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English Pages 498 [661] Year 2023
Elgar Encyclopedia of Development
ELGAR ENCYCLOPEDIAS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Elgar Encyclopedias in the Social Sciences serve as the definitive reference works to their fields. Each Encyclopedia is overseen by an editor internationally recognised as a leading name within the field, and contain a multitude of entries written by key scholars, providing an accessible and condensed overview of the key topics within a given subject area. Volumes in the series are commissioned across the breadth of the social sciences, and cover areas including, but not limited to, Political Science, Sociology, Human Geography, Development Studies, Social Policy, Public Management and Public Policy. Individual entries present a concise and logical overview of a given subject, together with a list of references for further study. Each Encyclopedia will serve as an invaluable resource for practitioners, academics, and students, and should form an essential part of any research journey. For a full list of Edward Elgar published titles, including the titles in this series, visit our website at www.e-elgar.com.
Elgar Encyclopedia of Development Edited by
Matthew Clarke Pro Vice-Chancellor, Researcher Development and Alfred Deakin Professor, Deakin University, Australia
Xinyu (Andy) Zhao Research Fellow, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, Deakin University, Australia
ELGAR ENCYCLOPEDIAS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA
© Editors and Contributing Authors Severally 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2023943171 This book is available electronically in the Political Science and Public Policy subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781800372122
ISBN 978 1 80037 211 5 (cased) ISBN 978 1 80037 212 2 (eBook)
EEP BoX
Contents
List of contributorsx An introduction to the Elgar xiv Encyclopedia of Development Matthew Clarke and Xinyu (Andy) Zhao Absolute poverty Andy Sumner
1
Advocacy5 Margit van Wessel Affordable housing Carolyn Whitzman
Agrarian change and rural development 13 Cristóbal Kay 18
Amartya Sen Lawrence Hamilton
21
Andre Gunder Frank Sing C. Chew
26
Animal capital Dinesh Wadiwel
33
Art and development Polly Stupples
37
Artificial intelligence and development Matthew L. Smith and Ruhiya Kristine Seward
42
Arturo Escobar Kiran Asher
60
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Bernice Yanful and Anne-Emanuelle Birn
65
Bretton Woods Laurissa Mühlich
71
BRICS75 Deborah Barros Leal Farias
10
Aid modality B. Ouattara
The Belt and Road Initiative Jing Gu
Chandra Talpade Mohanty Chizu Sato
78
Child labour Dev Nathan
84
Citizen aid Anne-Meike Fechter
89
Civil society and development Jude Howell
91
Class96 Jonathan Pattenden Communication for development Valentina Baú
101
Community capacity-building Gary Craig
105
Community development Gary Craig
111
48
Conflict sensitivity and do no harm Anthony Ware
117
Bandung and decolonization Narendran Kumarakulasingam
51
Corporate social responsibility Paul Alexander Haslam
121
Basic needs approach Kenneth A. Reinert
55
Corruption and development Alina Mungiu-Pippidi
126
v
vi Elgar encyclopedia of development
Culture and development Keith Nurse
130
Energy and development David I. Stern
219
Customary law Sandra F. Joireman
138
Ester Boserup Marina Fischer-Kowalski
224
Data justice Richard Heeks
142
Everyday peace Anthony Ware
228
Faith-based organizations Marie Juul Petersen
234
Finance and development Rashmi Arora
241
Financial inclusion Mandira Sarma
246
Debt146 Bruno Bonizzi and Christina Laskaridis Decent work Kanchana N. Ruwanpura
151
Degrowth156 Federico Demaria Dependency theory Wil Hout
162
Food regimes Philip McMichael
250
Developing countries Deborah Barros Leal Farias
167
Food security C. Peter Timmer
258
Development and racial hierarchy Kamna Patel
170
Forced migration Naohiko Omata
263
Development ethics Jay Drydyk
174
Foreign direct investment 267 Rajneesh Narula and André Pineli
Developmental state Yin-wah Chu
180
Gender and development Gouthami
271
Digital citizenship Jiajie Lu
185
Gender and intersectionality Tanja Bastia
276
Digital inclusion Amber Marshall
188
Disability and development Shaun Grech
192
Geography and the world’s development divides Marcin Wojciech Solarz
285
Disaster and development Jeroen Warner
197
Global governance Roni Kay M. O’Dell
290
Domestic violence and development Nata Duvvury
203
Global North–South Jean-Philippe Thérien
Early childhood development Deborah A. Phillips
208
Education and development Simon McGrath
214
Global value chains and economic development David Dollar Globalization and development Kenneth A. Reinert
278
295 298
Contents vii
Good governance Anis Chowdhury
303
Internet governance Francesca Musiani
390
Green economy Kirstie O’Neill
308
Labour migration Sylvia Ang
395
Health system Michael Anderson and Elias Mossialos
313
Land governance Stig Enemark
398
Heritage and development Dobrosława Wiktor-Mach
319
Land grabs Kiah Smith
403
Human development approach 323 Alexandra Fortacz and Sabina Alkire
Localization408 Kristina Roepstorff MDGs and SDGs Samuelson Appau and Sefa Awaworyi Churchill
412
Human Development Index Mark McGillivray
331
Human trafficking and slavery James Cockayne
336
416 Migration–development nexus Ronald Skeldon and Tanja Bastia
Humanitarian aid Nazanin Zadeh-Cummings
341
Mining421 Jeannette Graulau
Humanitarian–development nexus Jon Harald Sande Lie
346
Modernization426 Corinna R. Unger
Immanuel Wallerstein Chamsy el-Ojeili
351
Multispecies climate justice Yamini Narayanan
431
Inclusive research Melanie Nind
356
Multispecies poverty politics Yamini Narayanan
435
Indigenous peoples and development Janet Hunt
359
Neoliberalism438 Nichole Georgeou and Charles Hawksley
Infrastructure and economic development365 Dan Biller and Luis Alberto Andres International child sponsorship Brad Watson
372
Open development Ruhiya Kristine Seward and Matthew L. Smith Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Matthias Schmelzer
444
450
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Dane Rowlands
378
International trade and economic development Saibal Kar
383
Participatory development Anthony Ware
385
Pastoralism465 John Morton
International volunteering Susanne Schech
Oxfam455 Chris Roche 460
viii Elgar encyclopedia of development
Slow City Heike Mayer and Paul L. Knox
546
Pollution475 Andrew Farmer
Social enterprise Isaac Lyne
548
Population and development Tim Dyson
Social protection Keetie Roelen
553
Postcapitalism483 Tuomo Alhojärvi, Isaac Lyne, Pryor Placino, Katharine McKinnon and the Community Economies Collective
Socialist ecofeminism Ana Isla
556
South–South cooperation Thomas Muhr
562
Postdevelopment489 Samantha Balaton-Chrimes
Stages of growth Rashmi Arora
568
Post-neoliberalism492 Tobias Boos and Ulrich Brand
State fragility Nematullah Bizhan
572 575
Plan International Karin Arts
470
478
Poverty measurement Sharon Bessell
499
Queer development studies Corinne L. Mason
504
Subjective well-being Sefa Awaworyi Churchill and Russell Smyth
577
Religion and development Séverine Deneulin
507
Sustainable development Mark Diesendorf Sustainable livelihoods Kiah Smith
582
Sylvia Chant Cathy McIlwaine
587
Tourism and development David J. Telfer
590
Rights-based approach to development 522 Anthony Ware
Trade and poverty Paul Brenton
596
Rising powers Stephan Klingebiel
528
Urban planning Patrick Brandful Cobbinah
600
Rural–urban migration Xinjie Shi and Bingyu Huangfu
533
Waste management and development Sonia Maria Dias
605
Save the Children Karin Arts
538
Women and development Lourdes Beneria
610
542
The World Commission on Environment and Development Iris Borowy
Resilience512 Isaac Lyne, Ann Hill, Elizabeth Barron, Alison Guzman and Ignacio Krell Right to development Anthony Ware
Sexual and reproductive health and rights Nate Henderson
517
615
Contents ix
World-systems theory Christopher Chase-Dunn
620
World Trade Organization Kalim Siddiqui
623
Index
629
Contributors
Paul Brenton, The World Bank, USA
Tuomo Alhojärvi, University of Eastern Finland, Finland
Bruno Bonizzi, University of Hertfordshire, UK
Sabina Alkire, University of Oxford, UK
Iris Borowy, Shanghai University, China
Michael Anderson, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Christopher Chase-Dunn, University of California-Riverside, USA
Luis Alberto Andres, The World Bank, USA Sylvia Ang, Monash University, Australia
Sing C. Chew, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Germany
Samuelson Appau, RMIT University, Australia
Yin-wah Chu, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong
Karin Arts, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Sefa Awaworyi Churchill, RMIT University, Australia
Rashmi Arora, University of Bradford, UK
Anis Chowdhury, Western Sydney University, Australia
Kiran Asher, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA
Patrick Brandful Cobbinah, The University of Melbourne, Australia
Samantha Balaton-Chrimes, Deakin University, Australia
James Cockayne, NSW Anti-slavery Commisioner, Australia
Elizabeth Barron, The Norwegian University of Science and Techology, Norway
Community Economies Collective Gary Craig, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Deborah Barros Leal Farias, UNSW Sydney, Australia Tanja Bastia, University of Manchester, UK
Séverine Deneulin, University of Oxford, UK
Valentina Baú, Western Sydney University, Australia
Federico Demaria, The University of Barcelona, Spain
Lourdes Beneria, Cornell University, USA
Sonia Maria Dias, WIEGO, UK/Brazil
Sharon Bessell, Australian National University, Australia
Mark Diesendorf, UNSW Sydney, Australia
Dan Biller, Rollins College, USA
David Dollar, Brookings Institution, USA
Anne-Emanuelle Birn, University of Toronto, Canada
Jay Drydyk, Carleton University, Canada Nata Duvvury, University of Galway, Ireland
Nematullah Bizhan, Australian National University, Australia
Tim Dyson, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Tobias Boos, The University of Vienna, Austria
Chamsy el-Ojeili, Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Ulrich Brand, The University of Vienna, Austria x
Contributors xi
Stig Enemark, Aalborg University, Denmark
Sandra F. Joireman, University of Richmond, USA
Andrew Farmer, Institute for European Environmental Policy, Belgium
Saibal Kar, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, India
Anne-Meike Fechter, University of Sussex, UK
Cristóbal Kay, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Marina Fischer-Kowalski, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria
Stephan Klingebiel, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), Germany and Ewha Womans University, Republic of Korea
Alexandra Fortacz, University of Oxford, UK
Paul L. Knox, Virginia Tech, USA
Nichole Georgeou, Western Sydney University, Australia
Ignacio Krell, MAPLE Microdevelopment Chile, Chile
Gouthami, Independent Consultant
Narendran Kumarakulasingam, Conrad Grebel University College, Canada
Jeannette Graulau, The City University of New York, USA Shaun Grech, CBM, Germany and University of Cape Town, South Africa Jing Gu, Institute of Development Studies, UK and China Agricultural University, China Alison Guzman, MAPLE Microdevelopment Chile, Chile Lawrence Hamilton, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and University of Cambridge, UK Paul Alexander Haslam, University of Ottawa, Canada Charles Hawksley, University of Wollongong, Australia Richard Heeks, University of Manchester, UK Nate Henderson, Department of Enterprise, Investment and Trade, NSW Government, Australia Ann Hill, University of Canberra, Australia
Christina Laskaridis, The Open University, UK Jon Harald Sande Lie, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Norway Jiajie Lu, Dongguan University of Technology, China Isaac Lyne, Western Sydney University, Australia Amber Marshall, Griffith University, Australia Corinne L. Mason, Mount Royal University, Canada Heike Mayer, University of Bern, Switzerland Mark McGillivray, Australian National University, Australia Simon McGrath, University of Glasgow, UK Cathy McIlwaine, King’s College London, UK
Wil Hout, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Katharine McKinnon, University of Canberra, Australia
Jude Howell, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
John Morton, Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, UK
Bingyu Huangfu, Zhejiang University, China Janet Hunt, Australian National University, Australia Ana Isla, Brock University, Canada
Philip McMichael, Cornell University, USA
Elias Mossialos, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK Thomas Muhr, ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon, Centre of International Studies, Lisbon, Portugal
xii Elgar encyclopedia of development
Laurissa Mühlich, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Dane Rowlands, Carleton University, Canada
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, LUISS Guido Carli University, Italy
Kanchana N. Ruwanpura, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Francesca Musiani, Centre for Internet and Society, CNRS, France
Mandira Sarma, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
Yamini Narayanan, Deakin University, Australia
Chizu Sato, Wageningen University, the Netherlands
Rajneesh Narula, University of Reading, UK
Susanne Schech, Flinders University, Australia
Dev Nathan, Institute for Human Development, India; The New School for Social Research, USA; and GenDev Centre for Research and Innovation, India
Matthias Schmelzer, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany
Melanie Nind, University of Southampton, UK
Xinjie Shi, Zhejiang University, China
Keith Nurse, College of Science Technology and Applied Arts, Trinidad and Tobago Roni Kay M. O’Dell, Seton Hill University, USA Kirstie O’Neill, Cardiff University, UK Naohiko Omata, University of Oxford, UK B. Ouattara, University of Manchester, UK Kamna Patel, University College London, UK Jonathan Pattenden, University of East Anglia, UK Marie Juul Petersen, Danish Institute for Human Rights, Denmark Deborah A. Phillips, Georgetown University, USA André Pineli, Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), Brazil Pryor Placino, Thammasat University, Thailand
Ruhiya Kristine Seward, International Development Research Centre, Canada Kalim Siddiqui, University of Huddersfield, UK Ronald Skeldon, University of Sussex, UK Kiah Smith, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Policy Futures, The University of Queensland, Australia Matthew L. Smith, International Development Research Centre, Canada Russell Smyth, Monash University, Australia Marcin Wojciech Solarz, University of Warsaw, Poland David I. Stern, Australian National University, Australia Polly Stupples, Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand Andy Sumner, King’s College London, UK David J. Telfer, Brock University, Canada Jean-Philippe Thérien, Université de Montréal, Canada C. Peter Timmer, Harvard University, USA
Kenneth A. Reinert, George Mason University, USA
Corinna R. Unger, European University Institute, Italy
Chris Roche, La Trobe University, Australia
Margit van Wessel, Wageningen University & Research, the Netherlands
Keetie Roelen, Centre for the Study of Global Development, The Open University, UK Kristina Roepstorff, The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway
Dinesh Wadiwel, The University of Sydney, Australia Anthony Ware, Deakin University, Australia
Contributors xiii
Jeroen Warner, Wageningen University & Research, the Netherlands
Carolyn Whitzman, University of Ottawa, Canada
Brad Watson, Avondale University, Australia
Bernice Yanful, University of Toronto, Canada
Dobrosława Wiktor-Mach, Krakow University of Economics, Poland
Nazanin Zadeh-Cummings, Centre for Humanitarian Leadership, Deakin University, Australia
An introduction to the Elgar Encyclopedia of Development
Development is a contested term. It is contested in both its meaning and its means of achievement. Within this contestation though, the intrinsic goal of development is to advance human dignity, freedom, social equity, and self-determination. Development can therefore be best understood in its purest form as simply ‘good change’ (McGillivray 2016). A lack of development is characterized by social exclusion, poverty, ill-health, powerlessness, and shortened life expectancy. Positive development outcomes can be best achieved when communities have ownership of the goals and processes of development and where there are participatory representation, transparency, and accountability mechanisms. Positive development outcomes should also explicitly consider the importance of gender and diversity. Development occurs in all societies. It involves processes that require an appreciation of existing endogenous strengths and (often) exogenous interventions. Successful development requires critical analysis, mutual learning, and acceptance of its paradoxes and dilemmas. To ensure that benefits of development are sustained, the environment must be a central priority. There is no single measure of development and assessment of development requires a range of indicators. Development is both a noun and a verb. It is a desired state but also the process by which that state is achieved. Indeed, it is highly probably that neither noun nor verb will be fully realized and cease being sort. Development remains an ongoing goal for wealthy and resource-poor countries alike. As a political endeavour, it remains a powerful tool of inter-state relations, perhaps even more so over the last decade with the expansion of China’s interest in global development assistance. Whilst the living standards are now immeasurably improved from the past, there also remains tens of millions of people living in abject poverty and hundreds of millions more vulnerable to moving into such a state because of conflict and climate change. Whilst the modern xiv
development project has been in existence for the last seven decades, there is no expectation that this industry will slow soon. The beginning of the modern development project can be dated to the inauguration speech of President Truman in 1949. In the shadows of a world war that resulted in two political ideologies seeking dominance and with the rebuilding of a shattered Europe, it was considered that hitherto poor countries could quickly ‘modernize’ through adoption of liberal democratic ideals and institutions. With an intent to bring about ‘good’ change, the modern development project was from its inception though a political venture. During the final stages of the Second World War, the United States (soon to be joined by its Western allies), turned its attention to maintaining and extending its global influence and hegemony through a focus on increasing living standards under the guise of expanding liberal capitalism. From the middle of the last century, development has served a political purpose. Whilst initiated by the West, ideological foes almost immediately pursued the same cause of action, seeking to also expand the arc of communism across rapidly decolonizing countries in Africa, Asia, and South America. Development was a cornerstone of the Cold War from its infancy (Lorenzini 2019). The political genesis of the modern development project, however, does not ameliorate the positive impact it has had on hundreds of millions of people during this time. Whilst the development project absolutely served the national interests of development donors, it also directly addressed and sought to right humanitarian needs. This dual motivation of development – serving both national interests as well as addressing poverty – has been a defining tension of this endeavour. For the past seven decades, thousands of billions of dollars has been spent by Western countries in pursuit of good change in lowand middle-income countries. It is China today that is pursuing an alternative development agenda to the West through its Belt
An introduction to the Elgar Encyclopedia of Development xv
and Road Initiative development assistance programme (Pan and Clarke 2022). Such ‘competition’ between donors for influence with recipient countries changes the historic power dynamic between donor and recipient. It is unclear what the longer-term change to development paradigm will deliver. At an intuitive level, it would be expected that the ramping up of competition will result in positive development outcomes. Across any set of development indicators, be they related to life expectancy, health outcomes, education, housing, income, and so forth, there has been a significant improvement in the lives of the poor over the past 70 years in all countries. Whilst these outcomes are uneven (for example, depending on gender, age, minority status, disability) there has been an uplift in quality of life as a result of development interventions. This is not to say that development interventions have not been without negative consequences for some, but the overall outcomes are demonstrably on the positive of any objective assessment. Such good change ought not be surprising given both the quantum of funds specifically targeted towards achieving positive development outcomes during this period, but perhaps more importantly because of the international architecture and professional industry that has also been borne from this endeavour. Established soon after Truman’s declaration that the US would ‘embark on a bold new programme for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas … Our aim should be to help the free peoples of the world, through their own efforts, to produce more food, more clothing, more materials for housing, and more mechanical power to lighten their burdens’ (Truman 1949, p.1), this international architecture shaped the framework in which the modern development project was funded and implemented. This framework in turn shaped the relationship between donor and recipient by providing a platform and voice for countries receiving development assistance to highlight poor practice and unintended consequences. In more recent times, recipient nations have been able to drive changes to the delivery of development assistance to better empower recipient nations and hold donors to greater account. Seeking to address poverty and deprivation of course does date back before Truman in 1949. Indeed, the goal of universal primary
education was set in 1934 at a meeting sponsored by the League of Nations. However, this aspiration was not supported by any funds, timelines, or responsible agency. Moreover, what is commonly recognized today as development has historically been undertaken under the guise of charity. All major religions have placed the care of the widow, orphan, or other vulnerable community members at the centre of temporal expression of their religious beliefs. Moreover, religious bodies and institutions were often handmaidens to colonial incursions providing education, health, and other social welfare interventions. While these historical interventions can be critiqued, they do signify a long-held practice of responding to humanitarian needs. It is in this manner that the development project can also be understood to be a micro activity as much as it is a macro focused undertaking between nations. At the micro level, the focal point is the local community and the primary agents are local and international community-based organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Development interventions are smaller in scale, addressing identified needs often with a focus (more recently) on ensuring greater gender-based outcomes. Whilst these micro development agencies can be funded through official development assistance programmes by donor nations, they are more likely to be funded through private fund-raising in both the host and sending countries. The largest international NGOs raise funds through the child-sponsorship model which has been an effective fund-raising programme dating over 100 years (Watson and Clarke 2014). These agencies also receive funds in response to humanitarian emergency appeals as well as standing development-based programmes. Quite often, changes to delivery mode or focus have been initiated at the local level before percolating upwards to influence the larger macro development project. Increased focus on the environment, gender, disability, micro finance, inequality, and localization has started as local responses to development needs of impacted communities. Interventions undertaken at both the macro and micro levels have often failed the communities they should have assisted. Failures relate to both the motivation for the intervention (to serve the political needs of the donor rather than in response to humanitarian need) as well as technical failures. Vulnerable communities have been made
xvi Elgar encyclopedia of development
more vulnerable through interventions that entrenched existing unequal power structures. Environmental degradation or land reuse has forced human movement resulting in displacement. National self-determination has played second to needs of donors, resulting in debt for unnecessary or unaffordable infrastructure. Economies have been reorganized to suit political ideologies, removing traditional safety-nets and resulting in millions suffering economic and social hardship. In this way, the trajectory of development has been neither straight nor fair. It has undoubtedly delivered prosperity for many but often at an associated cost for others. It is therefore reasonable to consider development through a critical lens. Indeed, when this is done, many shifts in policy and practice have resulted from this critical consideration that have reversed (or at least highlighted and challenged) interventions that have not delivered ‘good’ change. In this manner, the development project is self-aware and able to negotiate the tension between its political and humanitarian motivations. Across development interventions at the macro and micro levels, the development project has become a global industry that involves hundreds of thousands of professionals and volunteers expending tens of billions of dollars each year. It is an industry that requires discipline-based knowledge and expertise from all sectors. Moreover, development has also established itself as its own academic discipline – itself interdisciplinary in nature – to critically research and teach how development practice and policy are understood and occur. It is to this wider audience that this Encyclopedia has been written. This Encyclopedia provides short primers for more than 130 key terms, events, people, theories, practices, agencies, and policies.
These entries are written by experts from across the globe both from academia but also from within the development sector itself. Authors of these entries were invited to contribute as acknowledged experts or as emerging leaders in new areas. As an encyclopedia, it is not a volume to be read in its entirety from start to finish – rather, its purpose is to provide key information on key subjects and introduce the reader to a wider literature. Authors have been asked to highlight core issues relevant to their entry, note major historical shifts, and identify seminal literature (where relevant). It would be unfair to expect such short entries to resolve the contestation and tensions within the development project. Rather, this Elgar Encyclopedia of Development should be seen as the essential starting point for those wishing to better understand how and why development occurs. Matthew Clarke and Xinyu (Andy) Zhao
REFERENCES
Lorenzini, S. (2019), Global Development: A Cold War History, Princeton University Press, Princeton. McGillivray, M. (2016), ‘What Is Development’, in D. Kingsbury, J. McKay, J. Hunt, M. McGillivray and M. Clarke (eds), International Development: Issues and Challenges, Palgrave, London. Pan, C. and Clarke, M. (2022), ‘Narrating the South Pacific in and Beyond Great Power Politics’, East Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/ s12140–021–09383-w. Truman, H. (1949), Inauguration Speech, http:// www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=13282, accessed 16 August 2022. Watson, B. and Clarke, M. (2014), Child Sponsorship: Exploring Pathways to a Brighter Future, Palgrave Macmillan, London.
A
Absolute poverty
This is in line with global pursuits to define poverty, for instance, that of the major UN Social Development Summit in 1995 which ultimately influenced the UN goals for 2015 and 2030 in the Millennium Development Goals and their successor, the Sustainable Development Goals.
Living in absolute poverty means being deprived from (i.e. lacking), something essential for a human being to have a minimum standard of living, thus experiencing one or more unmet basic needs. There is no unanimous definition of the latter since that requires a normative judgement, but basic needs could include sufficient financial means, nutrition, a certain education level, as well as access to healthcare, sanitation, and potable water. How poverty is defined and measured has practical consequences since entitlements to welfare services are frequently linked to poverty measures. Sen (1992, 1999), Nussbaum (2000), and UNDP (1990–present) advocate for considering individuals’ capabilities – their resources and opportunities – that make it possible to obtain what Sen called ‘functionings’. Functionings refer to things that humans value to be or to do – in Sen’s words ‘beings and doings’, such as being nourished, healthy, being dressed, and being literate – which jointly determine the level of well-being. Sen does not disregard income, arguing instead that income is overemphasized in well-being measures since income only constitutes a means to attaining valued outcomes. While Sen specified neither the precise functionings nor the related capabilities or opportunities as these are to be developed with some sort of societal deliberation process, on absolute poverty, Sen (1991, pp. 44–5) did remark the following:
Poverty has various manifestations, including lack of income and productive resources sufficient to ensure sustainable livelihoods; hunger and malnutrition; ill health; limited or lack of access to education and other basic services; increased morbidity and mortality from illness; homelessness and inadequate housing; unsafe environments; and social discrimination and exclusion. It is also characterized by a lack of participation in decision-making and in civil, social and cultural life. (UNDESA 1995, p. 1)
A participatory process across sixty countries corroborated this conceptualization of poverty. Narayan et al. (1999, pp. 4–5) summarized that people living in poverty stressed the experience of hunger and ill-health and also subjective dimensions that are difficult to quantify and thus are rarely measured. These subjective dimensions include shame, powerlessness, and humiliation: Poverty is multidimensional … poverty consists of many interlocked dimensions. Although poverty is rarely about the lack of only one thing, the bottom line is always hunger – the lack of food … poverty has important psychological dimensions, such as powerlessness, voicelessness, dependency, shame, and humiliation … poor people lack access to basic infrastructure – roads (particularly in rural areas), transportation, and clean water … poor health and illness are dreaded almost everywhere as a source of destitution.
[w]e may be able to go a fairly long distance in terms of a relatively small number of centrally important functionings (and the corresponding basic capabilities, e.g. the ability to be well nourished and well sheltered, the capability of escaping avoidable morbidity and premature mortality, and so forth).
When estimating poverty, one can choose between measures of income poverty or of non-monetary poverty. Monetary poverty lines at a national level are usually deter1
2 Elgar encyclopedia of development
mined based on the amount of monetary expenditure necessary to afford 2,100 calories daily (as advised by the World Health Organization) plus essential non-food items. The World Bank employs three thresholds to measure and compare poverty globally ($1.90, $3.20, and $5.50 a day per person in 2011 purchasing power parity (PPP)). The three different poverty lines mirror varying living standards used across the world. The lowest line, $1.90 a day, is the global threshold for extreme poverty, derived from the average national poverty lines of the poorest countries globally (i.e. low-income countries) (see Ferreira et al. 2016 for a history). The $3.20 and $5.50 a day lines in turn correspond to, respectively, the average of the national poverty lines of lower-middle- and upper-middle-income countries. (For a critical discussion of these thresholds, see Fischer 2018, Reddy and Lahoti 2015, and the seminal papers of Reddy and Pogge 2002, 2005.) It is frequently argued that $1.90 a day (or even $3.20 or $5.50) is insufficient to afford essential goods or to achieve functionings such as adequate health or access to education. In fact, the number of undernourished people may correlate to those in monetary poverty measured at $3.20 if not $5.50. A further critique of monetary poverty measures is that the necessary income varies across countries due to differing costs of access to education and health. More generally, monetary poverty alone might be inadequate to portray the multidimensional nature of poverty that Sen, the UN and Narayan et al., describe. Moreover, being temporarily out of monetary poverty does not eliminate the risk of returning to a state of poverty in the future. On the contrary, longitudinal studies estimate a ‘security from future poverty’ threshold to be much higher, namely at $13 a day in 2011 PPP (World Bank 2019, based on the approach of López-Calva and Ortiz-Juarez 2014; Sumner et al. 2014). In short, a person living above $13 a day has a low probability of living in absolute poverty in the future. The issue is that household income/ expenditure rarely remains stable, fluctuating over time. Given that millions of people globally live around the $1.90 a day line, slight changes in income/expenditure may already cause many to officially exit or enter poverty, frequently, in some cases. This clustering of people around the $1.90 a day line underlines how sensitive global poverty estimates are Andy Sumner
to the determined value of the consumption line. In fact, the poverty count increases on average by 100 million additional people for every 10 cents that are added above the consumption threshold (Edward and Sumner 2019). Additionally, about 250 million poor people are estimated to not appear in poverty statistics due to exclusion from data collection sample frames because of homelessness, migration, or other reasons (Carr-Hill 2013). While several aspects related to global monetary poverty measurement have been criticized, a major controversy is the application of national average consumption-based PPPs, given the significant differences in consumption patterns between the richer and poorer parts of a population, both between and within countries (see Deaton 2005, 2010a, 2010b; Deaton and Dupriez 2011; Deaton and Heston 2010; Klasen 2010). There are also raw data-related difficulties, some of which are not exclusive to monetary poverty data: making surveys (individual versus household) non-comparable across countries, variations in type of data collected (consumption expenditure, net income, or gross income), or that many countries may simply not have recent survey data. Determining the precise value of monetary poverty lines is not without caveats either. For instance, it has to be decided which items should be included in poor people’s consumption basket (and weightings) which may be heterogeneous across or even within countries. In contrast, non-monetary poverty is assessed by national governments by indicators, such as school enrolment and attendance; infant and child mortality; and access to healthcare, water, and sanitation when assessed nationally. Globally, UNDP and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) select a set of components of multidimensional poverty, which are then aggregated into an index as an alternative to monetary estimates of poverty (see Alkire and Foster 2011). The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) consists of ten indicators across three dimensions: health (nutrition and mortality), education (years of schooling and attendance rate), and living standard (access to electricity, sanitation, potable water, adequate flooring, cooking fuel, and household assets) (for a history, see Robles Aguilar and Sumner 2020). This multidimensional poverty measure is criticized as well, especially because its database stems from
Absolute poverty 3
different years across countries (depending on availability) without being interpolated/ extrapolated due to the lack of an agreed method to do so. Another source of contention is the selection of the components themselves, the weighting, and the cut-offs (for details, see Alkire 2011; Ravallion 2011). Although the MPI does not consider all the dimensions identified in UNDESA (1995) or Narayan et al. (1999) it portrays poverty in a set of dimensions beyond what is possible with monetary poverty measures. While a global unanimous definition of the fundamental capabilities or functionings does not exist (see discussion on various sets in Alkire 2005), one could consider the MPI a minimum set of globally comparable standards bound by the need for data that is available for as many countries as possible. Importantly, given that multidimensional poverty does not require cross-country price data (PPP data), it is unaffected by one of the major criticisms of the way global monetary poverty is measured. Andy Sumner
References
Alkire S (2005) Valuing Freedoms: Sen’s Capability Approach and Poverty Reduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Alkire S (2011) Multidimensional Poverty and its Discontents, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) Working Paper. OPHI, Oxford. Alkire S and Foster JE (2011) ‘Counting and multidimensional poverty measurement’, Journal of Public Economics 95(7): 476–87. Carr-Hill R (2013) ‘Missing millions and measuring development progress’, World Development 46: 30–44. Deaton A (2005) ‘Measuring poverty in a growing world (or measuring growth in a poor world)’, Review of Economics and Statistics 87(1): 1–19. Deaton A (2010a) ‘Measuring development: Different data, different conclusions’. Paper presented at the 8th AFD-EUDN Conference, Paris, 1 December. Deaton A (2010b) ‘Price indexes, inequality, and the measurement of world poverty’, American Economic Review 1: 5–34. Deaton A and Dupriez O (2011) ‘Purchasing power parity exchange rates for the global poor’, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 3(2): 137–66. Deaton A and Heston A (2010) ‘Understanding PPPs and PPP-based national accounts’, American Economic Journal 2(4): 1–35.
Edward P and Sumner A (2019) The End of Poverty: Inequality and Growth in Global Perspective, Palgrave Macmillan, London. Ferreira, FHG, Chen S, Dabalen A, Dikhanov Y, Hamadeh N, Jolliffe D, Narayan A, Prydz EB, Revenga A, Sangraula P, Serajuddin U, and Yoshida N (2016) ‘A global count of the extreme poor in 2012: Data issues, methodology and initial results’, The Journal of Economic Inequality 14(2): 141–172. Fischer AM (2018) Poverty as Ideology: Rescuing Social Justice from Global Development Agendas, Zed Books Ltd, London. Klasen S (2010) ‘Levels and trends in absolute poverty in the world: What we know and what we don’t’. Paper prepared for the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, St. Gallen, Switzerland, August 22–28. López-Calva LF and Ortiz-Juarez E (2014) ‘A vulnerability approach to the definition of the middle class’, The Journal of Economic Inequality 12: 23–47. Narayan D, Chambers R, Shah MK, and Petesch P (1999) Voices of the Poor: Crying out for Change, World Bank, Washington DC. Nussbaum M (2000) Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Ravallion, M (2011) ‘On multidimensional indices of poverty’, Journal of Economic Inequality 9: 235–48. Reddy SG and Lahoti R (2015) ‘$1.90 per day: What does it say?’ Discussion Paper No. 189. Göttingen: Courant Research Centre Poverty, Equity and Growth. Reddy SG and Pogge T (2002) ‘How not to count the poor (Version 3.0)’. Mimeo, Barnard College, New York. Reddy SG and Pogge T (2005) ‘How not to count the poor (Version 6.2)’. Mimeo, Barnard College, New York. Robles Aguilar G and Sumner A (2020) ‘Who are the world’s poor? A new profile of global multidimensional poverty’, World Development. 126. Sen AK (1991) ‘Capability and well-being’. In M Nussbaum and A Sen (eds.), The Quality of Life. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Sen AK (1992) Inequality Reexamined, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA. Sen AK (1999) Development as Freedom, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Sumner A, Yusuf A, and Suara Y (2014) ‘Prospects for the poor: A set of poverty measures based on the probability of remaining poor (or not) in Indonesia’. Center for Economics and Development Studies, Department of Economics, Padjadjaran University, Bandung, Indonesia.
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Andy Sumner
2, http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/wssd/text -version/agreements/poach2.htm (accessed 8 April 2021). World Bank (2019) Stagnant Poverty Reduction in Latin America, World Bank, Washington, DC.
Advocacy
of issues, influencing policy processes or practices in the desired direction or stopping undesirable developments. There may be strong opposition. Advocacy may be largely ignored by target audiences due to other priorities. Targets may be opposed to advocated views, and their interests may go against what you promote. In many cases, advocacy is also a long-term investment, in which success is measured by the steps taken towards desired outcomes. Policy processes are complex, involving multiple levels and actors, often working against the changes pursued by advocates. This makes advocacy for development and its achievements highly contextual, and its nature or effectiveness not easily done justice to, given the many challenges and contextual conditions involved.
It is often noted that organizations in the development field have increasingly turned to advocacy to achieve change. Seeking change through projects may lead to results, but these do not address fundamental underlying conditions that shape development, such as legal rights, cultural understandings or market relations. More than projects, advocacy addresses such structural matters, seeking to transform the legal, political and social conditions that shape development. This entry focuses on what we call ‘advocacy for development’ as carried out by organizations involved with development issues. Such organizations mainly include civil society organizations, but also multilateral organizations and states. Indirectly, donors such as states and foundations may have important roles supporting and directing advocacy. We define advocacy for development as a ‘wide range of activities conducted to influence decision makers at different levels’ (Morariu and Brennan 2009, p. 100) with the overall aim of combatting the structural causes of poverty and injustice. We include here as decision-makers not only people holding positions of power in public and private institutions, but also individuals and groups who hold more informal power, such as communities and their leaders, and social and cultural groups of various kinds. This definition follows the widely held belief that advocacy is a tool to fight the causes of poverty or injustice and influence structural change, aiming to change social, political and policy structures and to challenge power structures. In the current age of shrinking space for civil society, and challenges to human rights and conflicts in many contexts, advocacy is often geared towards protecting past achievements and preventing their loss. This advocacy goes beyond influencing policy, often aiming for sustainable changes in public and political contexts. Advocacy includes then not only activities such as lobbying or demonstrations, but also awareness-raising, legal actions and public education. Advocacy likewise supports the creation and elevation of voices through building networks, capacity, and the articulation of views and interests. Advocacy for development is a political activity. It is about drawing attention to issues, promoting certain understandings
Advocacy strategies
A conventional understanding of advocacy assumes that advocacy aims to influence powerful decision-makers such as leading government actors, through clearly defined messages and actions towards targets, either from the ‘inside’ in a more trusting relationship, or from the ‘outside’ where advocates seek to influence through applying pressure. While both forms of message-centred advocacy are common, advocacy for development also takes place through working together in longer-term policy development and implementation, such as when policy frameworks are developed together in multi-stakeholder governance process. Furthermore, advocacy for development involves not only the expression of voices but also the creation of voices, and the development of advocates and relations through which these voices can obtain a hearing. Advocacy is rooted in strategy development, involving situational analysis (identification and monitoring of relevant arenas, identification of opportunities and threats), stakeholder analysis (targets, allies, opposition), internal strategy development, coordination and planning as well as strategizing, coordination and planning with allies external to the organization. Such strategy development involves the articulation of the change that is sought, the means by which the change is to be achieved, and the mobilization of resources and capacities to carry out the chosen strategy. Strategies can be multi-pronged and planned for a short period 5
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of time (e.g. a single event) or a long-term process. Strategies can be centred on a single arena or involve multiple arenas. Depending on conditions and ambitions, advocacy for development may also involve capacity development. This occurs when people from formerly excluded and less-organized groups gain opportunities to develop their organizations and their roles as advocates, or when advocates build new capacities for advocacy (i.e. online campaigning), or develop new perspectives through their interactions with partners and constituents. Advocacy involves relationship-building and -maintenance. In many cases, with advocates seeking to represent the views and interests of constituents, organizations develop around an issue or seek to link up with (potential) constituents who are affected by an issue. Since organizations often seek to build a stronger voice through working together in coalitions, organizations commonly work on building and maintaining these. Such coalitions may be temporary, centred around a single policy process, or more long term and wide-ranging. Successful advocacy often depends on access to decision-makers. Building and maintaining this access is a key part of advocacy work. This access can have many grounds, such as agreement between advocate and the decision-maker they are trying to influence, the credibility of the organization doing the advocacy or trusting personal relations (Parkhurst 2017; Gourevitch et al. 2012; Harrison 2017). Content development is another key advocacy tool, involving development of content for direct influencing of targets (e.g. position papers and policy proposals). Message crafting, with attention to framing and symbolism for effectiveness can be an important dimension of this content development (Okada 2013; Eagleton-Pierce 2015). Gathering testimonies and stories and building or finding ways to present evidence to back up claims are other important activities. Information-centred activities are therefore central to advocacy, involving information politics, ‘the ability to quickly and credibly generate information and move it where it will have the most impact’ (Keck and Sikkink 1999: 95). Jordan and Van Tuijl (2000: 2052) even define advocacy as ‘an act of organizing the strategic use of information to democratize unequal power relations’. Margit van Wessel
Research can be important for understanding issues, developing and piloting solutions, and for developing materials to use in messaging. A specific form of using information in campaigning is the development and use of information to score actors on indices – a common approach for exposing and influencing public and private actors, as with Oxfam’s ‘Behind the Brands’ campaign (Oxfam n.d. a, b). Information is also effective for monitoring implementation of policies in order to hold actors to account. A distinction is commonly made between inside and outside advocacy. Inside advocacy is face-to-face, constructive interaction between advocates and individuals and institutions they seek to influence. It includes formal and informal meetings with targeted decision-makers, participation in non-public events (meetings, round table discussions, working groups, multi-stakeholder processes) presentations (at conferences, policy meetings, working groups, etc.) as well as publications directed at such targets, including for example reports, policy briefs, statements, recommendations and testimonies. Outside advocacy seeks to influence through pressure in various forms. One main method is the mobilization of public opinion through which pressure can be exerted on decision-makers in public and private institutions, as with the aforementioned ‘Behind the Brands’ campaign. Organizing demonstrations and exposure through mass and social media also come in here. Another form of outside advocacy is litigation, as with the Dutch civil society organization, Urgenda’s court case against the Dutch state, pushing the state to live up to its climate change mitigation commitments (De Graaf and Jans 2015). In practice, the distinction between inside and outside often does not hold. Organizations may combine outside strategies with constructive engagement, alone or in cooperation with other organizations, working with a formal or informal division of labour. For example, the momentum created with media attention may help gain attention for issues, thereby helping gain access to decision-makers for inside advocacy. Strategies may also shift over time as advocates may become part of the policy processes they first sought to influence from an outside position. Targets may also develop into allies. For example, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands is often a target for Dutch development organiza-
Advocacy 7
tions, but also an ally (van Wessel et al. 2017). Similarly, ‘frontrunners’ in the private sector can develop into allies to target those lagging behind.
Effectiveness
Advocacy can have many different objectives, ranging from organizing and building voices, awareness raising, agenda-setting drawing attention to issues, promoting specific understandings of issues or creating space for certain solutions, contributing to policy development and implementation or evaluation, or transforming the way decisions are made, as when more inclusive forms of policy process are sought. Advocacy can seek to promote change, or prevent change, such as deterioration of human rights or consumer protections. Advocacy can thus be effective on many different fronts. Many advocacy outcomes are intermediate, consisting of steps towards a desired change. The road towards success is also not linear and predictable. Challenges along the way can hamper or set back efforts (van Wessel et al. 2021). For long periods of time, it may seem that nothing is achieved – with sudden revolutionary changes then changing the picture completely, a process captured in punctuated equilibrium theory of policy change (Baumgartner and Jones 1993). To what extent successes then are due to recent efforts or more those of decades of work by others can be hard to determine. However, existing research does indicate that success depends on various factors, including internal and external factors, issue characteristics and the maturity of organizations’ efforts. Internal factors pertain to the organization’s capacities. A recent review identifies eight core capacities relevant to advocacy effectiveness in the context of development: the capacity to produce evidence, build rapport and inspire trust among power holders, represent constituency interests, analyse the political arena, produce tailored messages, work collectively and adapt to ongoing changes in the environment (Elbers and Kamstra 2020). It is important, however, to realize that factors like trust and rapport with power holders are not independent, objective capacities, but traits of relations, depending at least partly on agreement with perspectives and interests of the power holders involved. Depending on context, dif-
ferent capacities may turn out more or less relevant. For example, in authoritarian contexts, space for representation of constituency interests may be limited, while evidence on workable solutions may be welcomed more (Syal et al. 2021; van Wessel 2023b). External conditions and changes can provide openings or present barriers for advocacy. While advocates can sometimes influence external factors and create openings, external factors are largely outside of the advocates’ control. External factors can be grouped into four categories: (1) characteristics of the targets, including their power relevant to the issue, agendas, opposition to the issue and openness to influence; (2) characteristics of the context surrounding the issue, including the presence and capacity of an organized opposition against or support for the advocacy goal on a particular issue; (3) characteristics of the public in terms of their support for or opposition to an organization’s position on an issue, the degree of similarity between the advocacy objectives and societal values or agendas and the role of mass media and social media and (4) characteristics of the general context, including the socio-political, socioeconomic and sociocultural contexts and the political or legal space open to civil society organizations (Barrett et al. 2016). Literature on advocacy also points to the issue as an independent factor explaining results (e.g. Carpenter 2011). Identifying, for example, the scope of an issue, the degree to which an issue can be related to directly identifiable victims and the complexity of an issue (including the multiplicity of actors that need to be targeted) as explanatory factors. Finally, the maturity of the networks involved with advocacy and their efforts on an issue can play a part in explaining success. It can take years to build coalitions, agree on objectives and actions, gain access to targets and execute strategies. For that reason, the amount of time that has passed since the start of advocacy efforts can help to explain achievements. Funding cycles lasting only a few years may work against effectiveness – a common complaint among organizations doing advocacy for development.
Issues
Advocacy for development is presently confronted with two important issues regarding the question how to shape and carry out the Margit van Wessel
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work. One of these is Southern ownership. With international non-governmental organizations from the global North controlling the bulk of available funding, control over agendas, roles and allocation of funds to advocates in the global South is often in Northern hands, forcing Southern actors into positions where they focus on meeting donor requirements rather than constituent needs and interests, and depoliticize (Banks et al. 2015). This situation is increasingly contested, as illustrated by the #Shiftthepower movement (https://globalfundcommunityfoundations .org/what-we-stand-for/shiftthepower/) and numerous initiatives towards ‘localization’, seeking to shift funds towards actors in the global South, reform governance structures and reshape how advocacy agendas are set and developed towards more ‘locally led’ approaches (Bond 2021). However, while many efforts are underway, disappointment about the pace of progress is common among Southern actors, while Northern actors struggle to define new roles while seeking to maintain their relevance (van Wessel 2023). The second issue is civic space. In many contexts, space for civil society has been shrinking, sometimes strongly limiting the ability of civil society organizations (CSOs) to act, interact with likeminded organizations or even exist, often with high personal risks for the involved activists. Many nation states have increasingly restricted the space for civil society to carry out their roles – especially political ones (CIVICUS 2020; Toepler et al. 2020). Van der Borgh and Terwindt (2012, pp. 1070–72), distinguish five sets of actions and policies that can restrict operational space for CSOs: physical harassment and intimidation, preventative and punitive measures, administrative restrictions, stigmatization and negative labelling, and pressure in institutionalized forms of interaction and dialogue between government entities and civil society, distinguishing co-optation or closure of newly created spaces. Common effects are the stopping of operations, shifting from advocacy to service delivery, shifting topic and depoliticization of the advocacy (Fransen et al. 2021; Tadesse and Steen 2019). Much of this research focuses on restrictions as damaging the claim-making role of civil society (Toepler et al. 2020), which is often executed in the public sphere and sometimes in consultation with government agencies. Work on the crackdown on Margit van Wessel
civic space raises doubts about whether this role, essential for civil society’s contribution to articulating and promoting alternatives and including less-heard views and interests, can be executed in many contexts today, especially considering how restrictions obstruct autonomy and silence challenging voices. The constraints on civic space are often selective, with new restrictions mostly affecting human rights defenders, social movements, and marginalized and disempowered groups (Hossain et al. 2018, pp. 7–8, 14). A relevant and upcoming area of research here addresses the ways to navigate constrictions and work effectively in constrained contexts. Researchers point to such strategies as reframing into less-threatening language, shifting from national-level to local-level advocacy or from agenda-setting advocacy to implementation (Fransen et al. 2021) the management of visibility (van Wessel et al. 2019) and the building of trustful relations with state actors (Tadesse and Steen 2019). Margit van Wessel
References
Banks, N., Hulme, D. and Edwards, M. (2015) ‘NGOs, states, and donors revisited: Still too close for comfort?’ World Development, 66, 707–18. Barrett, J.B., van Wessel, M.G.J., Hilhorst, D.J.M., Arensman, B., Klaver, D.C., Richert, W., van Bodegom, A.J., van Waegeningh, C., Rasch, E.D. and Wagemakers, A. (2016) Advocacy for development: Effectiveness, monitoring and evaluation, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen. Baumgartner, R.F. and Jones, B.D. (1993) Agendas and Instability in American Politics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Bond (2021) Catalysing locally-led development in the UK aid system, Bond, London. Carpenter, R.C. (2011) ‘Vetting the advocacy agenda: Network centrality and the paradox of weapons norms’, International Organization, 65(1), 69–102. CIVICUS (2020) The State of Civil Society Report 2020, CIVICUS, https:// www .civicus .org/index.php/state-of-civil-society-report -2020, retrieved 15 August 2020. De Graaf, K.J. and Jans, J.H. (2015) ‘The Urgenda decision: Netherlands liable for role in causing dangerous global climate change’, Journal of Environmental Law, 27(3), 517–27. Eagleton-Pierce, M. (2015) ‘Symbolic power and social critique in the making of Oxfam’s trade policy research’, in Hannah, E., Scott, J. and Trommer, S. (eds), Expert knowledge in global trade, Routledge, London.
Advocacy 9 Elbers, W. and Kamstra, J. (2020) ‘How does organisational capacity contribute to advocacy effectiveness? Taking stock of existing evidence’, Development in Practice, 30(5), 599–608, https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524 .2020.1779664. Fransen, L., Dupuy, K., Hinfelaar, M. and Zakaria Mazumder, S.M. (2021) ‘Tempering transnational advocacy? The effect of repression and regulatory restriction on transnational NGO collaborations’, Global Policy, 12, 11–22. Gourevitch, P.A., Lake, D.A. and Stein, J.G. (eds) (2012) The credibility of transnational NGOs: When virtue is not enough, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Harrison, T. (2017) ‘NGOs and personal politics: The relationship between NGOs and political leaders in West Bengal, India’, World Development, 98, 485–96. Hossain, N., Khurana, N., Mohmand, S., Nazneen, S., Oosterom, M., Roberts, T., Santos, R., Shankland, A. and Schröder, P. (2018) What does closing civic space mean for development? A literature review and proposed conceptual framework, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. Jordan, L. and Van Tuijl, P. (2000) ‘Political responsibility in transnational NGO advocacy’, World Development, 28(12), 2051–65. Keck, M.E. and Sikkink, K. (1999) ‘Transnational advocacy networks in international and regional politics’, International Social Science Journal, 51(159), 89–101. Morariu, J. and Brennan, K. (2009) ‘Effective advocacy evaluation: The role of funders’, The Foundation Review, 1(3), 100–108. Okada, A. (2013) ‘Mobilizing the donor public: Dynamics of development NGOs’ message framing’, doctoral dissertation, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh. Oxfam (n.d. a) ‘Behind the brands’, https://www .behindthebrands.org. Oxfam (n.d. b) ‘Behind the brands company scorecard’, https://www.behindthebrands.org/ company-scorecard/. Parkhurst, J. (2017) The politics of evidence: From evidence-based policy to the good governance of evidence, Routledge, London.
Syal, R., van Wessel, M. and Sahoo, S. (2021) ‘Collaboration, co-optation or navigation? The role of civil society in disaster governance in India’, VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 32(4), 795–808. Tadesse, H.A. and Steen, T. (2019) ‘Exploring the impact of political context on state–civil society relations: Actors’ strategies in a developmental state’, VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 30, 1256–69. Toepler, S., Zimmer, A., Fröhlich, C. and Obuch, K. (2020) ‘The changing space for NGOs: Civil society in authoritarian and hybrid regimes’, VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 31(4), 649–62. Van der Borgh, C. and Terwindt, C. (2012) ‘Shrinking operational space of NGOs—A framework of analysis’, Development in Practice, 22(8), 1065–81. van Wessel, M. (2023a) ‘Starting advocacy programmes from the South: Rethinking multi-country programming’. In van Wessel, M., Kontinen, T. and Bawole, J.N. (eds), Reimagining Civil Society Collaborations in Development (pp. 249–64), Routledge, Abingdon. van Wessel, M. (2023b) ‘Advocacy in Constrained Settings. Rethinking Contextuality’. In Biekart, K., Kontinen, T. and Millstein, M. (eds), Civil Society Responses to Changing Civic Spaces (pp. 217–234), Cham, Springer International Publishing. van Wessel, M.G.J., Ho, W.W.S., Edwige, M. and Tamas, P.A. (2021) Advocacy in context: Stories from South Sudan, Nigeria, Burundi, Central African Republic and Afghanistan, Cordaid, The Hague. van Wessel, M.G.J., Katyaini, S., Mishra, Y., Naz, F., Balasubramanian, R., Manchanda, R., Syal, R., Deo, N. and Sahoo, S. (2019) Civil society dynamics: Shaping roles, navigating contexts, Wageningen University and Research, https:// edepot.wur.nl/511476. van Wessel, M.G.J., Schulpen, L., Hilhorst, T. and Biekart, K. (2017) Mapping the expectations of the Dutch strategic partnerships for lobby and advocacy, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen.
Margit van Wessel
Affordable housing
central to affordable housing policymaking (Farha 2016). The right to adequate housing has been ratified by numerous international treaties, starting with The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and further elaborated in The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) and The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966). The UN Sustainable Development Goals (2016, 11.1) include: ‘By 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe, and affordable housing and basic services, and upgrade slums.’ The link between adequate housing and climate change is clear: if sufficient affordable homes are not available in well-serviced locations, a greater proportion of the poor will be forced to live in peripheral areas. This will not only increase inequalities, but will also lead to higher greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through motorized transport and reduce economic opportunities. The human and environmental costs of poorly built and insulated housing have become increasingly clear, with a growing number of people dying in their homes during heat waves, and residential buildings accounting for 27 per cent of global GHG emissions, as compared to 23 per cent for transport (UNEP 2020, p. 3). Around the world, homes are rapidly becoming less affordable. A number of reasons have been posited, of which the two most common are: (1) speculation in buildings and land by footloose global capital (financialization of housing) and (2) withdrawal of national governments from providing social housing (public and other not-for-profit housing to meet the needs of low- and moderate-income households). Land policy, often controlled by local or regional rather than national government, can be negative or positive in its social impacts. All too often, land policy has discriminated against some households by income, racial origin or household composition, restricting multiple-family homes on well-located land through exclusionary zoning, evicting informal settlements without providing acceptable alternatives, and limiting availability of secure alternatives to homeownership (Lawson & Ruonavaara 2020; WEF 2019). Access to affordable housing varies widely around the world. In sub-Saharan Africa, over half of households – 55.4 per cent – are in unaffordable and/or substandard homes.
Affordable housing is both a human right, and a basic precondition of economic development. The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the concept of adequate housing as a health determinant. In order to prevent the spread of COVID-19, governments across the world have asked and, in some cases legislated, that people isolate at home. As Leilani Farha, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, has recently written: ‘Housing has become a frontline defence against the virus’ (Farha 2020). COVID-19 has also exposed increasing disparities in this health determinant. For as many as 1.8 billion people, a third of the earth’s urban population, overcrowding and the necessity to undertake unsafe work in order to pay rent and avoid being evicted have resulted in death or life-threatening illness (Whitzman 2020). What is affordable housing? The UN defines affordable housing as total housing cost (rent or mortgage, property taxes and insurance) of no more than 30 per cent of household income. This definition is linked to the approach called residual income, whereby money left over after paying housing cost should be sufficient to pay for other essential needs, including food, clothing, utilities such as water and energy, and transport to work or services. Residual income would be a more accurate measure but is much harder to calculate in a comparable and replicable manner between local and national governments (UN-Habitat 2019, pp. 2–3). Affordability is part of the more inclusive concept of adequate housing. Aside from affordability, which has already been defined, housing adequacy includes six other elements: availability of basic needs such as water and toilets; habitability in terms of protection from the elements; accessibility for marginalized groups such as people with disabilities; security of tenure to protect against forced eviction, particularly in informal settlements; location close to employment opportunities, schools and other necessary services; and cultural adequacy, which meets the need of marginalized minorities such as Indigenous peoples. In addition, the UN has called for the voices of those with lived experience of homelessness and inadequate housing to be 10
Affordable housing 11
In West Asia and North Africa as well as in Central and Southern Asia, the proportion is less than one-third – 30.5 per cent and 30.3 per cent, respectively. About one in five households in Latin America and the Caribbean and East and South East Asia – 21.4 per cent and 19.8 per cent, respectively – are without access to affordable housing. In North America and Europe, the proportion is one in seven – 12.8 per cent. Of course, there are substantial intra-regional variations in affordability: unaffordability rates in Africa range from 1.5 per cent in Mauritius to 100 per cent in Sierra Leone (UN-Habitat 2019, p. 5). It is only in a very few countries like Singapore and Finland where the right to adequate housing has been backed up by consistent government action over decades (Lawson & Ruonavaara 2020). Access to affordable housing also varies by gender and gender identity, indigeneity, race/ethnicity/religion, sexuality, age and abilities. In most countries, single mothers and women-led households more generally find it harder to enact their rights and participate in decisions around their homes than male-led households (Farha 2016). This, in turn, impacts on their economic and health outcomes, and those of their children. The ageing of populations in many countries increases the importance of housing that is accessible and close to health and social services. A consensus is beginning to emerge on ways to improve housing outcomes. Comprehensive need assessments are an important first step in national and local policies. These should be broken down by household income categories. The private sector cannot provide homes at affordable price points for most low-income households – this is a job for governments and other non-profit providers. The private sector will not provide adequate homes for moderate-income households without strong regulatory control by governments (Woetzel et al. 2014, pp. 1–5). The next most important mechanism is unlocking well-located land, followed by industrializing housing production through streamlined delivery (Woetzel et al. 2014; WEF 2019; Lawson & Ruonavaara 2020). Public land banking and industrialized construction of well-constructed public housing has been the key ingredient of Singapore’s success in providing adequate
housing since independence in 1964. Land re-adjustment – governments trading land within an urban area to create larger development sites – has helped countries like Korea and Germany develop mass housing programmes. Comprehensive transport and land use planning, with city-wide social and affordable housing targets, has been a hallmark of successful programmes in China and France (Lawson & Ruonavaara 2020, p. 6). Community land trusts – legal entities with a commitment to affordable housing in perpetuity – have worked to preserve and expand social housing in many countries (WEF 2019, p. 5). A commitment to tenure neutrality is essential to preventing loss of affordable housing. Governments must not assume that homeownership is ideal or possible for all households, and consequently they must improve the rights of tenants against eviction or untenable rent increases. Governments must reverse course on neoliberal policies that allowed over-concentration of ownership by housing speculators, most notoriously Real Estate Investment Trusts. These entities take a profit maximization approach to housing, by buying up vast numbers of homes, evicting existing tenants under the grounds of renovation or simply raising rents to the point of unaffordability, and then renting at ever-increasing costs. There is a growing global movement to restrict the growth and power of financialized instruments, through restricting short-term letting platforms such as Airbnb; requiring registration of rental properties; enacting and strengthening rent control systems by closing loopholes related to renovation, demolition and conversion to ownership; and reducing foreign ownership of properties (Lawson & Ruonavaara 2020, pp. 55–6). To conclude, affordable housing cannot occur without strong government regulation in terms of land and taxation policy. Housing infrastructure strategies must be underpinned by need assessments that include income categories, sizes of households, and a gender and intersectional analysis that identifies sub-targets for priority populations. The acquisition of land that is well-located in terms of transport and service infrastructure is key, as is retaining affordability of the land either through leasing or development of community land trusts. Housing must be Carolyn Whitzman
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treated as a right rather than as a commodity, just like healthcare and education, so that people can develop and thrive. Carolyn Whitzman
References
Farha, L. (2016). Implementing the right to adequate housing: A guide for local governments and civil authorities. United Nations Human Rights Commission. https://www.uclg-cisdp .org/sites/default/files/GuideSubnationalReport _EN_0.pdf. Farha, L. (2020). COVID-19 guidance note: Protection for those living in homelessness. United Nations Human Rights Commission. http://www.unhousingrapp.org/user/ pages/07.press-room/Guidance%20Note %20Homelessness%20Actual%20Final%202 %20April%202020[2].pdf. Lawson, J. & Ruonavaara, H. (2020). Land policy for affordable and inclusive housing: An international review. Smartland Institute, Turku University. https://smartland.fi/wp-content/ uploads/Land-policy-for-affordable-and -inclusive-housing-an-international-review.pdf. UNEP [United Nations Environment Programme] (2020). 2020 global status report for buildings and construction: Towards a zero-emission, efficient and resilient buildings and construction sector. UNEP. https://wedocs.unep.org/ bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/34572/GSR _ES.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y.
Carolyn Whitzman
UN-Habitat [United Nations Habitat] (2019). The global housing affordability challenge: A more comprehensive understanding of the housing sector. UN-Habitat. https://unhabitat.org/sites/ default/files/2020/06/urban_data_digest_the _global_housing_affordability_challenge.pdf. WEF [World Economic Forum] (2019). Making affordable housing a reality in cities. World Economic Forum. http://www3.weforum.org/ docs/WEF_Making_Affordable_Housing_A _Reality_In_Cities_report.pdf. Whitzman, C. (2020). COVID housing policy roundtable report. Housing Research Collaborative, University of British Columbia. https://housingr esearchcollaborative.scarp.ubc.ca/files/2020/ 11/FinalReport_COVID-19-Global-Housing -Policies.pdf. Woetzel, J., Ram, S., Mischke, J., Garemo, N. & Sankhe, S. (2014). A blueprint for addressing the global affordable housing challenge. McKinsey Consulting. https://www.mckinsey .com/~/media/McKinsey/Featured%20Insights/ Urbanization/Tackling%20the%20worlds %20affordable%20housing%20challenge/MGI _Affordable_housing_Full%20Report_October %202014.ashx.
Agrarian change and rural development
He later clarifies that the term rural development ‘may also be used, however, to refer to processes of change in rural societies, not at all of which involve actions by governments’ (1982, p. 16). For undertaking an analysis of AC and RD the following four questions put by Bernstein (2010, pp. 22–3) are a good guide. His first question is ‘Who owns what?’ This refers to the existing property regimes; it enquires into who owns the productive resources such as land and capital. His second question is ‘Who does what?’ which ‘is about social divisions of labour. Who performs what activities of social production and reproduction’ and what is the class composition in society. The third question ‘Who gets what?’ is about the distribution of income and inequality, and the fourth question ‘What do they do with it?’ ‘is about social relations of consumption, reproduction and accumulation’. These questions refer to the class, economic, social, and political relations in societies and they partially permeate this entry although they are not fully discussed due to space limitations.
Authors often do not make a distinction between agrarian change and rural development or do not explicitly differentiate both terms. By agrarian change (AC) I mean the transformation which occurs in the agricultural sector which includes the production of crops, horticulture/vegetables, fruits, livestock, and forestry. It might also include inland fish farming which has developed in recent decades. Rural development (RD) is a wider term which, besides comprising the above activities, also includes non-agricultural activities such as rural industries and services, for example, fruit processing and eco-tourism, respectively. While historically there was a clear demarcation between the rural and the urban, the so-called ‘urban–rural divide’, these boundaries have frayed owing to the increasing density and fluidity of rural–urban interactions resulting from the development of roads, transport, communication technologies, pendular migration, and so on. These are dynamic categories, hence terms like ‘rurbanization’ and ‘cities of peasants’ have been used. Where the distinction between change and development is concerned, the term development is more value laden due to its normative and policy dimension. Hence, as will be discussed throughout this entry, rural development is a more contested concept, which has led to major differences in its meaning and particularly in ways of achieving it. John Harriss (1982, p. 15) expresses these differences very well in his seminal work, Rural Development: Theories of Peasant Economy and Agrarian Change. He argues that
Agrarian transitions and food regimes
A pivotal moment in the history of AC and RD in the modern world has been the agricultural revolution which first emerged during the end of the seventeenth century and the first decades of the eighteenth century in Great Britain with the transition from feudalism to capitalism. A variety of technical and organizational transformations in farming led to increases in productivity and production. This in turn facilitated the country’s industrial revolution of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century as agriculture was able to provide financial resources for industrial investment as well as a market for industrial products. This AC was largely driven by improving landlords and profit-seeking capitalist tenant farmers who rented land from landlords. This has been characterized as a transition to agrarian capitalism from above with impulses from below. The typical case of ‘capitalism from above’ is the AC in Prussia where the landlords (Junkers) transformed their large feudal landed estates into modern capitalist farms. This type of AC is also referred to as the Junker, Prussian, or landlord road to capitalism. Meanwhile in North America, this AC was driven by
the term “Rural Development” thus refers to a distinct approach to interventions by the state in the economies of underdeveloped countries, and one which is at once broader and more specific than “agricultural development”. It is broader because it entails much more than development of agricultural production – for it is in fact a distinct approach to the development of the economy as a whole. It is more specific in the sense that it focuses (in its rhetoric, and in principle) particularly on poverty and inequality.
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settler family farmers who had emigrated from Europe seeking a better future for their families. This is referred to as development of ‘agrarian capitalism from below’ or the ‘peasant farmer’ road. This classical typology of transitions to agrarian capitalism has been developed further including other cases which present some distinguishing features while broadly following either a landlord or peasant path to agrarian capitalism. The various paths are distinguished by differences in historical timing, the key social class driving the changes and class relations, the main form of agrarian organization, the dominant method of capital accumulation, the particular relationship between the agrarian and industrial sector, the relative importance of the domestic and foreign markets, and the specific role of the state (Byres 2002). While Britain was the pioneer in the development of agrarian and industrial capitalism, a few decades later some European countries followed, although with some differences. These early industrializing countries went in search of raw materials and markets for their industries, creating the first international food regime through their colonial domination of countries in the South. This was the age of imperialism based on conquest, violence, racism, and the extraction of agricultural, mineral resources and slave labour from the colonies. Agricultures of those colonial countries were drastically reorganized for the production of commodities such as sugar, tobacco, tea, coffee, and cereals to be exported to the imperial countries. This first global food regime was dominated by Great Britain and other major industrial countries serving the interests of their capitalist class. During the Second World War and thereafter, the state took increasing control over the food regime through a series of domestic regulations and international trading agreements driven by the need to achieve food safety and security for their population. With the rise of agro-industrial corporations since the mid-1970s and the shift to neoliberalism during the 1980s, corporate and financial capital began to dominate the international food regime shaping AC and RD globally in what can be labelled the ‘neoliberal corporate food regime’. The rise of China is beginning to shape agricultures in various developing countries, particularly from those where it is a large importer of soybeans, meat, and other agricultural commodities. Cristóbal Kay
This Chinese-centred agro-import complex is driven by ‘agro-security mercantilism’ as China strike deals with governments and large agro-industries to achieve and maintain food security for its 1.4 billion people.
Modernizing agriculture for economic development
After the Second World War, with the decolonization process, many newly independent governments were keen to develop their economies to raise living standards, achieve legitimacy, and secure their continuity in power. The prevailing view was that following the example of developed countries was the best way to achieve this aim. Hence, it was necessary to start a process of industrialization which had been thwarted by the colonial powers. Several governments designed development plans for this purpose. Agriculture had to be modernized to support the industrialization process. AC and RD were thus subordinated to the goal of industrialization. The agricultural sector was to provide a steady supply of labour for industry to keep wages low; increase food production to satisfy the urban food requirements, thereby avoiding rising food prices and wages; increase exports in order to generate the required amount of foreign exchange for importing tools, machinery and other inputs for industry; supply the required raw materials to industry such as wool for the textile industry, and so on; and, finally, provide a domestic market for the industrial products. As can be seen, this was a tall order and choices had to be made as it was difficult to accomplish all the aims simultaneously. A productionist and diffusionist approach to AC and RD predominated among policymakers. It strongly advocated technological solutions such as the ‘green revolution’. Starting in the 1930s in the USA and a decade later in 1940s in Mexico, research was undertaken to develop high-yielding seeds through hybridization for wheat and maize. The purpose was to increase yields of these two staple crops so that on the same amount of land a significantly greater output could be obtained. In Asia, high-yielding varieties of rice were successfully developed, being the main food crop in the region. These so-called miracle seeds, which doubled or tripled output, or more through double cropping,
Agrarian change and rural development 15
were seen as a solution to hunger and poverty as well as evading peasant revolts. To be successful, these hybrid seeds required a whole package of measures, such as the correct application of chemical inputs (e.g. fertilizers and pesticides), as well as proper water management. At first sight this technology seemed to be suitable for peasant farmers as the inputs are divisible and hence can be easily adjusted to the size of the farm, contrary to machinery such as tractors or combine harvesters. While this in principle is correct, it abstracts from the economic and social context in which peasant farmers live. To begin with, it requires financial resources, technical knowledge, and managerial skills. In inegalitarian agrarian systems, land tenure structures, and power relations it is the capitalist farmers who can more easily adopt the green revolution package. While progressive governments were able to diffuse this technology to peasant farmers through subsidies, irrigation works, the provision of finance, and technical assistance, it was not always able to overcome the economic forces of the capitalist market and the unequal class and power relations. Some peasant farmers got into debt and sold their land to richer peasants or capitalist farmers. Also, capitalist farmers were able to take advantage of economies of scale, thereby giving them a competitive advantage. But by relying on chemical inputs and higher needs for water it also contributed to environmental problems. In short, the green revolution was highly successful in achieving major increases in production to the extent that countries that previously imported wheat, maize, or rice became self-sufficient and in some instances even became exporters of these crops. But it was the capitalist farmers who captured the lion’s share of the benefits derived from this technology, thereby exacerbating existent inequalities and further entrenching the dominance of capitalist farmers (Patel 2013). In some countries the green revolution helped to reduce hunger but this also depended on the purchasing power of the poor. With the development of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for soy, cotton, and other seeds by large biochemical companies, also referred to as ‘terminator seeds’ by their critics, the debate as to their benefits intensified as these transgenic seeds cannot be reproduced by the farmers but must be pur-
chased for each crop season from the companies who have the monopoly over these seeds and associated chemicals. As with the green revolution these GMOs have furthered the concentration of land and capital as well as inequality. Besides environmental concerns, health issues have also arisen due to the type of herbicides and pesticides required. Several environmental and peasant organizations have protested against the use of these seeds and some governments have responded by prohibiting their use or by refusing to import the crop.
Land reform
Since the 1960s peasant mobilizations and protests became more widespread in many countries of the developing world. They demanded greater access to resources, particularly land, credit, and better prices for their products, and those who were wage workers mobilized for higher wages and better working conditions. Hence, governments came under increasing pressure to implement land reforms, especially in countries with high land concentration. Also, the ‘trickle down thesis’, whereby it was argued that while economic growth might at first benefit more higher income groups it will trickle down to those with lower income, did not materialize or did only to a minor extent. This realization led to the dethroning of growth as the sole indicator of development in the late 1960s and 1970s and resulted in the emergence of a new meaning of development, which included the achievement of higher employment and a better distribution of income as well as growth. Hereafter, development experts and progressive social movements campaigned for the design of development strategies aimed at achieving ‘redistribution with growth’. In order to realize this new aim of development, some governments became more interventionist and changed their priorities in their pursuit of AC and RD. Advocates for land reform argued that it was necessary for economic, equity, and political reasons. For example, Latin America had, and to some extent still has, one of the most unequal agrarian structures in the world. Broadly speaking, in Latin America during the 1950s, peasants, who comprised 80 per cent of farmers only had access to 20 per cent of the land while landlords and capitalist Cristóbal Kay
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farmers who owned only 20 per cent of farms had access to 80 per cent of the land. Such an agrarian system was seen as being inefficient, an obstacle to industrialization, and unjust, as it perpetuated large inequalities and poverty in the countryside. While land reform is a necessary condition for achieving broad-based AC and RD, it is not a sufficient condition. A variety of complementary policies are required, to be directed mainly to the peasantry and land reform beneficiaries, such as the provision of technical assistance programmes, cheap credit, fair marketing facilities, and major public investments in irrigation and rural infrastructure, which governments often failed to implement. The land reforms of South Korea and Taiwan after the Second World War have been successful in achieving the various goals expected from land reform but this was due to exceptional circumstances arising from the Cold War period (Kay 2002). Many governments were either too weak to implement a substantial land redistribution or only paid lip service to it for political reasons. However, some land reforms did provide an important stimulus to institution-building in the countryside, such as facilitating the organization of trade unions, cooperatives, and indigenous associations, among others, thereby furthering the integration of the peasantry into society. In general, land reform hastened the demise of the landed oligarchy and eased the full commercialization of agriculture (Lipton 2009).
Transnational agribusiness and globalization
The industrialization of agriculture and the emergence of agribusiness in the developed countries increasingly shaped AC globally. Agribusiness developed new production technologies such as genetically modified seeds and agrochemicals as well as new technologies for processing, transporting, and marketing food, and new organizational systems to manage and extend their control over the commodity chain. Such new technologies, production, storage, and distribution processes require huge investments in scientific research, laboratories, plants, and equipment which favours concentration in the industry. It also favours those countries which are rich in capital in all its forms: Cristóbal Kay
financial, physical, and human. It is therefore no surprise that the most important agribusinesses have originated in developed countries and their headquarters are based there. These agro-industrial conglomerates extended their global reach, furthering the concentration, centralization, and internationalization of capital which increasingly integrated and controlled world agricultures. While recognizing the development of the productive forces which these transformations brought about, most of the benefits of these developments were captured by the capitalist class while many of the negative effects were experienced in developing countries and especially by their peasantry. These largely foreign-owned agro-industrial conglomerates were taking control of the agricultural sector in developing countries, transforming peasant farmers into dependent producers through contract farming, and accelerating their proletarianization by increasingly having to seek wage employment to make a living. Furthermore, agribusiness-driven agro-extractivism was having a detrimental effect on the environment by mining the natural resources through massive deforestation, polluting the soil and rivers with agrochemicals, and, in some instances, endangering the health of their workers through the use of pesticides and other chemicals. With the internationalization of capital, financialization, and the globalization of commodity chains, agribusiness conglomerates are also shaping government policies in their favour, especially in developing countries. With the liberalization of markets and the removal of some government support measures peasants have been unable to remain competitive in food markets leading to a process of de-agrarianization whereby an increasing proportion of their income derives from non-farm activities, wage labour, and remittances from household members who have migrated. Peasants have gradually lost their capacity to produce their own foodstuffs, thereby becoming food dependent. The growing size of capitalist farms allowed them to achieve economies of scale, thereby enhancing their competitiveness and market power. Furthermore, due to the increasing commoditization and financialization of agriculture it became attractive for investment funds, thereby encouraging land grabbing leading to further land concentration and
Agrarian change and rural development 17
marginalization of peasant farming (Borras & Franco 2012). These processes have opened debates on whether and to what extent the peasantry is disappearing, as well as on their future prospects. Contrary to the depeasantization or proletarianization position, the so-called ‘peasantists’ argue that the peasantry, far from being eliminated, persists, has vitality and in some areas is even being reinforced through a process of ‘repeasantiztion’. Peasant farmers are able to compete successfully with capitalist farmers in the market due to their reliance on unpaid family farm labour and aided, in some instances, by strong community ties, especially in indigenous areas, and the increasing concern of consumers about the ecological damage of agro-industrial farming. While today, less than half of the world population is rural, peasant farmers still provide most of the food and are a major political force. Through their various protests, campaigns, mobilizations, and organizations, they try to shape their own futures and hence the process of AC and RD. The transnational peasant organization ‘La Vía Campesina’ is campaigning for land reform and ‘food sovereignty’ which is centred on peasant farming and agro-ecology (Edelman & Borras 2016). Given the increasing concern about climate change and the
pressures of various agro-ecological movements, governments may be required to undertake more peasant-friendly policies. Whether this will contain the forward march of agribusiness is an open question. Cristóbal Kay
References
Bernstein, H. (2010). Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change, Fernwood Publishing. Borras, S.M. & Franco J. (2012). Global land grabbing and trajectories of agrarian change. Journal of Agrarian Change, 12(1), 34–59. Byres, T.J. (2002). Paths of capitalist agrarian transition in the past and in the contemporary world. In V.K. Ramachandran & M. Swaminathan (eds), Agrarian Studies (pp. 54–83), Zed Books. Edelman, M. & Borras S.M. (2016). Political Dynamics of Transnational Agrarian Movements, Practical Action Publishing. Harriss, J. (1982). Rural Development: Theories of Peasant Economy and Agrarian Change, Hutchinson. Kay, C. (2002). Why East Asia overtook Latin America: agrarian reform, industrialisation and development. Third World Quarterly, 23(6), 1073–102. Lipton, M. (2009). Land Reform in Developing Countries, Routledge. Patel, R. (2013). The green revolution. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 40(1), 1–63.
Cristóbal Kay
Aid modality
tures, such as roads, railways, ports, and airports (OECD, 1997). The inclination of donors towards project aid as the main form of aid disbursement was based on the fact that (1) it allowed them greater control over the amount disbursed; (2) it is attached to identifiable projects; and (3) success of these projects can be evaluated (Mosley et al., 1991). Although a large part of project aid was destined for developing the infrastructure (social and economic) of the recipient countries, other activities were also covered. For example, it offered support to the production sector (agriculture, industry, trade and tourism) and to multi-sectors such as gender, environment, and so on.
Introduction
In recent decades, aid modality has become a central issue in the aid discourse. For example, aid modality was an integral part of the Paris Declaration in 2005. Indeed, the Paris Declaration called for more controlled aid coordination but also encouraged partner countries in stating their preferred aid delivery mode. It became clear that the ways in which aid is delivered affects its effectiveness. Empirically, several studies (e.g. Mavrotas & Ouattara, 2006; Ouattara & Strobl, 2008) have provided quantitative evidence confirming this point. The current contribution will start with a definition of the notion of aid modality and discuss the policy objectives of each type of aid. This will be followed by a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses related to the different aid modalities. Finally, the conclusion will stress the need for donors to align aid modality disbursements with the recipients’ priority needs and developmental planning; and at the same time adapt aid modality to the current and future developmental challenges.
Programme aid Prior to the late 1980s, the disbursements of programme aid were very modest, and mainly provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Indeed, it was following the debt crisis of the 1980s that the World Bank as well as bilateral donors started to follow the footsteps of the IMF. By the mid-1990s, programme aid represented around 33 per cent of total World Bank lending and 20 per cent of bilateral donors’ disbursements (OECD, 1997). In terms of its characteristics, unlike project aid, programme aid is not tied to specific projects. It is quickly disbursed,1 compared to project aid, and has traditionally been linked to the issue of conditionality. Programme aid came in two main forms, namely, balance of payment (BOP) support and budget support. The BOP programme aid was designed to provide mainly debt relief and import support. The debt relief came in the form of debt forgiveness (or rescheduling) and/or debt reduction. Regarding import support (or commodity aid), donors often allocate funds for a particular commodity or offer foreign exchange on agreed terms with the recipient. From the donors’ viewpoint, this would help recipient countries remove their import constraints, therefore creating an environment that could boost economic growth. Turning to programme aid for budget support, as the name suggests, it is aimed at supporting the recipient country’s budget. The main reason for giving programme aid in the form of budget support is so that donors can influence and closely monitor the allocation of these funds in the budget. Under this scheme, recipient countries received
Aid modality: definition, characteristics and objectives
Although, in its simplest form, aid modality could be defined as the ways in which aid is delivered, its definition has changed over the years. In the 1950s and 1960s much of aid modality centred around project aid. In the 1980s, due to structural adjustment programmes, the concept was closely associated with budget support, while in the 1990s sector-wide approaches (SWAPs) were the main form of aid modality. In the aftermath of the Paris Declaration new forms of aid modality appeared. For example, budget support and SWAPs merged into programme-based approaches (PBAs). In short, trying to define aid modality is not straightforward. In this contribution, the definition of aid modality will follow its historical development. Project aid or project support Until the mid-1970s, project aid represented more than half of all aid disbursements by OECD countries, of which 66 per cent was allocated to the development of infrastruc18
Aid modality 19
foreign exchange, which was then sold to raise domestic currency. Other forms of aid Alongside project aid and programme aid, donors have traditionally used other forms of aid, namely technical assistance grants and food aid. Technical assistance Sometimes referred to as technical cooperation, technical assistance takes two general forms: free-standing technical assistance and investment-related technical assistance. Free-standing technical assistance comprises ‘the provision of resources where the main aim is to augment the stock of human capital i.e., the level of knowledge, skills, technical know-how or productive aptitudes of the population of aid recipients’ (OECD, 2000, p. 47). Investment-related technical assistance, on the other hand, is provided to help in the design and implementation of projects or programmes in the recipient country. It takes the form of consultancy, technical support, supply of human resources, capital expenditure and the financing of heavy machinery and equipment. Food aid Food aid is the transfer of foodstuff as a form of assistance on grant or concessional terms. Most food aid to developing countries is usually channelled through the United Nation’s World Food Programme (UNFP). It is classified into three major categories: programme food aid, project food aid, and emergency and relief food aid. Programme food aid is mainly for budget support purposes. In practical terms, the donor supplies the recipient with some food, which is then sold, in local markets, to raise local currency necessary to finance public expenditure. Project food aid, sometimes referred to as development food aid, is targeted at specific social and economic projects. In most cases it is used as a payment to workers engaged in socio-economic development activities in the recipient country. It is also used as an incentive for people to attend schools, health clinics and other development promoting activities. Turning to emergency and relief food aid, strictly speaking it is not classified as foreign aid. The reason is that, by defini-
tion, aid is provided for long-term developmental reasons. Emergency and relief food aid, however, is given with the main intention of saving lives in the event of natural and human disasters. Aid modality: strengths and weaknesses A question one may ask is whether the way in which aid is disbursed matters for the recipient country. To answer this question let us explore the advantages and disadvantages of each type of aid. Starting with project aid, from the donor perspective, it allows closer control over the amount disbursed and facilitates accountability. Also, project aid is generally attached to specific projects that are visible and success can be evaluated through various appraisal approaches. Moreover, from the recipient country’s viewpoint, project aid can be useful in the building of local infrastructure. However, several drawbacks are associated with this aid modality. The first issue is the proliferation of uncoordinated individual projects, as each donor tends to pursue its own agenda independently of others. This has often led to problems of management, planning and budgeting for the recipient government. A second problem with the project aid-based approach is that in the early years, it was not designed to resist shocks, particularly external shocks, such as to 1970s’ oil shocks. Several projects were abandoned as the result of unsustainable costs. Turning to programme aid, it started as a response to the weaknesses of the project aid-based approach. A distinctive feature of programme aid is that it is disbursed quicker than project aid, which perhaps is more appealing for the recipient country. Programme aid is also credited with boosting the supply side of recipient country economy through targeted import support. This aid modality also offered recipients with debt relief, debt restructuring, and so on. The programme-based approach has been criticized for several reasons. First, some of its sub-categories, such as import support aid, have been used to purchase goods that did not necessarily contribute to the development of the recipient (e.g. luxury goods) or displaced domestic demand for local production. The second criticism relates to the issue of fungibility, which occurs if the recipient governments use their own funds for non-productive B. Ouattara
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activities (because donors’ money already covers developmental needs). Perhaps the most controversial issue with programme aid is conditionality. Indeed, for funds to be disbursed the recipient country had to agree to some economic reforms, fiscal, monetary, exchange rate policy, and structural reforms. A large literature exists on the detrimental effects of such policies. With respect to technical assistance, it offered the recipient countries with the technical know-how to enhance their development. In the early years, following their independence, many countries were constrained by absorptive capacity, in terms of human capital broadly speaking; technical assistance provided greater efficiency by removing the skill-gap experienced by these countries. Aspects of technical assistance also covered education and training or, more broadly, capacity building in the recipient country. However, this form of aid has several shortcomings. For example, many recipient governments made little effort to build up local capacity because their contributions to the salary/wages paid to the experts (from the donor country) were far below what they would have paid for local workers (White, 1998). Another issue with technical assistance is that it inflates the amount of aid actually received by the recipient. Moreover, it has generally been criticized for benefiting the donor rather than the recipient. Food aid, like the other forms of aid, has advantages and disadvantages from the recipient’s viewpoint. It increases consumption opportunities in the recipient country, helps in reducing foreign exchange spent on food imports, in poverty alleviation (if targeted at those in need), and so on. However, it has been criticized for having a disincentive effect on the agricultural sector of the recipient. Food aid monetization processes can be burdensome and prolonged for governments in developing countries due to bureaucratic settings, resulting in delay in mobilizing the necessary resources to finance developmental expenditure. Another criticism of this form of aid is its potential to have a detrimental effect on farmers’ income because goods are sold below the market price.
B. Ouattara
Summary
Aid modality has become a central issue in aid policy. Whilst the definition of the concept has changed over the years, it is widely associated with the way in which aid is delivered by donors to recipient countries. In addition to the two widely known aid modalities, namely project aid and programme aid, there also exists other forms such as technical assistance and food aid. Each aid modality has its strengths and weaknesses; thus, donors should seek to disburse aid in a way that takes into account the recipient’s priority needs and developmental planning. The Paris Declaration, which focused on five mutually reinforcing principles (ownership, alignment, harmonization, managing for results and mutual accountability) offered some foundations to achieve these objectives. Also, with the changing nature of our current environment, perhaps the development community should start exploring innovative sources of aid modality, for example, sources that that would offer effective means to ensure sustainable development as well fighting environmental degradation, resilience to future pandemics, and so on. B. Ouattara
Note 1.
Programme aid is sometimes referred to as quick disbursement assistance (QDA).
References
Mosley, P., Harrigan, J. & Toye, J. (1991). Aid and Power: The World Bank and Policy-Based Lending. Routledge. Mavrotas, G. & Ouattara, B. (2006). Aid disaggregation and the public sector in aid recipient economies: some evidence from Cote D’Ivoire. Review of Development Economics, 10(3), 434–51. OECD (1997). Development Co-operation Report. OECD. OECD (2000). DAC Statistical Reporting Directives. OECD. Ouattara, B. & Strobl, E. (2008). Aid, policy and growth: does aid modality matter? Review of World Economics, 144(2), 347–65. White, H. (1998). Aid and Macroeconomic Performance: Theory, Empirical Evidence and Four Countries Cases. Macmillan.
Amartya Sen
appropriate “space” is neither that of utilities (as claimed by welfarists), nor that of primary goods (as demanded by Rawls), but that of the substantive freedoms – the capabilities – to choose a life one has reason to value’ (DF, 74). This is an important advance on many narrower views of development, in which it is identified with the growth of gross national product (GNP), the rise (or maximization) in personal incomes, industrialization, technological advance, or social modernization. As he argues, all of these can be very important as means to expanding the freedoms enjoyed by members of a society. But freedoms and quality of life depend also on other determinants, such as social and economic facilities for education and healthcare as well as political and civil rights. If freedom and quality of life is the goal of development, ‘then there is a major argument for concentrating on that overarching objective, rather than on some particular means, or some specially chosen list of instruments’ (DF, 3). Moreover, this alternative development objective meets head on an enduring problem within the theory and practice of development: paternalism. In general, development has been unable to escape a top-down method of proceeding, where ideas and institutions from afar are given license to dictate to the poor how best to develop without reference to their needs, values and conditions. Sen’s starting point is different. As he puts it in DF, his approach to development as freedom investigates various contributions ‘to enhancing and guaranteeing the substantive freedoms of individuals, seen as active agents of change, rather than as passive recipients of dispensed benefits’ (DF, xiii). He calls this an ‘agent-oriented view, in which individuals [with adequate social opportunities] can effectively shape their own destiny, help each other … [and] bring about change’ (DF, 11, 19). Sen’s theoretical and practical proposals based on his version of capability value the agency of individuals in and of itself – as constitutive of a live worth living – and because they tend to produce better overall effects in development projects. This is the third important contribution that Sen’s approach to development provides. Agency in general, and the requirements for it, lie at the very heart of his work.1 The substantive link between agency and freedom is discussed in Hamilton (2019). For
Amartya Kumar Sen is better known for his economics than his philosophy, but he excels at both. A Nobel Prize laureate in Economics (1998), he has also made significant contributions within philosophy, social theory and politics. For example, his work on social choice theory is seminal and his capabilities approach has changed the way we think about human well-being, the quality of life, freedom, development, justice and democracy. Sen has provided new ways of conceiving of development as well as new tools for measuring it and its component parts. His abiding interest in questions of development is abundantly apparent: in over 50 articles specifically on the topic; in his justly famous Development as Freedom (DF) (Sen 1999), which presents an overview of his thinking on development, while pulling together a whole tapestry of themes from his earlier work; and in the volumes on India he has published with Jean Drèze (Drèze and Sen 1989, 1995, 2002, 2014). Although he made his name via more formal social choice theory and welfare economic theory (Sen 1970; and many more), what might be called a full ‘return’ to development economics is marked by the publication ‘Development: Which Way Now?’ (Sen 1983; see also Sen 1989, 2000). This is not to suggest that all his arguments around choice, capability, freedom, justice and democracy are not also applicable to a whole range of questions and issues in developed contexts (Sen 1999). Rather, simply that the main inspiration for his work is the terrible effects of a series of deprivations on human lives most evident in less developed contexts. Sen has a firm position on how best to approach the economics of development. This is based on his conception of capability, or what he prefers to call his ‘concern for capabilities’. This is important for at least three reasons. First, through it he presents a philosophical alternative to the Utilitarianism that underpins so much of economics. Second, he delivers an alternative development objective, where development becomes ‘a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy’ (DF, 3). This transforms the ‘evaluative space’ for determining development issues. As Sen puts it, ‘for many evaluative purposes, the 21
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my purposes here, it is sufficient to point out that Sen’s view of freedom is much richer than is the norm in economic, development, philosophical and political theoretical literature: it encompasses both the requisites for individuals to make their own individual choices and the social, economic and political means for individuals to exert the necessary democratic power within and beyond their own societies. Sen calls this freedom as effective power (Sen 2009; Hamilton 2014). In short, Sen’s point is that citizens themselves, whatever their income level, can budget for themselves, but they cannot do so if, say, 80 per cent of their income must be spent on healthcare or education. Development, for Sen, is about generating the capacity, the capability, the power of citizens to determine themselves how best they should live. Against dogmatic left criticism that he thereby supports the idea that markets enable best the ability to make choices for development, he says frequently that, in the longue durée markets are one central component of enabling this development capability. Like Karl Marx, he argues that despite their deficiencies and failures, as compared to earlier forms of exchange, markets have been revolutionary in empowering individuals to acquire the necessities and luxuries of life. To be against markets generally speaking, he suggests, would be like being against communication. Yet critics of markets are clearly on to something. Though the problem lies not in the nature of markets themselves but in the exploitation and domination to which they can give rise. Thus, the crucial question becomes whether and how they are regulated. Consequently, often, the first important question in development is how to help poor people enter markets securely, given that many are excluded from them: how to enable them to do so with similar entitlement or power as those already securely enmeshed in existing markets. The seemingly more radical idea of being completely opposed to markets normally has the unfortunate unintended effect of leaving large swathes of poor people in forms of existence and relations of power that are, at best, riddled with traditional forms of domination and, at worst, ripe for extreme misery, as in the causes and consequences of famine. Here the large amount of empirical research on Indian development, which Sen has undertaken with Drèze, proves very Lawrence Hamilton
telling (Drèze and Sen 1989, 1995, 2002, 2014). In changing the language and the philosophical underpinning for how best to conceive of development, Sen successfully confronts various competing alternatives to development. These all share a tendency to remove the contexts of politics and history from development. In line with a more general tendency to view economics as a universal science whose ‘scientific’ findings are applicable irrespective of contextual conditions of authority and power (or ‘externalities’), welfare economics has not kept politics and the state central to its concerns. Similarly, as the poor cousin within the family of economics, development economics simply assumed that models of development could be determined without reference to the practices and institutions of the developing context in question. Once the core of the problem of development was correctly identified then the universal solution could be applied anywhere and everywhere (Hirschman 1981). The two main models against which Sen develops his view are the Harrod–Domar model of development, which stresses the importance of savings and investment as key determinants of growth. It is a classical Keynesian model of economic growth, originally devised with advanced industrial countries in mind and quickly adapted by development economists in the planning exercises for developing countries that became common in the 1950s and beyond. It explains an economy’s growth rate in terms of the level of saving and the productivity of capital investment (or the capital–output ratio). It suggests that once the capital gap, that is, the shortfall as regards capital brought about either by low levels of savings or low capital productivity, has been found, development programmes can come in to help fill that gap. (As Albert Hirschman (1981) notes, this is based on the ‘mutual benefit assumption’ that ‘core industrial economies’ could contribute to the development of the ‘periphery’ via large injections of financial aid.) This is what you might call ‘capital fundamentalism’, something that was central to the World Bank’s thinking for some time. As Sen (1983) notes, the shortcomings of this approach, with its assumed capital–output ratio, are most obvious in a case like Ghana between 1960 and 1980, which despite managing a 5 per cent savings rate (as a percent-
Amartya Sen 23
age of GDP), rather than being a stationary economy, in fact slipped back (its economy shrunk) by 1 per cent per annum. Having said this, in typically subtle terms, Sen then qualifies Hirschman’s more forthright critique of development economics, by suggesting that some of the figures from 1960 to 1980 do not contradict the traditional wisdom of development economics and the Harrod–Domar model. He agrees the latter is over-simplified but is not as willing as Hirschman to discard it completely (Hirschman 1981; Sen 1983: 750).2 He undertakes similar, nuanced critiques of those development economic theories that focus uniquely on industrialization or the role of disguised unemployment, and contends that, all told, as far as growth is concerned, ‘it is not easy to deny the importance of capital accumulation or of industrialization in a poor pre-industrial country’ (Sen 1983: 751). The second model against which Sen expounds is the idea that, even if it is accepted that markets can fail, states fail more often and more seriously. Thus, it follows that the state should play as small a role as possible: maintain law and order, and, at most, enable some very large infrastructural interventions. This is what has been called ‘market fundamentalism’. This is supported by an ideology of self-help, that is, that left to their own devices, people will make the right choices to develop their own societies. It is therefore best to reduce the power of the state as much as possible, or so the various versions of this argument in liberal and libertarian though suppose, especially the idea of the ‘night-watchman state’, coupled with the generally accepted ideology that it is good for you to ‘pull yourself up by your own boot-straps’. This view underpinned the infamous structural adjustment programmes imposed by the Bank across large swathes of the planet, most of which failed dismally (Chang 2003). The idea here was that shock therapies would enable ‘underdeveloped’ societies to wean themselves off bloated public sectors. The Bank supported developing countries financially on condition that they undertake large scale adjustment of the core structures of their economies. Sen provides a lot of evidence to support the exact opposite conclusion: that in low and middle-income countries the best performers are those in which there is a good
deal of state intervention and even economic planning. Moreover, success is not dependent on ideology. It was, for example, as true of Soviet centrally planned economies such as Romania and Yugoslavia as it was (and still is) of capitalist South Korea, which has had an economic system in which the market mechanism has been driven hard by an active government in a planned way (Sen 1981, 1983). Sen criticizes these mainstream models for missing three obvious things about development; the first two are more general points and the third is a precondition for the ‘fundamentalisms’ against which he moves so deftly. First, growth is not the same thing as development, even if it can scarcely be denied that economic growth is one aspect of the process of economic development. Second, government is powerful not only in high-growth developing countries, but in nearly every developing country. The real issue is that development seems to require the systematic involvement of the state in the economic sphere. Although free marketeers (and most of the discipline of economics) would have us believe otherwise, the same has also been true for centuries in what we now call ‘developed’ countries: not only is the state very powerful but it has been very interventionist in national and international markets, especially (ironically) in the UK and the USA (Chang 2003, 2015). The third thing mainstream models in development economics miss, Sen suggests, is that before people can save or make the right choices to develop their own societies, individuals first need the ability to make choices. It is out of this that he develops his capability approach as an achievements-based (or realizations-based) approach. In arguing that development is not the same as growth, Sen does not suggest that growth does not matter. It may matter a great deal, but this is because of some associated benefits ‘that are realized in the process of economic growth’ (Sen 1983: 753). He shows that the same level of achievement in life expectancy, literacy, health, higher education, and so on can be seen in countries with widely varying income per capita. For example, in 1982, China and Sri Lanka, with less than a seventh of GNP per head in Brazil or Mexico, had similar life expectancy figures to the two richer countries. Lawrence Hamilton
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Moreover, South Korea at that point, with its ‘much-eulogized’ growth record, had not yet overtaken China or Sri Lanka in the field of longevity, despite being then more than five times richer in terms of per capita GNP. Sen argues that the empirical record shows very well that rather than assume that fast growth will have the effect over time of raising the level of health and the expectation of life, it makes more sense to reach directly for these objectives through public policy and social change. China and Sri Lanka did exactly this, despite in other ways being quite different – one a planned economy, the other much more market oriented. Sen argues that these examples, and many others, show that dramatic improvement in quality of life, viewed in terms of capability enhancement, is possible, even under conditions of structural poverty and poor economic growth; though, of course, a growing economy is a great help. The second and third important moves by Sen have been his concentration not on national product, aggregate income and total supply of goods, but on the ‘entitlements’ of people and the ‘capabilities’ these entitlements generate. This shift of emphasis or identification of the real goal of development enables a rich set of objectives that transforms development into a discipline concerned with what people can or cannot do, such as live long, escape avoidable morbidity, be well nourished, be able to read and write and communicate, take part in literary and scientific pursuits and so on. In other words, he shifts development away from concentration on the growth of inanimate objects of convenience to focus on the quality and richness of human lives. Development, he argues, quoting Marx, is all about ‘replacing the domination of circumstances and chance over individuals by the domination of individuals over chance and circumstances’ (Marx and Engels 1976; Sen 1983: 754). Entitlement refers to the set of alternative commodity bundles that a person can command in a society using the totality of rights and opportunities that he or she faces. Sen sees an individual’s overall entitlement as being comprised of both the limit set by a person’s ownership (‘endowment’) and his exchange possibilities (‘exchange entitlement’). So ‘exchange entitlement’ is only a part of the entitlement picture and is incomplete without an account of ownership or endowment; and ‘exchange entitlement’ includes not only trade and Lawrence Hamilton
market exchange but also the use of production possibilities (Sen 1981). On the basis of this entitlement, a person can acquire some capabilities, that is, the ability to do this or be that (e.g. be well nourished) and fail to acquire some other capabilities. Thus, as he puts it, the ‘process of economic development can be seen as a process of expanding the capabilities of people’ (Sen 1983: 755). It is as result of this, and a series of more philosophical moves, that Sen thinks that ‘capabilities’ provides the right basis for judging the advantages of a person in many problems of evaluation – a role that cannot be taken over either by utility or by an index of commodities (Sen 1982: 29–38, 353–69). The various component parts of development, as well as other areas of the evaluation of human life, where we are concerned with a full account of a person’s well-being, standard of living, quality of life and freedom requires, Sen argues, the concept of capabilities. We must be concerned with what a person can do, he argues, and this is not the same thing as how much pleasure or desire fulfilment she gets from these activities (otherwise known as ‘utility’), nor what commodity bundles she can command (‘entitlements’). In other words, not only is it imperative to get beyond utility and its associated theorization in mainstream welfare economics (and development economics), but also entitlements over commodity bundles viewed on their own. The mental metrics of utility gets us very little way down the path of determining what people can do, and entitlements are crucial only as part of the means to capabilities (Sen 1982, 1983, 1985). In sum, Sen’s concern for capabilities draws out the centrality of agency in two distinct, though related, ways. First, the individual agent must be involved in the determination of their well-being and quality of life for two reasons that link back to Sen’s commitment to the role of social choice in any evaluative exercise: individuals themselves are best placed to provide the information necessary for an objective analysis of their own well-being and the associated conditions under which they live; and individual judgements about how they would like to live is central to a freedom-based account of well-being and quality of life. Second, he argues convincingly that agency is – in and of itself – a constitutive part of a life
Amartya Sen 25
worth living. In other words, even beyond its instrumental importance in the evaluation of well-being and the quality of life, humans tend to value agency as it gives the necessary sense of power and achievement that they have reason to value. Contrary to critics that suggest that all that matters is the provision of the requirements for a person’s well-being or quality of life, Sen argues that individual involvement in the attainment of outcomes they have reason to value is part and parcel of the process and the outcome itself. It is a constitutive good. If so, provision ought to be made for it, and it must therefore be a central concern of development. Lawrence Hamilton
Notes
1. Yet in a completely distinct way from the ‘post-development school’, a relativist position where the rejection of a top-down approach involves the complete rejection of indicators and a fetishization of the micro, giving complete autonomy to local movements, which only bolsters the highly idealized world of ‘civil society’ practitioners and theorists (for more on this and on ‘paternalism, see Hamilton 2003). 2. Hirschman’s critique was focused on the common assumption in development economics that ‘underdevelopment’ everywhere and anywhere could be resolved via the same technical mechanism or solution, irrespective of context and the politics of the place in question, and is much more excoriating (Hirschman 1981: 24).
References
Chang, H.-J. (2003), Rethinking Development Economics (London: Anthem Press). Chang, H.-J. (2015), Economics: The User’s Guide (London: Bloomsbury). Drèze, J. and Sen, A.K. (1989), Hunger and Public Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Drèze, J. and Sen, A.K. (1995), India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Drèze, J. and Sen, A.K. (2002), India: Development and Participation, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Drèze, J. and Sen, A.K. (2014), An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions (London: Penguin). Hamilton, L. (2003), The Political Philosophy of Needs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hamilton, L. (2014), Freedom is Power: Liberty Through Political Representation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hamilton, L. (2019), Amartya Sen (Cambridge: Polity). Hirschman, A.O. (1981), ‘The Rise and Decline of Development Economics’, in Essays in Trespassing: Economics to Politics and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1976), The German Ideology, in Marx Engels Collected Works (MECW), Vol. 5 (London: Lawrence and Wishart). Sen, A.K. (1970), Collective Choice and Social Welfare (Amsterdam: Holden-Day). Sen, A.K. (1981), Poverty and Famines (Oxford: Clarendon). Sen, A.K. (1982), Choice, Welfare and Measurement (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). Sen, A.K. (1983), ‘Development: Which Way Now?’, The Economic Journal, 93(372), pp. 745–62. Sen, A.K. (1985), Commodities and Capabilities (Amsterdam: North-Holland). Sen, A.K. (1989), ‘Development as Capability Expansion’, Journal of Development Planning, 19, pp. 42–58. Sen, A.K. (1999), Development as Freedom (New York: Knopf). Sen, A.K. (2000), ‘A Decade of Human Development’, The Journal of Human Development, 1(1), pp. 17–23. Sen, A.K. (2009), The Idea of Justice (London: Allen Lane).
Lawrence Hamilton
Andre Gunder Frank
developing country; instead, the responsibility should be placed historically on the Western and colonial powers. Such a relationship between the developed society (core) and the developing one (periphery) led to what he termed ‘the development of underdevelopment’ of the periphery. Andre Gunder Frank’s timely interventions in the debate on world development belong to a corpus of radical writings in the 1960s commonly referred to as the ‘dependency or uneven development’ perspective. According to Frank (1966), Third World societies (periphery) might be originally undeveloped, but never underdeveloped, and that the root cause can be attributed to the structure of external relations in which these societies were enmeshed. As a result, such a structural relationship generated the domination of their economies by the metropoles (core) and the subordination of their socioeconomic and political growth to the interest of the metropoles (core). Accordingly, to Frank (1972), this relationship led to the social development of a typical form of class (or national elites), political, and economic structure for a Third World country that he termed as lumpen bourgeoisie and lumpen development; though the forms might change for each specific epoch or cultural context. If one examines Gunder Frank’s writings from the 1960s onwards, we find that underlying all these empirical and methodological analyses that were put forth to explain and understand underdevelopment were three main threads that permeated his thinking on development: the need to consider history, the need to consider the whole (holism), and the need to consider the structure.
Andre Gunder Frank was an iconoclast – throughout his life he always challenged the intellectual orthodoxies of his time. From his work on dependent development that has been widely recognized to his final writings on world development and world history, he was forever pursuing an understanding of world development that was not supportive of the existing global power status quo. From the early 1960s, the study of socioeconomic and political change, widely known as ‘development’, was framed around understanding it within the bounds of national territorial boundaries of a nation state. The dominant theories then regarding development were based on stages of growth and modernization. This modernization/development paradigm contended that socioeconomic progress/ development (or the lack of it) is due to the absence of ingredients in each respective country/nation state that was necessary for development to occur (Rostow 1960; Pye 1962; Parsons 1964; Hoselitz 1960; Lerner 1965; McClelland 1967). The positing then of these necessary elements of development was based, ipso facto, on an ideal type of developed society conjectured within a basically Western-value organized framework. It was assumed, when a particular country was experiencing difficulties in achieving any progress in socioeconomic and political growth, the explanation invariably pointed to the lack of necessary presence of ingredients for development such as cultural, psychological/sociological, economic or institutional. Thus, from such a modernization/developmentalist paradigm, the problems and obstacles to development in societies were rooted internally. Enter Andre Gunder Frank. According to him, such difficulties to achieve development were mainly the consequence of viewing incorrectly the problems and obstacles to development as a result of the internal conditions of a particular developing country. Instead, Frank asserted that the process of development should be understood as the result of the mechanisms tying the developing country to the economically and technologically advanced countries of the capitalist world. In view of this, he asserted that the onus for the lack of development (underdevelopment) should not be blamed on the
Questioning the mode of production as a categorization of societal evolutionary forms
With regard to the use of history and holism to explain development, Gunder Frank in collaboration with Barry Gills (see e.g. Frank 1996) in the 1990s put forth a revised theory of world system change and transformation that questioned the commonly accepted theoretical position in world-system analysis propounded by Immanuel Wallerstein (1974), that is, the system is capitalistic in nature. According to Frank and Gills, there is a world system that has a set of structures and 26
Andre Gunder Frank 27
processes, and these structures and processes for them are enduring features of the world system: (a) The existence and development of a world system that ‘stretch back at least five thousand years’, (b) The process of capital accumulation is the motor force of (world system) history, (c) The existence of a centre–periphery structure in the development of the world system, (d) Hegemony and rivalry of classes and states mediated by force underline the dynamics of the world system, and (e) Long and short economic cycles alternating in ascending and descending phases depict the trends and processes of the world system. For Frank and Gills, enduring meant that the world system has a history of at least 5,000 years, thus extending the evolutionary history of the system by 4,500 years as, at that point in time, world-systems analysis according to Immanuel Wallerstein (1974) viewed the history of the evolution of the system as having a genesis in the sixteenth century (i.e. 500 years ago). If there is continuity of structures and processes as stated above, then Gunder Frank had to come up with a new theoretical twist to support this new interpretation of world history and world development for the usual line of theoretical reasoning then was based on the modes of production analysis that he had also adhered to for so many years prior to his re-thinking. This he did in a little quoted and lesser-known article that was published in Critique of Anthropology (1991) entitled: ‘Transitional Ideological Modes: Feudalism, Capitalism, and Socialism’. To account for his theoretical shift, Gunder Frank argued that the fetishishtic preoccupation with analysing social change and transformation via the modes of production transition was not very fruitful in accounting for historical transformations, and in fact, for him the mode of production as a concept was ideological in nature!1 Instead, he (1996: 44) felt that that other variables such as trade and trade routes, centres of accumulation, and location of hegemonic powers were more relevant in understanding world history and development.
By declaring theoretically the irrelevance of the mode of production to explain development pattern and the nature of change, Gunder Frank had diminished any specific contingent factors or processes that underline system transformation (and the change that follows) that the mode of production form of analysis had been able to furnish and distinguish. In other words, for Gunder Frank, world development is distinguished by the economic cycles of expansion and contraction, centre–periphery relations, hegemonic rivalry of global powers, and so on. There is no specificity of a transformation for a particular historical epoch as he (1996: 44) put it: ‘the rules of the game are not much altered so much as the position of the players’. Frank, again, repeated this in his book manuscript, ReOrienting the 19th Century, completed prior to his passing away where he (2015: 59) stated: ‘Secondly IF we do that, we will discover that historical CONTINUITY has been far more important than any and all its dis-continuities.’2 If the mode of production analysis for explaining long-term change is analytically fruitless, how does Gunder Frank explain world development? For him and Gills, global change is a consequence of shifts in hegemonic powers, shifts in hegemonic regions within the dynamics of long-term economic cycles of expansion and contraction. In other words, accumulation processes and strategies including competition generate the dynamics of the rise and fall of hegemonic powers within socioeconomic and military processes.
The attack on Eurocentrism
By asserting that the world system has a longer history than 500 years as suggested by Immanuel Wallerstein (1974) and Fernand Braudel (1982), Frank and Gills thus proposed that the manner by which the world has developed was not shaped by the emergence of a capitalist world-system in Western Europe 500 years ago. For Frank, this world system, as we come to know its interconnected nature, started as early as 5,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent and formed trade connections with north-western India, West Asia, and Egypt; and connected to China by 1000 bc. Therefore, world development is a rise and fall of cities, civilizations and regions. In this regard, Frank was very critiSing C. Chew
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cal of analyses suggesting that a region of the world was the driving force towards making the world as we come to know it. He and Gills rejected any ‘centrism’ in world history (Gills 1996). To Gunder Frank, all regions of the world system played a part in the making of the modern world. This is how he (2015: 59) puts it in his last book manuscript, ReOrienting the 19th Century, written prior to his passing away: ‘Once we abandon this Eurocentrism and adopt a globally holistic world or even pan EurAsian perspective … Once we look upon the whole world more holistically, historical continuity looms much larger, especially in Asia.’ Given the above, in numerous publications Frank (see e.g. Frank 1994, 1998) criticized the works of Fernand Braudel (1982), Eric Jones (1981), Walt Rostow (1978), David Landes (1998) and Immanuel Wallerstein (1974) for their Eurocentricity. The manner by which he proceeded was through a horizontal integrative macro historical analysis. He showed with historical evidence the hollowness of European exceptionalism that has been put forth by Jones and Wallerstein. Furthermore, Frank (1994) challenged Braudel’s writings that there were several world economies, and showed that Braudel contradicted himself with his own historical data. According to Frank (1998: xxv), the rise of the West never was, for the West never rose by pulling itself up by its own boot straps; instead, Europe used its plunder of gold and silver in the Americas ‘to buy itself a ticket on the Asian train’. What, then, is Frank’s interpretation of world development? Instead of how Braudel and Wallerstein have explained world development whereby both of ‘whom advanced the view that a world-economy emerged in Western Europe by at least 1450, then spread outward from Europe to encompass the rest of the world’, Frank (1998: 259) suggested a view that ‘modern history unfolded in a world economic system, the center of which emerged in Asia and only shifted to Europe after 1800’. Frank’s reinterpretation of world development suggests that he has dropped the significance of ad 1500 as a breakpoint in world history whereby modern world history has its particular Eurocentric origin – a view he shared with Wallerstein, as noted in his earlier publications, such as World Accumulation. Instead, this reorientation of his suggests that Asia for a long time had Sing C. Chew
been the centre of the world system. Thus, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age was Frank’s attempt to show this empirically and historically. In fact, his earlier assertion in his article, ‘The World Economic System in Asia Before European Hegemony’ that Europe emerged as the hegemonic centre after 1800 has even been revised. For Gunder Frank (2015: 59), even the nineteenth century in which the common understanding is that Europe was paramount was challenged by him in his book ReOrienting the 19th Century, completed before his passing away in 2005: ‘The perception of a major new departure in 1500, and even of one in 1800 which allegedly spell a dis-continuous break in world history, is substantially [mis]informed by a Eurocentric vantage point.’ In this historical-empirical study, Frank attempted to debunk various myths about the nineteenth century being one of European supremacy of the world economy by challenging the myth of British hegemony, the myth of free trade, the myth that imperial colonialism does not pay, and so on. ReOrienting the 19th Century was Frank’s attempt to use his world system history approach to rewrite world history and development of the nineteenth century. It is a daring book utilising socioeconomic historical data to challenge the commonly received understanding of the socioeconomic trends of the nineteenth century by economists, historians, political scientists, geographers and sociologists. According to Frank, it was not until 1860 that China – which had a preponderant position in the world economy – started to slip from it’s ranking in the world economy, and that Europe’s rise was around 1870. It is vintage iconoclastic Frank. The last chapter (chapter 10) of the book manuscript even had a short sketch on the broad contours of reorienting our understanding of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, Gunder passed away before he could start this project.
The return of Asia
Gunder Frank’s attempt to rewrite world history should not be viewed as having an ‘Asiancentricity’ bias. Frank’s aim is to rewrite world history based on a historical and empirical analysis of world economic and population trends that stretched back to the sixteenth century without any ‘centric’ focus other than humanocentric (Gills and
Andre Gunder Frank 29
Frank 1992). As a trained economist, he rested his analysis on empirical and historical data and not on descriptive or ideological studies of the conditions of the various countries and regions in the world economy. By following the economic data and trends from ad 1400, Frank’s book, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age, showed that there was a booming economic system centred in Asia that was connected via trade stretching from India through to China and Japan, with linkages to Europe. According to him, as we have mentioned previously, the Europeans first led by the Portuguese, Spanish and the Dutch with Great Britain and France, rushed to Asia to participate in this booming world economy dominated by the Asians before the rise of Europe. This type of explication was continued through to the nineteenth century by him in his last book manuscript, ReOrienting the 19th Century. The argument in this manuscript is further refined in terms of dating of the decline of Asia and the rise of Europe. Sharing this view of Asia is the work of Jack Goody. In two volumes, Capitalism and Modernity (2004) and The Theft of History (2012), Goody noted of Frank’s contribution and buttressed Frank’s mainly economic trend analysis arguments with social and scientific indicators of Asian achievements and their absorptions by the Europeans in their rise to global power in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By no means is this the only example of reinterpretation of world development and world history and Asia’s role in it. Among historians and sociologists, Jim Blaut (1993), Ken Pomeranz (1993) and Mark Elvin (1973) for example, have also challenged the received wisdom of European exceptionalism and the role of Asia, especially China and India, in world history. What is clear for Frank is that Asia has played a central role in the making of the modern world, and it is Eurocentrism that has diminished our understanding of its role in the evolution of the world system. To correct this, Frank (with Gills) has suggested a humanocentric approach towards understanding world history (Frank and Gills 1992).
System crisis
By stressing the importance of understanding the continuity of the system, Frank decided
that world development and world history is characterized not by specific contingent factors and processes but one of repetitive cycles of economic expansion and contraction, and political hegemonic shifts of regional/global dominance depending on the state of the globalized world economy. This means that for him the world system continues to evolve in a ceaseless accumulation trajectory interrupted by economic contractions over world history. Such a model does not attempt to deliberate on system crisis and system transformation as Frank has stated in numerous books since the 1990s that discontinuity is not as important as the study of continuity of the world system. Frank (1998: 329) writes: ‘The widespread discontinuity theses are far less a contribution, let alone a necessity, and far more an impediment to understanding the real world historical process and contemporary reality.’ Given the above, for Frank, world development is a perpetual cycle of economic expansion and contraction (A and B phases). That is how he explained the final demise of Asia and the rise of Europe in the nineteenth century. A ‘B-phase’ of economic contraction was occurring in the world system, the economies of China, India and South East Asia were experiencing economic distress and Europe maximized economically on this period of economic contraction. Thus, Asia’s demise preceded Europe’s rise.
The B-phase
Social (world) system crisis means that the continued evolution of the world system faces obstacles, and that necessary structural changes/adjustments have to be made for systems reproduction to continue. These crisis phases become the key periods for our understanding of the dynamics of world system evolution and transition (long-term social change). Over world history, these crisis moments are rare. When they do occur, these phases are extremely impactful in terms of geographic coverage, and they extend over a long period in terms of socioeconomic and ecological recovery. Conceptually, the factors and processes that trigger system crises over the last 5,000 years have not been worked out or well understood. That, however, has not prevented the identification of these system crises or B-phases. With the plethora of positions on Sing C. Chew
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world system/s development, system crises or B-phases have been proposed to cover different durations, and have different meanings for those working in this area. Besides Gills and Frank’s model, the works of Modelski and Thompson (1996), and Wallerstein (1974, 1979) also come to mind. According to each model, the duration of these downturn phases also varies. Different durations ranging from 50 years to 1,000 years in length have been suggested. Leaving this difference in duration aside for the moment, there are also different views of what is a B-phase in relation to world system/s reproduction. For Gills and Frank (1992), B-phases represent the cyclical tendency or rhythms that a world system goes through as it expands. In other words, a B-phase is a cyclical downturn of the world system within its rhythm of expansion and contraction – a structural process of the world system (Gills and Frank 2002: 159–60). They are recurrences of economic downturns. Along this reasoning, there is no notable difference between one B-phase and another. They are all economic downturns with no distinguishing characteristics depicting a specific era (conjuncture) of the world system other than sharing similar tendencies such as hegemonic rivalries. There is no overt articulation of B-phases as representing the point of system transformation. Therefore, historical contingent circumstances/factors are not given much weight nor proffered to explain the genesis or resolution of system crisis and transitions. Another view of a B-phase is quite different. Wallerstein (1974–80, 1979) for example, understands B-phases or logistics in another way. A specific B-phase or logistic not only signifies an economic crisis period (e.g. price fluctuations), it also demarcates specific characteristics of system transition, reorganization and consolidation depending on the particular B-phase in question. In his explication of the origin and evolution of the modern world system, the B-phase between ad 1300 and ad 1450 has been analysed as a reorganization of the social structure (‘the crisis of feudalism’) in order to overcome the crisis conditions (Wallerstein 1980: 25). However, the B-phase between ad 1600 and ad 1750 is considered not as a ‘crisis in the system’ but as ‘a period of consolidation’ of social relations and structures with its respective specificities (Wallerstein Sing C. Chew
1980: 31). Thus, a specific B-phase crisis has certain triggers that trip the system crisis. In the case of the B-phase between ad 1300 and ad 1450, the particular triggers for the ‘crisis of feudalism’ were a conjuncture of secular trends, immediate cyclical crisis and climatological decline. The apparent differences in just two positions have implications for our understanding of the factors conditioning system crisis. If we consider a Wallersteinian B-phase, we need to note that it has some commonalities such as cyclical economic contraction trends (price changes, production losses, etc.) with other recurrent B-phases. In this case, Wallerstein’s interpretation is similar to Gills and Frank’s understanding of a B-phase. However, for Wallerstein, a specific B-phase is also different from other B-phases, for it also has certain contingent particular characteristics (e.g. breakdown of feudal social relations, climate changes) of the epoch in question that condition the system crisis. Hence, the specific conjuncture and its contingent socioeconomic and political characteristics are included in an understanding of the precipitation and determination of the systems crisis and transition. Given this direction, for Wallerstein, the identification of common elements that condition system crises recurring over world history needs to be combined with the conjunctural elements in order to understand the crisis. The attempt, therefore, is to straddle nomothetic and idiographic methodologies for an explanation of system crisis and transition. Between these two viewpoints of B-phases, there are those that are closer or further away from the above two positions. Modelski and Thompson’s (1996, 2001) contributions have suggested the recurrent nature of crisis and transitions over long cycles in the historical evolution of the world system. Agreeing with Gills and Frank on the dynamics of the world system since 3000 bc, the recurring crisis phases have been characterized by learning (technological, writing, information, etc.) innovations, political hegemonic struggles, population, urbanization, migrations, climate and warfare. Unlike Gills and Frank (1992), Modelski and Thompson have identified both particular elements (technological innovation, information, writing, etc.) that underline a specific crisis phase, and common elements such as de-urbanization, migration, and population decreases, that per-
Andre Gunder Frank 31
meate every system crisis phase. Beyond the widely agreed element of negative economic trends defining a B-phase, what we have are additional delineation of elements such as those that are specific (information, technological innovations, and writing), and other common elements (de-urbanization, migration, climate, and population decreases) that all form the matrix circumscribing system crisis and transition. System crises, therefore, are transition points of system adaptation and evolution.
Conclusion
Clearly, Andre Gunder Frank’s view of world development and world history is quite refreshing, especially in light of current global transformations, and especially for those outside the core zones who are looking for alternate views explaining world development and world history. In an era of critical cultural and social debates on global issues often determined knowingly and unknowingly by dominant ideological frameworks such as Eurocentrism, nationalism, socialism, and so on, Gunder Frank’s type of scholarship will be sorely missed. He was, I believe, a harbinger of truth as to what happened in the past, and what could very likely occur in the future not only in terms of world development but in the world of academic scholarship as well. In summary, as he would usually like to state in his writings: A Luta Continua! Sing C. Chew
Notes
1. In particular, Frank was aiming his attack on Marxists such as Perry Anderson and Samir Amin, and even Immmanuel Wallerstein. 2. This manuscript has now been published posthumously, ReOrienting the 19th Century (Frank 2015), edited by Robert A. Denemark.
References
Blaut, Jim. 1993. The Colonizer’s View of the World. New York: Guilford Press. Braudel, Fernand. 1982. The Wheels of Commerce, Vol. 2. New York: Harper and Row. Elvin, Mark. 1973. The Pattern of Chinese Past. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Frank, Andre Gunder. 1966. ‘The Development of Underdevelopment’. Monthly Review, Vol. 18(4). https://doi.org/10.14452/MR-018-04 -1966-08_3.
Frank, Andre Gunder. 1972. Lumpenbourgeoisie: Lumpendevelopment, Dependence, Class, and Politics in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press. Frank, Andre Gunder. 1994. ‘The World Economic System in Asia before European Hegemony’. The Historian, 56(4), 259–76. Frank, Andre Gunder. 1996. ‘The Underdevelopment of Development’. In Sing C. Chew and R. Denemark (eds), The Underdevelopment of Development: Essays in Honor of Andre Gunder Frank (pp. 17–56). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Frank, Andre Gunder. 1998. ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Frank, Andre Gunder. 2015. ReOrienting the 19th Century. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press. Frank, Andre Gunder and Gills, B.K. 1992. ‘World System Cycles, Crises, and Hegemonial Shifts’. Review, 15(4), 621–88. Gills, B.K. 1996. ‘Hegemony and Social Change’. Mershon International Studies Review, 38(2), 369–71. Gills, B.K. and Frank, Andre Gunder. 1992. ‘World System Cycles, Crises and Hegemonial Shifts’. Review, 15(4), 622–87. Gills, B.K. and Frank, Andre Gunder. 2002. ‘A Structural Theory of the 5,000 Year Old System’. In Sing C. Chew and David Knottnerus (eds), Structure, Culture and History (pp. 151–76). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Goody, Jack. 2004. Capitalism and Modernity: The Great Debate. Cambridge: Polity Press. Goody, Jack. 2012. The Theft of History. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hoselitz, B. 1960. Sociological Aspects in Economic Growth. New York: Free Press. Jones, E.L. 1981. The European Miracle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Landes, David. 1998. The Unbound Prometheus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lerner, David. 1965. The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. New York: Free Press. McClelland, David. 1967. The Achieving Society. New York: Free Press. Modelski, George and Thompson, William R. 1996. Leading Sectors and World Powers. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Modelski, George and Thompson, William R. 2001. ‘Evolutionary Pulsations in the World System’. In Sing C. Chew and David Knottnerus (eds), Structure, Culture, and History. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Parsons, Talcott. 1964. ‘Evolutionary Universals in Society’. American Sociological Review, Vol. 29(3), 339–57.
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32 Elgar encyclopedia of development Pomeranz, Ken. 1993. The Great Divergence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pye, Lucien. 1962. Personality, Politics, and Nation Building. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Rostow, W. 1960. The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. London: Cambridge University Press.
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Rostow, W. 1978. How It All Began: Origins of the Modern Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wallerstein, I. 1974–80. The Modern World-System, Vols 1–3. New York: Academic Press. Wallerstein, I. 1979. ‘Kondratieff Up or Kondratieff Down’. Review, Vol. 2(4), 663–73.
Animal capital Historically, the rise of agriculture and animal husbandry marked a substantial shift in human–animal relations (Serpell, 2003). At least one shift was the transformation of animals into property (Francione, 2007), enabling their transition into material assets within economies. Here animals came to serve a hybrid role: not merely a means of subsistence but also, simultaneously, an asset within a system of exchange. As Karl Marx observes in his notes on the history of money in Grundrisse, cattle are among the first currency instruments (1993: 166; see also 192). Financial terms like ‘stock’ reveal their close lineages to animal-based economies; indeed, the word ‘capital’ is etymologically linked to ‘cattle’ (Francione, 2007: 35). While animals have been central as assets and forms of labour within many economies, over time their role within capitalism has assumed a perhaps unprecedented importance. Animals have an intertwined history with the development of capitalism, playing a role in the ‘original accumulation’ that pre-figured capitalist economies. They exist as a raw material for commodity production and as a means of subsistence for human populations. And finally, animals exist as a source of energy or ‘labour’ that is drawn upon by capitalist production.
foundations for the development of capitalism as an economic system. As David Nibert (2013: 68) suggests, ‘the immeasurable violence and oppression experienced by both humans and animals in the Americas and the accompanying terror, trauma, and deprivation created the enormous wealth necessary for the development of mercantilism and the rise of the capitalist system’. One aspect of this is the reality that animals were central to the strategy of European expansionism and destruction in so far as the development of large-scale animal agriculture globally was tied to the process of colonial expropriation. In settler colonial contexts, European powers took land by force, who were then followed by grazing ‘livestock’ and other imported animals, who completed the process of altering landscapes, and displacing traditional economies (Wolfe, 2016; see also Pascoe, 2018). But we should also note that this process operated at the level of epistemology, systematically replacing alternative world views, including prevailing Indigenous ontologies, putting in their place the hierarchical anthropocentricism that underpinned European colonialism; as Kim TallBear observes, ‘the late nineteenth-century assimilative mantra “Kill the Indian, save the man” implies not simply an attack on our cultures but more precisely an attack on the relations – both human and other than-human – that make us who we are’ (TallBear, 2019: 24–5).
Colonialism and the origins of capitalism
Raw material and consumption commodities
Introduction
Capitalism as a system led to an explosion in the use of animals as fixed and circulating capital, as well as animal products which were proliferated predominantly as a means of subsistence for human populations. While we might understand animals under capitalism as labouring subjects (see below), they are positioned on the balance sheets of global agribusiness and pharmaceutic industries as assets: as the raw materials that are worked upon to enable profit. This ‘stock’ has grown in an unprecedented way during the twentieth century and beyond. This is best exemplified when we consider the place of animals in capitalist food systems. Today, animal agriculture globally represents a sophisticated intensified system to manage the reproduction, life and death
European colonial expansion provided the material base for the development of capitalism. Animals were a central point of focus within this history, in so far as animals were part of the extraction strategy of the colonial regime. The extermination of plains bison in North America for leather products is a powerful example of this relationship between colonialism and capitalist commodity production. In this example, the extraction of resources was interlinked with the settler colonial logic of elimination and dispossession: ‘colonial processes of extraction centrally involved animals and human-animal relations from the beginning’ (Taschereau Mamers, 2019: 13; see also Taschereau Mamers, 2020). This process formed the 33
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of billions of animals (Robinson et al., 2011: 43–59) and an ever-expanding intensification of adjacent industries such as feed production to enable this mass production to occur (OECD, 2019: 32–6). This means that today some 26 per cent of habitable land on the planet is used for grazing, and 33 per cent of croplands are used to produce feed for animals within intensive and semi-intensive food production systems. In 2019, some 81 billion land animals were slaughtered for human consumption (UN FAOSTAT, 2020). Figures on the numbers of fish killed annually for food are not officially defined; however, it has been estimated that this could comprise up to three trillion animals per year across industrialized wild fish capture and aquaculture (fishcount.org, 2019; Mood & Brooke, 2012). Farmed fish now account for close to half of the fish consumed by humans (UN FAO, 2016: 2); an astonishing example of human capacity to completely transform its relations with sea animals within the space of a generation. It is worth remarking here on the role of animal sourced foods within contemporary global capitalism. There has been an expansion in human utilization of animal products for food over the last 60 years. For example, in 1961, global per capita meat consumption, excluding fish and seafood, was at 23kg per person; by 2014 this had nearly doubled to 43kg per person (Ritchie & Roser, 2017). World per capita fish consumption has more than doubled (UN FAO, 2018). These changes have fundamentally shifted human diets on the planet, with an increasing proportion of meat and dairy products making up what humans eat. Raj Patel and Jason Moore argue that this transformation in diets is part of capitalism’s strategy for ‘cheap food’: by reducing the costs of animal-based food, this effectively reduced the wage cost of capitalism as a system (Patel & Moore, 2017). This has effectively placed an ever expanding animal population in a biopolitical relation with human populations, where animal life has become a means of subsistence to allow for the reproduction of human life. While there are many alternatives today to using animals for food, this close structural interdependence of human life and economies on the perpetual expansion of animal populations in food systems at least partly explains the seeming permanence of animal agriculture, despite the many challenges it poses for the Dinesh Wadiwel
environment and the welfare and rights of animals. Animals and animal products exist as many different forms of ‘use value’ today within the global capitalist system. It is estimated that globally there are close to 200 million animals used within scientific procedures, a figure that has grown over the last decade (Taylor & Alvarez, 2019). Animals used for ‘sport and recreational purposes’ create their own profit-making industries: for example, there are an estimated half a million thoroughbred racehorses in the world (McGivney et al., 2020) and their selectively bred athleticism is interlinked with a billion-dollar global gambling industry (McManus et al., 2013). There is every indication that companion animal ownership has grown, with attendant growth in demand for pet food, accessories and insurance (see, for example, Kestenbaum, 2018); and this has been accompanied by an expansion of the global exotic animal trade (Collard, 2020). And as Nicole Shukin (2009) reminds us, the by-products of animal production systems, such as gelatine, are not incidental but also significant drivers of this global trade in animals and animal products.
Labour
Animals within human productive systems are rarely thought of as ‘labour’ and are more often understood as passive resources that are worked on, or alternatively, as ‘living machines’. This reflects anthropocentric world views, something reflected in traditional European conceptions of labour power. For example, for Marx, this led to the extraordinarily species narcissistic view that domesticated animals were simply the accumulated product of previous human labour: ‘In the earliest period of human history, domesticated animals, i.e., animals that have undergone modification by means of labour, that have been bred specially, play the chief part as instruments of labour along with stones, wood, bones, and shells, which have also had work done on them’ (Marx, 1986: 285–6; see also 287–8). Recent work in animal studies and posthumanism has challenged the anthropocentricism of Marxist conceptualizations of labour, by arguing that animals might well be considered labourers within production (see, for example, Noske, 1997; Hribal, 2003; Stuart et al., 2013; Barua, 2017; Collard &
Animal capital 35
Dempsey, 2013; Coulter, 2016; Cochrane, 2016; Blattner, 2020). This emerging work on animal labour provides a welcome analytic frame by which to understand the interaction between the activity of animals and the development and future of capitalism. In some respects, this provides a useful way to understand the role of animal traction within early forms of industrial capitalism – such as the labour provided by mine-working equines or ‘pit ponies’ (see Jones, 2014) – and the continuing use of animals as an alternative to motorized traction today. But it also provides a way to analytically understand the ‘metabolic labour’ performed by animals within industrial food systems (see Beldo, 2017): that is, the way in which capitalist food production subsumed the biological capacity for animals to develop and grow as a site of productive activity, with the aim of producing consumption products that would become the means of subsistence for human populations. Here food animals represent a unique combination ‘constant’ and ‘variable’ capital, arriving at the scene of production as a raw material, being compelled to work on their own bodies in order to be transformed, through a process of violence, into a consumption commodity (see Wadiwel, 2018). Naturally, the fact that animals are not paid a wage, nor agree to this labour, makes the analysis of the billions of animals who perform work within animal agriculture conceptually controversial to understand in terms of ‘value’ (see Foster & Burkett, 2018). However, in my view this enables us to comprehend one of the driving rationalities for animal use under capitalism: namely, the extraction of surplus from the labour of animals. However, this surplus is extracted not as a difference between a wage and the value produced by labour, but instead the relationship between the value generated by the labouring being and the reproduction costs associated with this work (see Wadiwel, 2018, 2020).
Conclusion
Animals have played a fundamental role in the history of capitalism, representing a central site of accumulation and exploitation. Today, animals exist in many guises under capitalism: as raw materials that are deployed within capitalist productive pro-
cesses; and commodities (alive or dead) that are central to economies and ways of life; and finally as the energies and labour that are the target of capitalist production effort to extract surplus. Because of the brutality associated with how most societies engage with animals today, particularly, but not only, in the context of industrialized forms of utilization, there is substantial ethical concern about how we can reduce or eliminate this violence. This today ties closely to the challenge of ‘sustainable’ modes of development, which increasingly point to the non-compatibility of large-scale animal agriculture to the challenge of curtailing anthropogenic global warming, and demands substantial work to ‘transition’ capitalist food systems away from animal-sourced foods. Understanding the relationships of animals to capitalist value system is central to this task. Dinesh Wadiwel
References
Barua, M. (2017). Nonhuman Labour, Encounter Value, Spectacular Accumulation: The Geographies of a Lively Commodity. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 42(2), 274–88. Beldo, L. (2017). Metabolic Labor: Broiler Chickens and the Exploitation of Vitality. Environmental Humanities 9(1), 108–28. Blattner, C. (2020). Should Animals Have a Right to Work? Promises and Pitfalls. Animal Studies Journal 9(1), 32–92. https://ro.uow.edu.au/asj/ vol9/iss1/3. Cochrane, A. (2016). Labour Rights for Animals. In R. Garner & S. O’Sullivan (eds), The Political Turn in Animal Ethics (pp. 15–32). Rowman & Littlefield International. Collard, R. (2020). Animal Traffic: Lively Capital in the Global Exotic Pet Trade. Duke University Press. Collard, R. & Dempsey, J. (2013). Life for Sale? The Politics of Lively Commodities. Environment and Planning A 45(11), 2682–99. Coulter, K. (2016). Animals, Work, and the Promise of Interspecies Solidarity. Palgrave Macmillan. fishcount.org.uk (2019). Numbers of Fish Caught from the Wild Each Year. http://fishcount.org .uk/fish-count-estimates-2/numbers-of-fish -caught-from-the-wild-each-year. Foster, J.B. & Burkett. P. (2018). Value Isn’t Everything. Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine. https://monthlyreview.org/ 2018/11/01/value-isnt-everything/.
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36 Elgar encyclopedia of development Francione, G. (2007). Animals, Property and the Serpell, J. (2003). In the Company of Animals: A Study of Human-Animal Relationships. Law. Temple University Press. Cambridge University Press. Hribal, J. (2003). Animals are Part of the Working Class: A Challenge to Labor History. Labor Shukin, N. (2009). Animal Capital. University of Minnesota Press. History 44(4), 435–53. Jones, A. (2014). Pit Ponies: Real Horsepower Stuart, D., Schewe, R.L. & Gunderson, R. (2013). Underground. CIM Magazine. https:// Extending Social Theory to Farm Animals: Addressing Alienation in the Dairy Sector. magazine.cim.org/en/in-search/pit-ponies-real Sociologia Ruralis 53(2), 201–22. -horsepower-underground-en/. Kestenbaum, R. (2018). The Biggest Trends in the TallBear, K. (2019). Caretaking Relations, Not American Dreaming. Kalfou 6(1), 24–41. Pet Industry. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/ Taschereau Mamers, D. (2019). Human-Bison sites/richardkestenbaum/2018/11/27/the-biggest Relations as Sites of Settler Colonial Violence -trends-in-the-pet-industry/?sh=4409bfff099a. and Decolonial Resurgence. Humanimalia: Marx, K. (1986). Capital Vol.1. Penguin. A Journal of Human-Animal Interface Studies Marx, K. (1993). Grundrisse. Penguin. 10(2), 10–41. McGivney, B.A., Han, H., Corduff, L.R., Katz, L.M., Tozaki, T., MacHugh, D.E. & Hill, E.W. Taschereau Mamers, D. (2020). Last of the Buffalo: Bison Extermination, Early Conservation, (2020). Genomic Inbreeding Trends, Influential and Visual Records of Settler Colonization Sire Lines and Selection in the Global in the North American West. Settler Colonial Thoroughbred Horse Population. Scientific Studies 10(1), 126–47. Reports 10, 466. https://doi.org/10.1038/ Taylor, K. & Alvarez, L.R. (2019). An Estimate s41598–019–57389–5. of the Number of Animals Used for Scientific McManus, P., Albrecht, G. & Graham, R. (2013). Purposes Worldwide in 2015. Alternatives to The Global Horseracing Industry: Social, Laboratory Animals 47(5–6), 196–213. Economic, Environmental and Ethical UN FAO (2016). The State of World Fisheries Perspectives. Routledge. and Aquaculture 2016. Contributing to Food Mood, A. & Brooke, P. (2012). Estimating the Security and Nutrition For All. United Nations Number of Farmed Fish Killed in Global Food and Agriculture Organization. Aquaculture Each Year. Fishcount.org.uk. UN FAO (2018). Is the Planet Approaching ‘Peak http://fishcount.org.uk/fish-count-estimates Fish’? Not So Fast, Study Says. United Nations -2/numbers-of-farmed-fish-slaughtered-each Food and Agriculture Organization. http://www -year/study-to-estimate-the-global-annual .fao.org/news/story/en/item/1144274/icode/. -numbers-of-farmed-fish. Nibert, D. (2013). Animal Oppression & Human UN FAOSTAT (2020). UN Food and Agriculture Organization. http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/. Violence: Domesecration, Capitalism and Wadiwel, D. (2018). Chicken Harvesting Machine: Global Conflict. Columbia University Press. Animal Labor, Resistance, and the Time of Noske, B. (1997). Beyond Boundaries: Humans Production. The South Atlantic Quarterly and Animals. Black Rose Books. 117(3), 527–49. OECD/FAO (2019). OECD-FAO Agricultural Wadiwel, D. (2020). The Working Day: Animals, Outlook 2019–2028. OECD Publishing. Capitalism and Surplus Time. In Charlotte E. Pascoe, B. (2018). Dark Emu. Magabala Books. Blattner, Kendra Coulter, and Will Kymlicka Patel, R. & Moore, J.W. (2017). A History of (eds), Animal Labour: A New Frontier of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide Interspecies Justice? (pp. 181–206). Oxford: to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Oxford University Press. Planet. University of California Press. Ritchie, H. & Roser, M. (2017). Meat and Seafood Wolfe, P. (2016). Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race. Verso. Production and Consumption. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/meat-and -seafood-production-consumption#per-capita -milk-consumption. Robinson, T.P., Thornton P.K., Franceschini, G., Kruska, R.L., Chiozza, F., Notenbaert, A., Cecchi, G., Herrero, M., Epprecht, M., Fritz, S., You, L., Conchedda, G. & See, L. (2011). Global Livestock Production Systems. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), 1.
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Art and development
Arts’ support emerges from development’s cultural turn
Development support for the arts emerged as part of development’s cultural turn in the 1980s, which sought to diversify thinking about development – exploring the cultural assumptions behind development and drawing attention to the importance of the cultural contexts in which development interventions were undertaken. The United Nations Decade for Culture and Development (1988–1997) saw a series of high-level debates and reports supporting more diversified cultural and human-centred approaches to development, and also pointing out the importance of cultural expressions to broader social and cultural life. The decade ‘affirmed the importance of cultural identities, supported cultural participation and promoted international cultural cooperation’ (Stupples & Teaiwa, 2017, p. 8). It also saw United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopt a more inclusive understanding of cultural expressions, recognizing intangible cultural heritage, which includes rituals, dances, craftsmanship, and oral storytelling. The World Commission in Culture and Development (WCCD) published the landmark report Our Creative Diversity (WCCD, 1996), and launched a series of World Culture Reports. These debates took place in a context of intensified processes of globalization and migration, with the arts seen as contributing in particular ways: increasing cross-cultural empathy, mediating the discussion of contentious issues, and contributing to the construction of new hybrid identities. At the same time, trade in cultural goods and services was rapidly increasing, amid concerns about global power imbalances and the potential for cultural homogenization. Debate about the place of creative goods and services in trade agreements was heated at The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (and later the World Trade Organization (WTO)) trade negotiations and led to the argument for ‘the cultural exception’ – that creative goods and services should not be treated like other commodities in trade agreements because of their importance as vectors of meaning and identity. This argument was further strengthened through UNESCO’s 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (De
Introduction
The arts play diverse roles across all societies: they can be vital carriers of cultural knowledge and histories; they may challenge and disrupt dominant social norms; they can contribute to employment and exports through the creative industries; they can give voice to marginalized communities, thereby contributing to diversity and inclusion; and they can generate pleasure, laughter, and empathy. The term art is used here in a broad and inclusive sense, including ‘all forms and traditions of dance, music, visual and digital arts, crafts, design, fashion, literature, film and theatre that serve as means for individual and collective creative agency and expression’ and recognizing that for many cultures, the arts are not a separate sphere of activity, but are ‘deeply integrated into political, social and economic life’ (Stupples & Teaiwa, 2017, p. 4). As such, the arts are integral to immanent development and flourishing in all societies. Since the 1990s, the arts have been supported through development interventions, particularly by the European donor community (both bilateral partners and NGOs). That support has been impactful in places where government funding for the arts is weak, non-existent, or is used to support highly conservative or even totalitarian regimes. However, funding approaches reveal divergent understandings of the agency of the arts in relation to development. While some donors support creative practice broadly as a form of cultural expression, others only support arts initiatives if they are used to convey development messages, while others support them primarily as a contributor to economic growth or diversified livelihoods. Across these approaches, and in this transnational funding context, it is important to stay alert to power dynamics and ask, ‘who is making the cultural decision, and for what reasons?’. This chapter describes the historical trajectory through which the arts came to be recognized within development, and then introduces five key approaches to the arts in development.
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Beukelaer & Pyykkönen, 2015). The 2005 Convention recognizes the significance of cultural expressions produced by artists and cultural professionals, and the sovereign right of States to protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions. The complex relationship between creative expression and economic development continues to be debated. Three UN Creative Economy Reports (United Nations Conference of Trade and Development (UNC TAD) and United Nations Development Programme UNDP, 2008; UNCTAD and UNDP, 2010; UNESCO and UNDP, 2013), for example, have articulated more economistic framings of creative and cultural expressions. Today, artists, arts organizations and cultural managers are supported by development agencies and NGOs across a range of genres and activities: creative industries like design, digital media, and filmmaking; crafts, music, dance, theatre, visual arts, digital arts; arts education and cultural management; platforms for dissemination like publishing, festivals, and events; the development of cultural policy; and the expansion of local and global networks. Some arts projects are small-scale and localized; others are significant at national, regional, and global scales. Development funding comes from a range of bilateral development agencies (the Nordic nations and the Netherlands are particularly active here) and also dedicated culture-focused NGOs, primarily to support artists but also public cultural institutions like museums and libraries. Creative agency takes many forms and is dependent on multi-scalar contextual factors for its meaning. Below are five key ways in which that agency is envisaged in relation to development.
Diverse approaches Arts as communication for development Arts interventions like community filmmaking or theatre-for-development are often used to engage communities in sensitive development issues such as HIV/AIDS or gender-based violence – issues that may carry social stigma and may be challenging to discuss. Here, arts interventions are used for education, to facilitate dialogue, and to contribute to social and cultural change. In communities with low literacy rates or where Polly Stupples
communication is largely orate, creative community-based storytelling and discussion is particularly effective. A range of different methodological approaches are used but one common approach is to develop a fictionalized story that embodies the complexities of an issue in the community context; stage it or screen it (either publicly or with a targeted group); and then facilitate a dialogue around the issues presented. The fictional representation (or aesthetic mediation) adds a helpful distance from which to discuss challenging material, without referring directly to existing community members or situations; and it can inspire empathy for others’ points of view. Some of these communication-for-development approaches also focus on building professional capacity in techniques of acting, scriptwriting, filmmaking, and theatre-production. The Vanuatu-based NGO Wan Smolbag (see https://www.wansmolbag.org/) is an excellent example. It has been a leader in theatre, film, and television for development in Oceania for over 30 years and has an emphasis on community education and on skills-development in the creative arts. Arts for peace-building and post-conflict transformation Conflict remains a significant impediment to development, and peace that is declared at the national or international scale does not automatically result in peaceful communities. In the post-conflict context, the arts can contribute to processes of reconciliation, security, and development, albeit indirectly and as part of a range of peacebuilding measures. Culture and identity, however, are also lenses though which conflict is perceived and may entrench a sense of belonging to one group and antagonism towards another. Indeed, cultural sites are often targeted for destruction during conflicts because of their symbolic power. Participating in the arts does not in any way guarantee peaceful outcomes, but sensitively managed programmes that are locally grounded, with a good understanding of local cultural identities and traditions can support the rebuilding of trust and relationships, empathy with the other, tolerance and healing, and promote new identity formations.
Art and development 39
Arts-based methods allow people to engage emotionally and intellectually and provide symbolic and metaphorical ‘languages’ through which to articulate experience or trauma that may be difficult, if not impossible, to express in words. On the other hand, jokes, skits, and other forms of performance can also generate humour and create a space of relief away from a traumatic context. Arts-based programmes may be particularly effective with youth, who may struggle to have a voice in more formal approaches to conflict resolution. Participatory arts engagement in the post-conflict context focuses less on direct conflict resolution, and more on rebuilding relationships, social cohesion and resilience, strengthening civil society, supporting voice and agency, and creating therapeutic spaces and spaces for dialogue. They may also create processes to imagine new cultures of peace, justice, and equality – new narratives that are less haunted by the divisions of the past. Fairey (2017, p. 11) frames approaches to art and peacebuilding through five themes: the arts as healing; the arts as remembering; the arts as a pursuit for truth and justice, the arts as enabling dialogue; the arts as embedding peaceful values. Arts, identity, and immanent development Creative cultural expression is present in all societies and is a part of broader processes of immanent development. Indeed, in many parts of the world, cultural expression has been, and continues to be, closely tied to everyday practice. As Teaiwa notes in relation to Oceania, art is ‘central to the process of archiving social knowledge, reflecting political dynamics, and providing a vehicle for the expression and maintenance of strong communal identities’ (2007, p. 142). Art reflects and dialogues with the context from which it emerges, although that context is multi-scalar. Art engages intimately with perception, emotion, and understanding, but can also be part of community-level, regional, national, and global dialogues, and symbolic processes. Artist-led spaces can provide important sites for critical reflection on the relationship between creative practice and contemporary society, and questions of voice and representation. The 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions recognizes this, but
also recognizes imbalances in the resources and opportunities available to artists globally. A number of international NGOs, bilateral agencies, and diplomatic organizations (e.g. British Council and Goethe Institute) support the arts and cultural sectors in poorer states without requiring direct and measurable social or economic outcomes in a short-term project cycle. The Prince Claus Fund (Netherlands) and Mimeta (Norway) are two important examples. They do this on the premise that a thriving arts sector overall contributes to democracy, diversity, and civil society. Supporting the cultural sector in and of itself involves supporting quality arts education, mentorship, festivals, and exchanges, enabling opportunities for artists to travel and share their work, and capacity-building in arts management. Supporting the creative sector beyond the discursive frame of ‘underdevelopment’ also carries agency: enabling different forms of identity-construction beyond those linked to ‘lack’ or ‘deficiency’. The Costa-Rican art curator Virginia Pérez-Ratton, for example, worked over 30 years to reframe the way Central America was represented in global art circuits. While international curators expected art from the region to focus on violence, natural disasters, or poverty, Pérez-Ratton developed international platforms for artists from the region that recognized a far wider range of interests and concerns, and that moved beyond the ghettoization of ‘underdevelopment’ (Pérez-Ratton and Herkenhoff, 2020). In a similar vein, Kenyan filmmaker Ranuri Kahiu is raising the profile of contemporary artistic expression in Africa that focuses on joy and love with her platform Afrobubblegum (http:// www.afrobubblegum.com), arguing that art from the continent should not always have to address socio-cultural issues. Arts as drivers of economic development Three UN Creative Economy Reports (published in 2008, 2010, and 2013) have drawn particular attention to the economic possibilities of the creative industries as alternative pathways for development. The reports build on cultural policy shifts over the last 30 years, particularly in the UK and other Anglophone nations, which saw a focus on creative cities, creative clusters, and the ‘creative class’ as vital contributors to the post-industrial Polly Stupples
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knowledge economy. The Creative Economy reports argue that the creative industries generate ‘inclusive growth’: increasing employment, income, and exports while sustaining social inclusion and cultural diversity. They argue that the creative economy is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the global economy, and that creativity is a plentiful and renewable resource. This approach is seen, therefore, as a win-win for both neoliberal economic and human-centred approaches to development and, has generated significant interest, particularly across Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) economies, in Latin America and Asia. Critics, however, argue that these reports are overly celebratory and fail to address key issues (De Beukelaer, 2014; Sternberg, 2017). These include poor definitional clarity (some definitions suggest almost any firm could be considered ‘creative’); a lack of recognition of vital state support to creative industries (e.g. higher education and training; or funding from national film commissions); existing global inequalities in the creative sector (e.g. the power of major media conglomerates); the lack of cultural statistics on which to base policies, and the precarity of labour conditions in the creative industries everywhere. Nevertheless, the reports also provide multiple examples of dynamic creative practices across the world that support cultural expression, voice, and public debate, and counter historical and contemporary processes of marginalization. There is much to be celebrated in the creative economy, but more critical engagement is needed in what it looks like in particular contexts, how best to support artists and creative professionals, and the diverse forms of creative agency that are enabled – which are not always primarily economic. Artistic freedom and artists as change agents Artists can be agents of change, be that social, cultural, or political. Their work can amplify and interrogate issues, and their profile or transnational networks may extend their communicative reach. Artists can act as change agents in different ways and at different scales. They can act as community organizers and advocates, create spaces for critical dialogue, take a leading role in social and political movements, or openly challenge Polly Stupples
political regimes, religious codes, or social and cultural norms through their artwork, or as political activists outside of the art space. The right of artists to express themselves freely may be threatened, however, through censorship, threats to personal safety, detention, or imprisonment, or even murder. UNESCO defines artistic freedom as ‘the freedom to imagine, create and distribute diverse cultural expressions free of governmental censorship, political interference or the pressures of non-state actors. It includes the right of all citizens to have access to these works and is essential for the wellbeing of societies’ (2019, p. 2). Threats to artistic and human rights reduce the diversity of cultural expressions, while impacting individual’s well-being and livelihoods. In 2013, a report exploring the intersection of artistic freedom and human rights, by the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of Cultural Rights, Farida Shaheed, was presented to the UN Human Rights Council (Shaheed, 2013) and is a foundational document. UNESCO and a number of NGOs continue to monitor threats to artists and develop strategies to support those imprisoned or exiled.
Ongoing challenges
Ongoing challenges in arts-development interventions include short-term project cycles and reductivist framing that fails to recognize the importance of the broader cultural field in which arts practices exist, and the possibility for agency to extend beyond the local. The artistic field includes a wide range of actors: artists, producers, cultural managers, educators, critics, and audiences, and the ability for artists to travel and strengthen transnational networks is important. In addition, cultural statistics on which to base policy interventions are not gathered in many places, and, where they are, they are rarely disaggregated (e.g. by race, gender, or age). Another ongoing challenge is adequate qualitative evaluation methods: processes that can capture the richness and unexpected outcomes from arts practice.
Summary
The arts intersect with development in many ways, through promoting diversity and social inclusion, supporting economic development, acting as change agents, or providing plat-
Art and development 41
forms through which sensitive issues can be articulated, shared, and discussed. Beyond these more instrumental forms of agency, the arts contribute to the enrichment of our lives every day: they are a space for collective reflection, celebration, and contestation, offer us insights into our human condition, places to laugh and delight as well as to share pain and doubt, and they transmit ideas across space and time. Despite this, there is nothing intrinsically benign about creative expression: its power and symbolic impact depends on its context of production and reception. Polly Stupples
Shaheed, F. (2013). The Right to Freedom of Artistic Expression and Creativity. Report of the Special Rapporteur in the Field of Cultural Rights, Farida Shaheed. UNGA. Sternberg, R. (2017). Creativity Support Policies as a Means of Development Policy for the Global South? A Critical Appraisal of the UNESCO Creative Economy Report 2013, Regional Studies 51(2), 336–45. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00343404.2016.1174844. Stupples, P., & Teaiwa, K. (2017). Introduction: On Art and International Development. In P. Stupples & K. Teaiwa (Eds.), Contemporary Perspectives on Art and International Development (pp. 1–24). Routledge. Teaiwa, K. (2007). On Sinking, Swimming, Floating, Flying and Dancing: The Potential of Cultural Industries in the Pacific Islands, References Pacific Economic Bulletin 22(2), 140–51. De Beukelaer, C. (2014). The UNESCO/UNDP UNCTAD and UNDP (2008). Creative Economy 2013 Creative Economy Report: Perks and Report 2008: The Challenge of Assessing Perils of an Evolving Agenda, Journal of Arts the Creative Economy: Towards Informed Management, Law, and Society 44(2), 90–100. Policy-Making, UNCTAD/DITC/2008/2. De Beukelaer, C., & Pyykkönen, M. (2015). United Nations. Introduction: UNESCO’s “Diversity UNCTAD and UNDP (2010). Creative Economy Convention”—Ten Years on. In C. De Report 2010: Creative Economy: A Feasible Beukelaer, M. Pyykkönen & J.P. Singh (Eds.), Development Option, UNCTAD/DITC/ Globalization, Culture and Development: The TAB/2010/3. United Nations. UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity. UNESCO (2005). Convention on the Protection Palgrave Macmillan. and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Fairey, T. (2017). The Arts in Peace-building Expressions. UNESCO. and Reconciliation: Mapping Practice. https:// UNESCO (2019). Artistic Freedom. UNESCO. kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/118871197/ https://en.unesco.org/creativity/sites/creativity/ Fairey_Arts_Peacebuilding.pdf. files/artistic_freedom_pdf_web.pdf. Pérez-Ratton, V., & Herkenhoff, P. (2020). UNESCO and UNDP (2013). Creative Economy Virginia Pérez-Ratton: Centroamérica: deseo Report. UNESCO and UNDP. de lugar/Central America: Desiring a Place. WCCD (1996). Our Creative Diversity: Report RM Verlag. of the World Commission on Culture and Development. UNESCO.
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Artificial intelligence and development
trained on massive datasets of hundreds of billions of words scraped from the internet and other sources. These models learn the relationships within datasets and uses this learning to generate new outputs from new inputs. These training approaches have led to the development of LLMs that can pass the Turing Test, i.e., they can produce responses that are so convincing a panel of judges can not tell if they are from a human or a machine.1 The chasm between Eliza and ChatGPT demonstrates the key shift that has taken place in AI development: we have moved from approaches based on explicit rules to those based on machine learning. This is a critical leap for real-world applications because, in many contexts, it is impossible to explicitly spell out the rules to be followed. For example, how could one possibly write rules to account for all the permutations of visually recognizing a person or navigating a car through a city? AI is not taught how to do these things with a set of rules; it learns from experience codified in data. Despite the incredible power of machine learning, most AI models are still narrow in the sense that they can be applied only to the task for which they are trained. They ‘break’ when applied to another task. An AI algorithm trained to play chess cannot play GO, for instance. That said, LLMs are more flexible than other AI models that are trained to perform a specific task. Indeed, up-to-date people are still exploring the set of tasks that LLMs can do effectively. However, as of this writing, while GPT-4 can also play chess, it does not do so well and tends to ‘hallucinate’ moves (i.e., make moves that violates the rules of chess). Critically, these models do not understand in a meaningful sense that they are playing chess. They do not understand the meaning of a sentence as part of a conversation The result is that LLMs can ‘hallucinate’, generating realistic sounding, but internally contradictory and factually incorrect statements.2 In short, these algorithms lack a general, humanlike, adaptive intelligence that would enable them to learn and apply learning across domains, situations, and problems. While researchers are actively exploring and developing AI capable of adaptive, general intelligence, such advances fall out of the scope of relevance for AI in development at the time of writing.
Introduction
Artificial intelligence (AI) is ‘the science and engineering of making intelligent machines’ where ‘intelligence is the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the world’ according to John McCarthy, who ran the first-ever gathering on AI in 1956 (McCarthy, 2007). Today, AI is the science and engineering of computer systems where ‘intelligence’ means having the ability to perform tasks such as visual perception, speech recognition, language translations, and certain types of decision-making. Since that first AI gathering in 1956, significant advances in AI have been made, although more slowly than early pioneers predicted. It was only in the 2010s that advances in machine learning – a particular approach to AI – started to have real-world impact. Specifically, the introduction of deep learning (LeCun et al., 2015), enabled by increasing computational power and data availability, is propelling advances in AI. Machine learning algorithms are now at the core of search engines, news feeds, and chat bots. They can compose music, make medical diagnoses, produce efficient engineering designs, enable real-time facial recognition and surveillance, and inform life-altering decisions about who is eligible for a job interview, a bank loan, and even parole. The progress made in AI over 60 years becomes clear when we compare an early AI program called Eliza to the emergence of large language models (LLMs), like ChatGPT-4 released in March 2023. (Brown et al., 2020). Eliza, programmed in the 1960s, was the first chatbot to use early natural language processing to simulate a psychotherapist. The relatively simple system worked by creating rules for Eliza to flip patients’ statements around into questions, like this: Patient: Eliza:
I am feeling stressed out. Do you believe it is normal to be feeling stressed out?
ChatGPT, by contrast, does not use a predetermined set of rules. Instead, LLMs are 42
Artificial intelligence and development 43
AI in lower- and middle-income countries
The development and deployment of AI applications builds on the ongoing diffusion and adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) – from telephones to internet-enabled mobiles to the internet of things. Over the last 40 years, the spread of ICTs has given rise to broad development benefits from digital technologies, improving service delivery, increasing opportunities online and offline, and contributing to economic growth (World Bank, 2016). Flowing from this digital infrastructure is the increasing prevalence of data production and collection, which creates new mechanisms for increasing transparency and accountability, making better policy, improving service delivery, and increasing business opportunities (World Bank, 2021). The broad application of AI straddles this trend and therefore should only deepen with continued processes of digitization, digitalization, and datafication. AI leverages digital and data infrastructure in a way that enables it to potentially foster transformative changes at a large scale. AIs can turn data into actionable intelligence through data-informed predictions that can inform or lead to concrete decisions. In doing so, AI can augment or fill in for non-existent expertise. The fact that AI does this while piggybacking on existing digital infrastructure means that provided the data exist, these predictions and decisions can scale easily at minimal cost. Examples abound: ● Automated computer translation of text between languages (machine translation) can contribute to more inclusive governance by making services and information available in a wider array of local languages. ● Optical character recognition techniques can digitize paper-based legal case records, and natural language processing techniques can help lawyers and judges rapidly analyse them. ● Sensor technology can be attached to livestock to monitor vital information, and AI techniques can analyse this data for early detection of diseases or other disorders. This allows for timely medical intervention and contributes to improved livestock health and productivity.
Before AI, many of these activities would either not have been possible or would have been prohibitively time consuming. While training an AI model may be costly, once trained, running the model typically requires significantly less computational power. This means models can be run locally on handheld devices, often without internet connections, which in turn greatly expands their applicability beyond contexts of high connectivity. For example, a farmer can diagnose crop diseases using just a cell phone with a camera. Similarly, rural health workers can diagnose malaria by conducting a microscopic analysis of blood samples using a low-cost mobile device. Given the continued rapid spread of technology and broad applicability of AI, it is not surprising that AI applications could arguably contribute to achieving 134 of the 169 United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets (Vinuesa et al., 2020). Despite this potential applicability, practitioners, academics, and policymakers promoting the use of AI to tackle local challenges and improve people’s lives face considerable constraints in lower- and lower-middle income countries (LLMICs). These constraints not only limit the impact of AI, but also increase some of the associated risks. While the following is not an exhaustive list, three key constraints can be noted. Governance Like ICTs and data, AI requires sound governance to encourage its use and limit its potential downsides. Currently, many LLMIC governments are limited in their readiness to leverage AI for genuine development aims – although this can also be said for middle- and higher-income countries. This reality is not surprising, as many countries lack the foundations upon which to successfully govern AI. They lack, for example, the institutional capacity to safeguard the rights of citizens (offline or online), and even rudimentary data protection frameworks. Infrastructure Despite the rapid spread of ICTs globally, considerable inequities remain in access to digital infrastructure across the world. An increasing number of organizations (academic, public, and private sector), typically Matthew L. Smith and Ruhiya Kristine Seward
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in large cities, do have sufficient computational capacity and access to work with AI tools. And while access to cloud computing AI services somewhat mitigates the need for local computational capacity, the costs to train can be high. The uneven spread of digital infrastructure has resulted in a lack of contextually relevant, high-quality, labelled data sets for applying AI at a local level. This is amplified by the fact that the development of AI (and related datasets) has occurred almost entirely in higher-income countries. Active lines of research for technical solutions are working to address these infrastructure challenges, and this could greatly improve the applicability of AI in LLMIC contexts. For example, transfer learning approaches (i.e. working with partially pre-trained models) require significantly less data to achieve high levels of performance. Human resources Many LLMIC countries – such as Kenya, South Africa, and Senegal – already have hubs of AI capacity and across the Global South there are well-organized and mobilized AI communities.3 However, gaps remain in the expertise required to advance AI for human development. One considerable gap is in female practitioners – an issue the world over – who are critical for, among other things, bringing female voices and diverse perspectives into the development of applications, and addressing biases in AI development and deployment. Another key gap is a paucity of cross-disciplinary collaborations needed to successfully bridge a development challenge and a relevant, viable, innovative solution.
AI controversies and responses
The excitement for AI’s potential in development may be equally matched by concerns and controversies. As with all technologies, AI applications can and will have both positive and negative social effects. These concerns have rapidly emerged in the public consciousness, in part due to high-profile incidents of highly biased software, such as when Google photo recognition software produced racist results. These incidents have helped motivate a series of responses by AI companies, and non-governmental, Matthew L. Smith and Ruhiya Kristine Seward
inter-governmental, research, and governmental organizations around the world. Controversies AI controversies are rooted in both technical issues and the irresponsible or unethical application of these technologies that may lead to social ills (Bender et al., 2021). Here are a few key concerns: ● Bias – Perhaps the most widely discussed controversy stems from AI algorithms that have encoded biases (O’Neil, 2016; Smith & Rushtagi, 2021). Bias can come from a variety of sources. If an algorithm is trained on a non-representative dataset, the efficacy of an algorithm trained on that data will differ across populations, such as when an algorithm developed to detect melanoma does not work well for darker-skinned patients. Algorithmic bias can also result from training on data that reflects existing social inequities and biases, such as an AI model developed to predict crime that is trained on data representing past biased policing practices, or a large language model trained on language corpuses with sexism biases. Such algorithms effectively learn, and then offer predictions informed by the social biases that drove the social inequities in the first place. Another source of bias can come from a lack of diversity among those who are designing AI systems. Given the overwhelming prevalence of males working in the computer engineering and AI fields, it is no surprise that biases emerge in the AI applications they create, such as when early voice assistant technologies used almost entirely female voices. ● Opaqueness – Typical LLMs currently encode their training data in tens, if not hundreds, of billions of parameters. This non-symbolic representation of the data accounts for both how it can ‘learn’ so much and why it is an opaque black box. Given an input, we can’t explain why it provides a particular output. In other words, these models lack ‘explainability’ – humans’ ability to look inside and discern a clear and understandable explanation of how it arrived at its prediction. While GPT-4 is at the time of writing one
Artificial intelligence and development 45
of (if not the) largest AI models in the world, the basic mechanism of numerically encoding rules across many nodes remains the same with smaller models. This lack of transparency is arguably a huge challenge both for developing mechanisms of accountability and for building trust in AI systems. ● AI snake oil – AI’s strong ability to predict outcomes has spurred the development of AI applications that inform potentially life-altering decisions such as who can get parole, a loan, or a job interview. These types of systems are problematic because they are: ● Trained on historical data that encode structural biases (socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, gender, among others). ● Involved in social predictions for which current AI models have not yet demonstrated sufficiently high levels of accuracy. ● High risk because they can potentially have high impact on an individual’s life or a community’s well-being. At best, these models do not work very well; at worst, they can cause harm to individuals and communities. These applications are the AI version of ‘snake oil’ (Narayanan, n.d.). In a similar vein, well-intentioned but quickly assembled AI models, such as the numerous AI responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, can lead to disappointment, lost resources, and even negative outcomes (The Alan Turing Institute, 2021). AI is not needed for many problems and, in most contexts, there are simpler solutions. ● Surveillance systems – AI is supercharging our ability to track and profile individuals and communities. For example, police departments across the world are buying and using real-time facial recognition as part of daily policing activities to reduce crime, even though research is demonstrating how such systems can be both biased (resulting in a greater number of errors for darker-skinned people, for example) and easily misused. Predatory lenders are scooping up and buying vast amount of personalized data to profile and target poorer populations (O’Neil, 2016). Together, the uses of AI for surveillance by the public and private sectors
are potentially undermining human and democratic rights, presenting enormous and durable governance challenges for policymakers and innovators alike. ● Energy consumption and carbon footprint – Some large AI models can be extremely energy intensive to train. For example, the training of the older and smaller GPT-3 model took several thousand petaflop4 days of compute, with a carbon footprint comparable to a new car driving 703,808 kilometers (Anthony et al., 2020). This list of concerns is not comprehensive, but some of the key issues include5: ● AI-based automation could create significant unemployment or underemployment. ● The consolidation of power in a few large corporations is more likely due to the centrality of data and the cycle of more data leading to better applications. ● The public sphere can become diminished and polarized as a result of filter bubbles and echo-chambers generated from personalized and sometimes biased social media and news feeds, and because we do not yet have the tools to help us discern when content is AI generated, when it is trained on disinformation, or when it is hallucinating. These controversies surrounding AI contribute to the concern that AI applied in LLMICs could work to inhibit the achievement of SDG targets (Vinuesa et al., 2020), and even reverse development by contributing to increased inequalities and political instability (Smith & Neupane, 2018). Responses The well-documented and increasingly well-researched risks of AI have motivated a broad range of responses that seek to balance benefits and potential harms. Below, we discuss some prominent responses to the controversies spelled out above. ● Frameworks for ethical, responsible, or trustworthy AI – Since 2015, there has been an explosion of frameworks and principles to guide AI development and deployment in ways that are ethical, that preserve human rights, and that are environmentally sustainable. These frameworks have different names but in Matthew L. Smith and Ruhiya Kristine Seward
46 Elgar encyclopedia of development
general converge on the following five principles: transparency, justice and fairness, non-maleficence, responsibility, and privacy (Jobin et al. 2019). These frameworks, however, have limitations. First, they may have limited applicability, as they have been developed almost entirely within and by people living in ‘northern’ contexts – and therefore may not be appropriate outside these contexts. Second, these high-level principles do not provide guidance on how to put the principles into practice in different contexts. This leaves a significant gap between aspiration and implementation. ● Technical tools – A myriad of technical tools have emerged that are designed to help innovators develop AI more responsibly. For example, there are tools for detecting and mitigating bias in training data sets, and tools that report the energy consumption associated with training AI models. There is also an active subset of AI research focused on developing explanations for the operation of an AI application. ● National and regional strategies, policies, and regulations – While the pace of technological innovation in AI since the early 2010s has been rapid, governments around the globe are still in the early stages of understanding how to deal with the possibilities and controversies raised by AI. An early response by some governments has been to develop national strategies that focus on a wide variety of activities, including research and development, human capacity development, infrastructure, and the provision of an ethical and legal framework. Governments are also beginning to explore targeted policies and regulations. For example, governments at different levels of jurisdiction have begun to place moratoriums or outright bans on facial recognition technology. As of 2021, perhaps the most comprehensive approach has been the EU’s proposed AI regulation.6 This regulation prohibits, among other things, AI systems that may cause physical or psychological harms and facial recognition in public spaces or by law enforcement. This regulation also seeks to govern ‘high-risk’ AI systems that may undermine fundamental human rights, such as when AI is applied in Matthew L. Smith and Ruhiya Kristine Seward
the administration of justice or to determine eligibility for public benefits, credit scoring, and employment. This includes requiring that these high-risk systems be understandable by users and allow user oversight. ● International collaborations – The transboundary nature of digital infrastructure and data flows means that questions of AI governance require regional and international cooperation and collaboration. One global response is the launch of the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) in 2020, co-founded by 14 governments and the EU. GPAI is a ‘multi-stakeholder initiative to bridge the gap between theory and practice on AI by supporting cutting-edge research and applied activities on AI-related priorities’ (GPAI, 2022). Among key early priorities are the issues of responsible AI and data governance.
Conclusion
AI in development is not just a passing fad. By the time you read this, some key information in this entry on the state of AI will be partially or even embarrassingly out of date. However, the broad applicability of AI and the rapid growth of its underlying infrastructure mean that its importance and relevance for AI techniques in development will have increased. While countries around the world are taking notice of the importance of AI in shaping economies and societies, as of 2023, we are still in the early stages of the larger transformation. The applicability of AI in numerous domains makes it a potentially transformative technology in service of human development. But there are limited resources, and it can be difficult to justify spending on AI applications where more fundamental development challenges persist (poverty, health, education, climate change, and institutional capacity). AI techniques can, however, be applied in all these domains in ways that cheaply substitute or complement limited inputs (e.g. expertise) and can, at least technically, be scaled relatively cost effectively. Harnessing AI for human development requires addressing numerous constraints to ensure that governments and civil societies in LLMICs (and globally) have the autonomy, resources, and know-how to govern and
Artificial intelligence and development 47
responsibly apply AI to achieve local development goals. A reliance on imported AI strategies, regulations, and solutions greatly increases the chances of contextually inappropriate applications that run counter to local value systems – and deteriorate trust as a result. Among other things, policy and innovation research is needed if we are to better understand the social, political, and economic implications of AI. A deepened understanding and expertise can then inform local implementations and policy, as well as – perhaps equally critically – regional and international discussions, collaborations, and agreements. Matthew L. Smith and Ruhiya Kristine Seward
Notes
1. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/ 2022/06/17/google-ai-lamda-turing-test/. 2. That said, there is some debate as to whether or not we should adjust our conception of ‘understanding’ to account for LLMs. See https://www.pnas.org/ doi/10.1073/pnas.2215907120. 3. For example, African researchers and practitioners established Deep Learning Indaba (https:// deeplearningindaba.com/) and Data Science Africa (http://www.datascienceafrica.org/) to strengthen the machine learning and data science communities. Similarly, Masakahne (https://www.masakhane.io/ ) is a grassroots organization focused on strengthening and spurring natural language processing research on African languages. 4. A petaflop is equal to 1015 floating-point operations per second. 5. For a more comprehensive exploration of concerns stemming from LLMs, see https://arxiv.org/abs/ 2108.07258. 6. See https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/ EN/T XT/? qid= 1 623335154975& u ri= C ELEX %3A52021PC0206.
References
Anthony, L.F.W., Kanding. B., & Selvan R. (2020). Carbontracker: Tracking and Predicting the Carbon Footprint of Training Deep Learning Models. ArXiv:2007.03051 [Cs, Eess, Stat]. Bender, E.M., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A., & Shmitchell, S., (2021). On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? (pp. 610–23) Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. Association for Computing Machinery.
Brown, T.B., Mann, B., Ryder, N., Subbiah, M., Kaplan, J., Dhariwal, P., Neelakantan, A. Shyam, P., Sastry, G., Askell, A., Agarwal, S., Herbert-Voss, A., Krueger, G., Henighan, T., Child, R., Ramesh, A., Ziegler, D.M., Wu, J., Winter, C., Hesse, C., Chen, M., Sigler, E., Litwin, M., Gray, S., Chess, B., Clark, J., Berner, C., McCandlish, S., Radford, A., Sutskever, I., & Amodei, D. (2020). Language Models Are Few-Shot Learners ArXiv:2005.14165 [Cs]. GPAI. (2022). The Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence. https://gpai.ai/. Jobin, A., Ienca, M., & Vayena, E. (2019). Artificial Intelligence: The Global Landscape of Ethics Guidelines. Nature Machine Intelligence. doi: 10.1038/s42256–019–0088–2. LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y., & Hinton, G. (2015). Deep Learning. Nature 521(7553),436–44. doi: 10.1038/nature14539. McCarthy, J. (2007). What Is Artificial Intelligence? Stanford University. Narayanan, A. (n.d.). How to Recognize AI Snake Oil. https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/ talks/MIT-STS-AI-snakeoil.pdf. O’Neil, C. (2016). Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Crown Publishers. Smith, M., & Neupane, S. (2018). Artificial Intelligence and Human Development: Toward a Research Agenda. https://idl-bnc-idrc .dspacedirect.org/handle/10625/56949. Smith, G., & Rushtagi, I. (2021). When Good Algorithms Go Sexist: Why and How to Advance AI Gender Equity. Stanford Social Innovation Review. https://ssir.org/articles/ entry/when_good_algorithms_go_sexist_why _and_how_to_advance_ai_gender_equity. The Alan Turing Institute. (2021). Data Science and AI in the Age of COVID-19. https:// www.turing.ac.uk/research/publications/data -science-and-ai-age-covid-19-report. Vinuesa, R., Azizpour, H., Leite, I., Balaam, M., Dignum, V., Domisch, S., Felländer, A., Langhans, S.D., Tegmark, M., & Nerini, F.F. (2020). The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Nature Communications 11(1), 233. doi: 10.1038/s41467–019–14108-y. World Bank. (2016). World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends. World Bank. World Bank (Washington, District of Columbia), ed. (2021). World Development Report 2021: Data for Better Lives. World Bank.
Matthew L. Smith and Ruhiya Kristine Seward
Arturo Escobar
of his native Colombia, and particularly their cultural-political practices, Escobar argues that to ‘unmake development’ one must recover ‘cultural difference’:
Arturo Escobar’s writings have shaped scholarship on a diverse range of concerns across the globe. Indeed, my own research on development, the environment and Afro-Colombian social movements in the Pacific lowlands of Colombia has developed in relation to his (Asher 2009, 2013, 2018). His importance to development studies is attested by the fact that he is one of the half a dozen proper noun entries in this encyclopedia. He has been publishing since the 1980s, and his early works (1992, 1998, 2005 [1987], 2012 [1995]) foregrounded post-structuralist critiques of the development project and were informed by Michel Foucault, Edward Said, V.Y. Mudimbe, Chandra Mohanty and Homi Bhabha, among others – but not Spivak. His book Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (2012 [1995]) is arguably his most influential contribution to shaping the field of development studies. The book’s basic argument is that development functions as a discourse that reproduces structural inequalities and unjust representations of the Third World and its people. He offers a thorough theoretical and political assessment of development as a discursive invention of the West, arguing that ‘development’ in its modern, Eurocentric guise has marginalized other epistemes and economic systems. In his account, development was created after the Second World War and quickly dominated the world (thanks to its incorporation as the horizon of Third World national efforts). Along with a number of other authors (Apffel Marglin & Marglin 1990; Banuri 1990; Esteva 1987; Rahnema & Bawtree 1997; Sachs 1992; Sheth 1987; Shiva 1988), Escobar’s goal is to move us towards a post-development era where ‘development as a regime of representation’ and ‘the Western economy as a system of production, power and signification’ are displaced by ‘different subjectivities’ and ‘hybrid, creative, autonomous alternatives to it’ (2012[1995]: 216–17). These alternatives to development and possibilities of sustainability, he argues, lie in the traditional lifestyles and livelihood practices of heretofore marginalized local communities. Deeply inspired by the struggles of Black communities of the Pacific lowlands region
Cultural differences embody … possibilities for transforming the politics of representation that is for transforming social life itself … The greatest political promise of minority cultures is their potential for resisting and subverting the axiomatics of capitalism and modernity in their hegemonic form. This is why cultural difference is also at the root of post-development. (Escobar 2012[1995]: 225)
From these premises, Escobar identifies critical ethnography as the method appropriate to access the subjectivity of marginalized cultural groups. In other words, traditional knowledge contains the seeds for alternative worlds. Post-development and Escobar’s contributions have been criticized vigorously (see, for example, Asher 2009, 2013; Asher & Wainwright 2019; Gidwani 2002; Hart 2001; Lazreg 2002; Wainwright 2008, 2010; Watts 1993; Ziai 2004, 2015, 2017). But Encountering Development and Escobar’s subsequent writings (2007, 2008, 2010, 2018) remain central to post-development debates. In the preface to the 2012 edition of Encountering Development, he argues for the continuing relevance of analysing development and imagining a post-development era (Escobar 2012: vii–xliii). But he rejects post-structural and postcolonial approaches, on the ostensible grounds that they emerge from metropolitan centres of knowledge production (thus forming a hidden alliance with Eurocentric scholarship) and take the South Asian experience as paradigmatic (and are therefore inadequate to address diverse experiences). Instead, he foregrounds Latin American critical traditions to trace the crucial but often invisible role of the Americas in constituting colonial modernity’s material practices and epistemes. To address the critiques levelled against his earlier work, Escobar turns especially to the practices of transnational social movements and Latin American decolonial thought. Foregrounding the ‘political ontologies’ of subaltern groups (peasants, women and, especially, Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities), he contends that they signal a transition to ‘pluriversal’ think48
Arturo Escobar 49
ing (Escobar 2012: viii). For Escobar, ‘alternative to development’ is clearly evident in the many concrete proposals emerging from Ecuador, Bolivia, and Mexico (Buen Vivir, sumaq kawsay, Zapatista strategies) that think beyond globalization to imagine forms of ‘planetarization’, where humans and non-humans can co-exist. Like his earlier post-development proposals, Escobar seeks ‘post-capitalist, post-liberal, and post-statist options’ (2010: 3) grounded in the lived experiences of those situated ‘outside Europe’. His responses to his critics emphasize cultural difference, non-Eurocentric imaginaries, and a new-materialist criticism of a world dominated by colonial modernity (Escobar 2007, 2008, 2010, 2018). In his 2008 book, Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes, Escobar develops some of these claims through ethnographic research into ‘place-based’ cultural practices (conducted in partnership with the Proceso de Comunidades Negras) to visualize alternatives to development and liberal modernity. As in Encountering Development, Escobar aims to tie academic decolonial perspectives to pluriversal knowledge from social movements. Much of this work comes from his engagement with the Modernity/Coloniality/ Decoloniality research programme, which I review elsewhere (Asher 2013). A decade later, in his book Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds (2018), Escobar turns his attention to cities, arguing, as he did about development, that they are governed by a Western, patriarchal logic that makes them unconducive to life. He proposes ‘ruralizing the urban’ and reconnecting cities to the Earth in order to go beyond the impasses of modernity and to make cities habitable again. His book is an intervention in the field of urban studies flagging the inadequacies of most extant analyses of the ‘urban revolution of space’, and proposing to share lessons from struggles for urban justice struggles and rights to the city. In a combination of analysis and politics that is characteristic of Escobar, he foregrounds the importance of movements and knowledges of Indigenous, Afro-descendant, pre-Western, Latin American Indigenous and Black feminists to outline a research programme for rurbanization. Besides attention to ‘other’
cosmo-visions and ontologies, Escobar is among the few authoritative Western academics who consistently references works by lesser-known, women, young or non-Western scholars, and oral and activist knowledges. While the focus on the urban is a new element in Escobar’s critiques of Western modernity and proposals for non-Eurocentric alternatives, there are clear continuities between his current intervention and his earlier work on development and development studies. A brief encyclopedia entry cannot do justice to Escobar’s vast contributions. But tackling large questions, seeking broad explanations and following up on critiques with proposals are some hallmarks of his prolific work over the past 30+ years. In the context of the ecological and economic crises of the twenty-first century, Escobar’s alternative proposals and the voices he repeatedly brings to bear on them are clearly necessary. But, as I note in a recent review (Asher 2019), there are analytical slippages and political risks, however inadvertent, in Escobar’s work. We must learn from him but do so critically. Kiran Asher
References
Apffel Marglin, F., & Marglin S. (Eds) (1990). Dominating Knowledge: Development, Culture, and Resistance. Clarendon Press. Asher, K. (2009). Black and Green: Afro-Colombians, Development, and Nature in the Pacific Lowlands. Duke University Press. Asher, K. (2013). Latin American decolonial thought, or making the subaltern speak. Geography Compass, 7(12), 832–42. Asher, K. (2018). Fragmented forests, fractured lives: Ethno-territorial struggles and development in the Pacific lowlands of Colombia. Antipode, https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12470. Asher, K. (2019). The risky streets of ontologically redesigned cities: Some comments on Arturo Escobar’s rurbanization research program. GeoForum, 101, 212–14. https://doi .org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.01.008. Asher, K., & Wainwright, J. (2019). After post-development: On capitalism, difference, and representation. Antipode, 51(1), 25–44. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12430. Banuri, T. (1990). Development and the politics of knowledge: A critical interpretation of the social role of modernization theories in development of the Third World. In F. Appfel Marglin & S. Marglin (Eds), Dominating Knowledge: Development, Culture, and Resistance (pp. 29–72). Clarendon Press.
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50 Elgar encyclopedia of development Escobar, A. (1992). Imagining a post-development era? Critical thought, development, and social movements. Social Text, 31/32, 20–56. Escobar, A. (1998). Whose knowledge, whose nature? Biodiversity, conservation, and the political ecology of social movements. Journal of Political Ecology, 5(1), 53–83. Escobar, A. (2005 [1987]). Economics and the space of modernity: Tales of market, production, and labour. Cultural Studies, 19(2), 139–75. Escobar, A. (2007). Worlds and knowledges otherwise. Cultural Studies, 21(2/3), 179–210. Escobar, A. (2008). Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. Duke University Press. Escobar, A. (2010). Latin America at a crossroads: Alternative modernizations, postliberalism, or postdevelopment? Cultural Studies, 24(1), 1–65. Escobar, A. (2012 [1995]) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton University Press. Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Duke University Press. Esteva, G. (1987) Regenerating people’s space. Alternatives, 12(1), 125–52. Gidwani, V. (2002). The unbearable modernity of “development”? Canal irrigation and development planning in Western India. Progress in Planning, 58(1), 1–80. Hart, G. (2001). Development critiques in the 1990s: Culs de sac and promising paths. Progress in Human Geography, 25(4), 649–58.
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Lazreg, M. (2002). Development: Feminist theory’s cul-de-sac. In K. Saunders (Ed.), Feminist Post-Development Thought (pp. 121–45). Zed Books. Rahnema, M., & Bawtree, V. (1997). The Post-Development Reader. Zed Books. Sachs, W. (Ed.) (1992). The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. Zed Books. Sheth, D.L. (1987). Alternative development as political practice. Alternatives, 12(2), 155–71. Shiva, V. (1988). Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Survival. Zed Books. Wainwright, J. (2008). Decolonizing Development: Colonial Power and the Maya. Blackwell. Wainwright, J. (2010). Review of ‘Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes’ by Arturo Escobar. Environment and Society Environment and Society, 1(1), 185–7. Watts, M. (1993). Development I: Power, knowledge, discursive practice. Progress in Human Geography, 17(2), 257–72. Ziai, A. (2004). The ambivalence of post-development: Between reactionary populism and radical democracy. Third World Quarterly, 25(6), 1045–61. Ziai, A. (2015). Post-development: Premature burials and haunting ghosts. Development and Change, 46(4), 833–54. Ziai, A. (Ed.) (2017). Post-development 25 years after The Development Dictionary. Third World Quarterly, 38(12), 2547–58.
B
Bandung and decolonization
Bandung can be anything more than a cautionary tale given that the self-determination it espoused has come to be straight-jacketed by the colonial legacy of modernization politics and the nation state form (Chakrabarty 2010). Focusing on the nuts and bolts of the meeting or scrupulously evaluating the failure to realize decolonial futures in the face of entrenched colonial conditions are undoubtedly important. However, despite these insights and critiques, Bandung’s memory continues to resonate in many quarters of the world, its spirit animating myriad contemporary efforts by artists, writers, academics, and social movements to challenge colonialism and imperialism (Phạm and Shilliam 2016).
On 18 April 1955, representatives of 29 newly independent states of Asia and Africa met in the Indonesian city of Bandung to forge a new world. Adhering to differing faiths, cultures, and divergent, even antagonistic, political-economic systems, they came together to discuss and to put into practice a vision of international politics governed by the principle of right relations. Their weeklong discussions on addressing colonialism and racism and forging a dignified and peaceful future for all of humankind were marked by a spirit of celebration, relations of consanguinity, and deep disagreements. More than 60 years later, this gathering, referred to as the Asian-African Conference or as the Bandung Conference (or simply ‘Bandung’) stands out as a creative-collective attempt to transfuse global relations with the universal principles of self-respect, mutual recognition, and peace, and as an act of decolonization in and of itself. Rarely do watershed events produce consensus in the scholarship they provoke. Bandung is no exception. Its effectiveness in terms of transforming international order has been the subject of much debate. Some scholars view it as a well-meaning but failed attempt that bequeathed very little in the way of concrete institutions and initiatives (Kahin 1956). Others are more optimistic, citing it as an inspiration for Asian regionalism (Tan and Acharya 2008) or as a milestone in the universalization of human rights (Burke 2010). More tellingly, scholars have cautioned against taking the aspirations voiced at the conference at face value, arguing that the historical record paints the conference in much more sober light than how it is remembered (Vitalis 2013). Even those sympathetic to the cause of decolonization question if
Forging a spirit
Pressing geopolitical concerns such as the threat to peace posed by the rise of the Cold War in South East Asia, especially in connection with the war in Viet Nam and with China–US tensions, and the growth of the nuclear arms race provided part of the immediate background for staging the conference (Kahin 1956: 2–4). In this sense it would not be incorrect to date Bandung’s initiation to the 1954 meeting of the Colombo Powers – Burma (Myanmar), Ceylon (Sri Lanka), India, Indonesia, and Pakistan – at which Indonesian premier Ali Sastroamidjojo first floated the idea of an Asian–African conference. It is also equally correct to trace the antecedents a little further back to various twentieth-century Asian regional meetings, such as the Asian Relations Conference of 1947 held in Delhi. However, Bandung was forged in the crucible of anticolonial struggles worldwide (Phạm and Shilliam 2016: 7–8, 11–13). Anticolonial leaders and peoples built close ties with each other during the twentieth century through successive pan-African meetings (Persaud 2016), anti-Imperialist women’s conferences (Armstrong 2016), the gathering of the League against Imperialism 51
52 Elgar encyclopedia of development
in 1927, as well as through individual collaborations and joint struggles (Prashad 2007). Revolutionaries became ‘cousins through colonization’ (Muppidi 2016: 26) as they drew sustenance from each other and came to realize that defeating colonialism and imperialism was as much a global affair as it was a national one. This consanguinity forged by the shared struggle against colonialism and imperialism was a key element of the gathering in 1955: Why did we meet? Some persons called the Five Prime Ministers of five countries invited you here. Do you think this is the reason why we met? They were the conscious or unconscious agents of other forces. We met because there is an irrepressible urge among the people of Asia and Africa for us to meet. We met because mighty forces are at work in these great continents, moving millions of people, creating ferment in their minds, and urges and passions and a desire for a change from their present conditions. So, however big or small we might be, we represent these great forces. (Asia–Africa Speaks 1955: 183)
Infused with this ‘mighty spirit’, the attendees at Bandung celebrated their freedom and declared ‘colonialism in all its manifestations’ to be ‘an evil’ that needed to be brought to a speedy end (Abdulgani 1981: 186). This spirit of opposing colonialism and imperialism was not premised on a commonality of race consciousness or skin colour. Neither was it premised on hatred or anti-white sentiment, despite it being read in this manner in the West. The Bandung spirit affirmed the independence struggles being waged by dependent peoples and called on colonial powers to unequivocally respect the right of self-determination, which had by then been affirmed by the United Nations (UN). The discussions raised the issue of Palestine (ibid., 99) and the Final Communique made special mention of the anticolonial struggles in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia and rebuked the French government for its failure to adhere to the UN Charter (ibid., 186). As the phrase ‘colonialism in all its manifestations’ illustrates, the gathering was cognizant of the manifold and mutating dimensions of colonialism. The leaders understood all too well that self-determination entailed more than the raising of new flags. Well aware that juridical-political independence did not free a people from foreign economic control, Narendran Kumarakulasingam
they emphasized the need for changing the colonial global division of labour that was prevalent. These concerns around changing the global division of labour, reorienting national economies, and forging cooperation amongst the formerly colonized would inspire the subsequent demand for a New International Economic Order in the 1970s, which would claim restitution and redress for the continuing neocolonial exploitation of the Third World (Weber and Winanti 2016). Yet the economic discussions at Bandung did not take a confrontational approach and studiously avoided antagonizing the economic powers of the day. The Final Communique emphasized the need for principles of equality, cooperation, and justice to underpin economic relations. In this spirit it proposed a greater role for all participating countries at economic forums. It recommended that the attending countries take a ‘collective’ and ‘unified’ approach to gradually transforming the unequal economic order by ensuring favourable terms of trade for the primary commodities on which their economies were based and by diversifying exports and processing materials to reduce their dependency on primary commodities (Abdulgani 1981: 181–4).
Enacting self-determination
If Bandung materialized a spirit of anti-colonialism and sought to give flesh to it by extending political independence across the world and putting forth principles to change unequal economic conditions, it was also, at its core, a refusal of the more insidious dimensions of colonialism and an affirmation of what Indonesian president Sukarno termed the ‘ethical and moral content’ of self-determination (ibid., 171). Refusing diminution The violence of colonialism is usually apprehended in the registers of physical coercion (the bayonet, the whip, the cannon) and economic exploitation (theft of natural resources and artefacts, and unequal terms of trade). More insidious and less tangible, however, is the violence enacted in the realm of culture, what political-psychologist Ashis Nandy (2009) calls the ‘colonization of the mind’. Colonization works not only by occupying the territory of the colonized but also their
Bandung and decolonization 53
psyche. Crucially it asserts its superiority by mutilating the worlds of the colonized and destroying their pasts. Violently disfiguring the cosmologies of the colonized, the colonizer destroys or severely hamstrings the capacity of the colonized to make sense of the world on their own terms. Stripped of their cosmologies, languages, and self-respect, the colonized are forced to grapple with the question foisted on them by the colonizer: ‘Who am I?’ (Fanon 2004). Thus, colonialism, having severed the colonized from their social meanings, traditions, and realities, blithely supplies the answer: ‘You are less than; you are a brute’ (to be a brute is to be incapable of making meaning on one’s own) (Lindqvist 1992). Redefining the selfhood of the colonized, denuding varied and rich ecologies of being – and thereby dehumanizing entire collectives – colonialism presents itself as a gift for the materially needy, the cosmologically destitute, and the historically inadequate. Through a combination of coercion and persuasion, colonization teaches the colonized the appropriate ways to inhabit and make sense of the world, and marks out the proper ways of advancing politically, economically, and culturally. This pedagogical aspect is a result of developmentalism, which will be discussed later. Unifying everyone gathered at Bandung was the refusal of this inferiority complex forced upon them by colonialism. This included states that were favourably disposed to the United States or enmeshed in military alliances with it, such as the Philippines (Romulo 1956). The participants at Bandung did not think of themselves as fledgling states in need of tutelage from ageing or aspiring colonial masters on how to behave in the world or govern themselves, as the Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru pointed out.1 Instead, they recognized that Asia and Africa were ‘cradles of great civilizations which have enriched other cultures and civilizations while themselves being enriched in the process’ (Abdulgani 1981: 184). This affirmation of the ‘spiritual and universal foundations’ of the cultures of Asia and Africa undercut the colonial monopolization of civilization and universality. The colonial arrogation of universality is an entrenched feature that continues in our times. It frames discussions
about important issues (such as human rights) as debates between universalism and relativism, without asking what exactly constitutes universalism and whether what is proposed in the name of universalism is actually universal or something parochial that masquerades as universalism. Importantly, Bandung did not spurn universalism. Rather, it diagnosed the pseudo-universality of colonialism and sought to introduce a new universalism into global politics. As a result of its fundamental understanding that the world is constituted by already universal but different and even clashing cosmologies, Bandung was able to conceive of colonialism as an interruption or rupture of right relations between civilizations. Thus, redressing colonialism required replacing arrogance, fear, and might with dignity and dialogue as the governing principles of relations. Relating to others in this manner did not equate to consensus. For Bandung had its fair share of disagreements and dissensus, including around the definition of colonialism. But the commitment to universality precluded the more influential states at the conference from monopolizing thought and word, or from forging a consensus that would humiliate the less powerful. Bandung’s diagnosis of colonialism as a process of diminution underwrote what stands as one its most important contributions, the principle that subsequently came to be known as non-alignment. More of a guide or a moral force than a policy prescription, this ‘third way’ sought to create a space for critiquing the bellicose camp mentality that underwrote the cold war and remaining independent. This space was not constituted by disinterest or neutrality, but rather by the refusal to be dragged as ‘hangers-on’ (Abdulgani 1981: 143) into ‘Europe’s troubles, Europe’s hatreds, and Europe’s conflicts’ (Asia–Africa Speaks 1955: 185), as the Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru stated. Embodied in the Final Communique by the injunction to adhere to the principles of mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual nonaggression, mutual non-interference, equality, and peaceful coexistence, this third space would become institutionalized in Belgrade in 1961 as the Non-Aligned Movement.
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Developmentalism Colonial diminution is a product of developmentalism, a way of thinking that seeks to convert difference into sameness and hierarchy. According to developmentalism, all societies can be placed along a linear continuum akin to a ladder with Europe, and then America, being at its apex. Those placed on the lower rungs embody the past of those at the top. Because of this, those at the top were seen as having found the key to be a successful society, and as being duty bound to teach those lagging behind (Chakrabarty 2000: 1–23). Seen this way, developmentalism is a way of ordering the diversity that is our globe into a temporal hierarchy that requires constant governance from those on the top rungs. It is premised on a denial that everyone has the capacity to diagnose the ills of the world and act accordingly. Those viewed as lacking, that is, subjected to inferiorization, can only be recipients, fated to emulate or obey their betters.
Conclusion
Engaging with Bandung makes visible the operation of developmentalism and a profound refusal to internalize it. This refusal enabled the attendees to think of themselves and others not in terms of lack (poverty, disease, for example) but in terms of plenitude. How might we think with those at Bandung? How do we learn to recognize and harness Bandung’s spirit? And what does it mean to think about development without colonial diminution and developmentalism? Narendran Kumarakulasingam
Note
1. List of participants: Afghanistan, Burma, Cambodia, People’s Republic of China, Ceylon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gold Coast, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, State of Viet Nam, Yemen.
References
Abdulgani R (1981) The Bandung connection: the Asia–Africa conference in Bandung in 1955 (trans M Bondan), Gunung Agung, Singapore.
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Armstrong E (2016) ‘Before Bandung: the anti-imperialist women’s movement in Asia and the women’s international democratic federation’, Signs, 41 (2): 305–31. Asia–Africa speaks from Bandung (1955) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Djakarta, Indonesia. Burke R (2010) Decolonization and the evolution of international human rights, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Chakrabarty D (2000) Provincializing Europe: postcolonial thought and historical difference, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Chakrabarty D (2010) ‘The legacies of Bandung: decolonization and the politics of culture’, in C Lee (ed.), Making a world after empire: the Bandung moment and its political afterlives, Ohio University Press, Athens, pp. 45–68. Fanon F (2004) The wretched of the earth (trans R Philcox), Grove Press, New York. Kahin GM (1956) The Asian–African conference: Bandung, Indonesia, April 1955, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. Lindqvist S (1992) Exterminate all the brutes (trans J Tate), The New Press, New York. Muppidi H (2016) ‘The elements of Bandung’, in Q Phạm and R Shilliam (eds), Meanings of Bandung: postcolonial orders and decolonial visions, Rowman & Littlefield, London, pp. 23–36. Nandy A (2009) The intimate enemy: loss and recovery of self under colonialism, Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Persaud R (2016) ‘The racial dynamic in international relations: some thoughts on the Pan-African antecedents of Bandung’, in Q Phạm and R Shilliam (eds), Meanings of Bandung: postcolonial orders and decolonial visions, Rowman & Littlefield, London, pp. 133–42. Phạm Q and Shilliam R (eds) (2016) Meanings of Bandung: postcolonial orders and decolonial visions, Rowman & Littlefield, London. Prashad V (2007) The darker nations: a people’s history of the third world, The New Press, New York. Romulo C (1956) The meaning of Bandung, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill. Tan SS and Acharya A (eds) (2008) Bandung revisited: the legacy of the 1955 Asian–African conference for international order, NUS Press, Singapore. Vitalis R (2013) ‘The midnight ride of Kwame Nkrumah and other fables of Bandung’, Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, 4 (2): 261–88. Weber H and Winanti P (2016) ‘The “Bandung spirit” and solidarist internationalism’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 70 (4): 391–406.
Basic needs approach
(ILO) World Employment Conference. This conference spawned a report entitled Employment, Growth, and Basic Needs: A One-World Problem that briefly put the BNA on the global development policy agenda. The report emphasized the provision of food, clothing, shelter, housing, water, and sanitation. Unacknowledged at that time, and largely since, was the link to Pigou’s (1932) ‘minimum standard’ concept that arose in the context of early Cambridge economics (e.g. Walker 1943). There was also a reference to the ILO’s previous work on standards of living (e.g. ILO 1938). The BNA takes journal article form in Lisk (1977) and the following important statement:
In modern economics, the concept of human need is largely treated as irrelevant. To cite but one development-related example, Filmer, Hammer and Pritchett (2000) state that ‘economists tend to shy away from discussions of “need” because it is not directly observable and is an emotionally charged term’ (p. 214). As pointed out by Georgescu-Roegen (1954), this practice also reflects the fact that notions of need are theoretically unnecessary in modern economic theory, being just another type of preference. The basic needs approach (BNA) goes against these tendencies in economics. It emphasizes that human needs are observable and that the needs concept is no more emotionally charged than other economic concepts (e.g. utility or growth). The BNA also situates human needs within economic and development ethics. Though short-lived as a popular development paradigm, it retains contemporary relevance. The position of human needs in modern economics is at sharp variance with some important strands of moral philosophy and social policy. For example, in moral philosophy, Braybrooke (1987) emphasizes that ‘the concept of needs differs top and bottom from the concept of preferences’ (p. 5), and Griffen (1986) defines well-being as ‘the level to which basic needs are met so long as they retain importance’ (p. 42). In the realm of social policy, Doyal and Gough (1991) stress that needs are both ‘universal’ and ‘knowable’ and that ‘basic human needs … stipulate what persons must achieve if they are to avoid sustained and serious harm’ (p. 50). In the field of economics itself, Corning (2000) states that needs are ‘the inner logic … of economic life’ and ‘the skeletal structure upon which economies are built’ (p. 79). Further, as shown by Baxter and Moosa (1996), needs can be identified in econometric analysis as having a set of distinct characteristics. In the considerations of these and other researchers, the human needs concept has empirical validity, ethical weight, and policy importance. The BNA recognizes this.
The basic needs approach recognizes that countries will have different requirements as a result of differences in their economic, social, political, and cultural characteristics. Nevertheless, there are certain minimum levels of personal consumption and access to public services that can be regarded as everywhere essential … and in these cases it is possible to define targets in physical units on a global basis. (p. 186)
Building on these origins, Streeten and Burki (1978) identify a hierarchy of basic needs as bare survival, continued survival, and productive survival that, together, constitute ‘core basic needs’. They advocate the provision of particular goods and services and recommend a focus on access and delivery. They warn against the ‘unrestricted exercise of consumers’ demand in the market’ and the ‘artificial stimulation of wants’ (p. 414). They explicitly link the BNA to the redistribution with growth concept of Chenery et al. (1974), another short-lived paradigm with continued relevance. Streeten (1979) emphasizes six types of needs in the form of food and nutrition, basic educational services, basic health services, sanitation, water supply, and housing. But he explicates the BNA as both a relatively narrow, objective concept, a very expansive, subjective concept. Indeed, Streeten (1979) includes a full list of ‘non-material needs’ such as ‘self-determination, self-reliance, political freedom and security, participation in decision making, national and cultural identity, and a sense of purpose in life and work’ (p. 136). In this latter mode of exposition, the basic needs approach morphs
Origins and content
The institutional origins of the BNA go back to the 1976 International Labour Organization’s 55
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into a call for human flourishing, a much more expansive agenda that was never fully defined in the BNA and about which there is still no consensus. Streeten (1984) raises more questions than answers and casts the BNA in so many possible varieties that it almost loses any meaning at all. He again suggests that it might be cast in subjective terms but goes so far as to describe it in terms of wants satisfaction, making it indistinguishable from standard, neoclassical welfare analysis that has dispensed with needs altogether. As emphasized by Reinert (2018), the distinction between needs and wants goes back to the economics of both Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall. Glossing over this distinction unfortunately makes the BNA redundant and diminishes the needs concept. In this way, Streeten weakened rather than strengthened the BNA. As stated by Walker (1943) decades earlier, in the context of minimum standards, the satisfaction of newly created wants ‘does not contribute to welfare in the same way as the production of goods or services to meet an established and persistent need’ (p. 431). The impact of the BNA on development policy was short-lived. Indeed, with its origin in 1976, its apogee has been located by Hoadley (1981) in the year 1980. Writing just before the debt crisis of the 1980s, Hoadley notes that an era of increased private capital flows and trade opportunities, the ascendancy of the World Bank over the ILO as a development policy institution, and the capture of donors’ imaginations by a further series of development policy themes, brought the short era of basic needs development lending to a premature end. The debt crises and eras of structural adjustment and the so-called Washington Consensus also furthered this shift. However, none of these factors lessened the ethical imperatives of continued basic needs deprivations (e.g. Reader 2005).
Basic needs and basic rights
There is an important link between the BNA and established notions of basic rights, particularly subsistence rights. For example, Stewart’s (1989) explication of the BNA explicitly links basic needs fulfilment to basic human rights. She states: The basic needs approach to development (stresses) needs rather than wants in an effort
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to both recognize different priorities than those produced by the wants-driven system, and to give these priorities the moral legitimacy associated with the language of needs. (p. 350)
Unfortunately, the link from the BNA to basic or subsistence rights was never as fully explored as it might have been. In particular, the link to the work of Shue (1996) has been underdeveloped. Shue introduces the concept of basic rights, namely those rights that must be fulfilled so that other rights can be enjoyed. These include both security rights and subsistence rights. As argued by Reinert (2020), both these categories of basic rights involve meeting basic needs. There are important links to be made to contemporary treatments of subsistence rights such as those by Hertel and Minkler (2007). There are further underdeveloped links to the tradition of moral minimalism such as that developed by Walzer (1994) and to the common values of Bok (2002). Situating the BNA within the basic rights tradition would contribute to its continued relevance and deserves further exploration.
Basic needs and basic goods
Reinert (2018) attempts to revive the BNA in the form of what he terms the basic goods approach (BGA). The BGA asserts that basic needs and their satisfaction are developmentally related to the human condition. It views basic goods and services as the ‘ingredients of well-being’ and that these goods and services need to be treated differently than others and given priority in policy deliberations. This last point is related to what Braybrooke (1987) terms the ‘principle of precedence’ and what Streeten (1979) calls the ‘selective approach’. These elements of the BGA are fully consistent with the BNA. That said, there are three important contrasts between the BGA and the BNA. First, the BGA does not rely on either expansive or subjective criteria in developing a list of priorities as is sometime the case with the BNA. Instead, the BGA is developed in terms of an objective list justified in terms of basic needs. In this characteristic, it is connected to the objective list theory of human welfare (e.g. Arneson 1999). Second, it explicitly focuses on the often-neglected issue of specific provisioning processes. This emphasis involves a combination of standard economic
Basic needs approach 57
policy analysis with ongoing technological assessment, the latter often missing in the basic needs approach. Third, unlike the BNA, it is closely tied to the idea of basic security and subsistence rights (e.g. Reinert 2020). It is safe to say that this attempted revival is still a work in progress.
Needs versus capabilities
As noted by Reader (2006), the BNA has been eclipsed by the capabilities approach (CA). This line of thinking began with Amartya Sen’s book The Standard of Living (1987) and was further developed by Sen (1989). The CA largely rejects basic needs and basic goods and services as a fundamental focus of development ethics, often relegating them to ‘commodity fetishism’. In situations of significant deprivations, this is not always appropriate or helpful because such deprivations significantly inhibit capability expansion. As stated by Clark (2005), an advocate of the CA, ‘people cannot live, let alone live well, without goods and services’ (p. 1341). Clark also states that the CA must ‘say something more concrete about the role of material things’ (p. 1362). As argued by Nelson (2008) and Reinert (2020), it has not yet done so in a satisfactory manner. Despite the explicit rejection of the BNA by the capabilities approach, Laderchi, Saith and Stewart (2003) suggest that the capabilities approach is ‘virtually identical’ to the basic needs approach. This is emphatically not the case as is evidenced by the arguments made in defence of the CA by Alkire (2005), for example. Such misleading claims contribute to conceptual confusion in development policy. Remedying such confusions must be part of any revised BNA. Reader (2006) argues that the BNA can withstand the criticism of the CA. She states that ‘the official story has always been that the BNA faces theoretical criticisms that the CA can avoid’ (p. 338). Reader disagrees and emphasizes the role of ‘vital needs’ or needs that must be met to avoid harm. This corresponds closely to the ‘core needs’ of Streeten and Burki (1978). She disputes the tendency in the CA to place ethical imperative on ultimate capabilities (e.g. as is done by Nussbaum 2000, 2011) rather than on the satisfaction of vital needs. In Reader’s view, ‘moral requirements are limited to needs’
(p. 342), a view echoed in Reinert (2018, 2020). Reader also defends the BNA approach against the claim of paternalism levied by both CA advocates (e.g. Alkire 2005) and their nemesis, neoclassical economists. Reader suggests that any risks of alleged ‘commodity fetishism’ must be weighed against ‘freedom fetishism’. This is related to the unresolved issue of dis-valuable capabilities and the ‘freedom’ to pursue them. Any restriction of scope to valuable capabilities is analogous to restriction of scope regarding objective needs. Reinert (2018) also addresses this issue, stating that ‘some degree of paternalism is always involved in policy choices …. The question is when and what kind of paternalism is desirable’ (p. 46). It is difficult for any development policy paradigm to avoid this issue, and exclusively attributing it to the BNA is simply inaccurate. Regarding capabilities theorists, Reader concludes that they ‘seem to think that we should conceal the reality of human vulnerability to helplessness and dependency behind brave talk of human freedom to do and be’ (p. 345). Annual infant and child mortality denominated in the millions suggests that this brave talk falls short and the Reader is correct. The BNA might be closer to the mark in addressing the multiple deprivations that contribute to such premature mortality. For these reasons, Reader’s (2006) analysis is a notable contribution to the BNA.
Assessment
The BNA lasted only a short while as a popular development policy paradigm. It was overtaken by a resurgent development as growth paradigm, structural adjustment, the so-called Washington Consensus, and the capabilities approach. Human needs deprivations, however, have persisted, and this persistence is a statement of the continued ethical relevance of the BNA. As stated by Reader (2005): The increased acceptance of the concept of need among philosophers, political theorists and development thinkers … has so far had little influence on the thinking of governments, economists, or executives of powerful corporations. The mistake such agents make is a moral one: They deny and ignore something of fundamental and obvious moral importance. (p. 5)
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Despite this unfortunate reality, as pointed out by Reinert (2018), development policy subcommunities exist across the full range of basic goods and services provision that address basic needs deprivation: food security, sanitation and development, water and development, and education and development, just to cite four examples. What has been missing is an integrating framework across these various subcommunities. Both the BNA and its recasting in the form of the BGA can help support conversations and collaborations among the relevant sub-communities to form an overall policy perspective. For this reason, a revived BNA or BGA can play a continued, important role in development policy. Kenneth A. Reinert
References
Alkire, S. (2005), ‘Needs and capabilities’, in S. Reader (ed.), The Philosophy of Need, 229–251, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Arneson, R.J. (1999), ‘Human flourishing versus desire satisfaction’, Social Philosophy and Policy, 16 (1), 113–42. Baxter, J.L. and I.A. Moosa (1996), ‘The consumption function: A basic needs hypothesis’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 31 (1), 85–100. Bok, S. (2002), Common Values, University of Missouri Press, Columbia. Braybrooke, D. (1987), Meeting Needs, Princeton University Press, Princeton. Chenery, H., M.S. Ahluwalia, C.L.G. Bell, J.H. Dulay and R. Jolly (1974), Redistribution with Growth, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Clark, D.A. (2005), ‘Sen’s capability approach and the many spaces of human well-being’, Journal of Development Studies, 41 (8), 1339–68. Corning, P.A. (2000), ‘Biological adaptation in human societies: A “basic needs” approach’, Journal of Bioeconomics, 2 (1), 41–86. Doyal, L. and I. Gough (1991), A Theory of Need, Guilford Press, New York. Filmer, D., J.S. Hammer and L.H. Pritchett (2000), ‘Weak links in the chain: A diagnosis of health policy in poor countries’, World Bank Research Observer, 15 (2), 199–224. Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1954), ‘Choice, expectations, and measurability’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 68 (4), 503–34. Griffen, J.P. (1986), Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
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Hertel, S. and L. Minkler (2007), ‘Economic rights: The terrain’, in S. Hertel and L. Minkler (eds), Economic Rights: Conceptual, Measurement, and Policy Issues, 1–35, Cambridge University Press, New York. Hoadley, J.S. (1981), ‘The rise and fall of the basic needs approach’, Cooperation and Conflict, 16 (3), 149–64. ILO [International Labour Organization] (1938), The Workers’ Standard of Living, International Labour Organization, Geneva. ILO [International Labour Organization] (1976), Employment, Growth, and Basic Needs: A One-World Problem, International Labour Organization, Geneva. Laderchi, C.R., R. Saith and F. Stewart (2003), ‘Does it matter that we do not agree on the definition of poverty? A comparison of four approaches’, Oxford Development Studies, 31(3), 243–74. Lisk, F. (1977), ‘Conventional development strategies and basic needs fulfillment: A reassessment of objectives and policies’, International Labour Review, 115 (2), 175–91. Nelson, E. (2008) ‘From primary goods to capabilities: Distributive justice and the problem of neutrality’, Political Theory, 36 (1), 93–122. Nussbaum, M.C. (2000), Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Nussbaum, M.C. (2011), Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Pigou, A.C. (1932), The Economics of Welfare, Macmillan, London. Reader, S. (2005), ‘Introduction’, in S. Reader (ed.), The Philosophy of Need, 1–24, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Reader, S. (2006), ‘Does a basic needs approach need capabilities?’ Journal of Political Philosophy, 14 (3), 337–50. Reinert, K.A. (2018), No Small Hope: Towards the Universal Provision of Basic Goods, Oxford University Press, New York. Reinert, K.A. (2020), ‘Development ethics reconsidered: Basic goods are basic rights’, Global Perspectives, 1 (1), 17985. Sen, A. (1987), The Standard of Living, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Sen, A. (1989), ‘Development as capabilities expansion’, Journal of Development Planning, 19, 41–58. Shue, H. (1996), Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy, Princeton University Press, Princeton. Stewart, F. (1989), ‘Basic needs strategies, human rights and the right to development’, Human Rights Quarterly, 11 (3), 347–74.
Basic needs approach 59 Streeten, P. (1979), ‘Basic needs: Premises and promises’, Journal of Policy Modeling, 1 (1), 136–46. Streeten, P. (1984), ‘Basic needs: Some unsettled questions’, World Development, 12 (9), 973–8. Streeten, P. and S.J. Burki (1978), ‘Basic needs: Some issues’, World Development, 6 (3), 411–21.
Walker, E.R. (1943), ‘Minimum welfare standards as a post-war objective’, International Labour Review, 48 (4), 417–33. Walzer, M. (1994), Thick and Thin: Moral Arguments at Home and Abroad, Notre Dame University Press, Notre Dame.
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The Belt and Road Initiative
continent. In addition to the maritime ‘Road’, a series of ‘economic corridors’ are associated with the overland ‘Belt’. These include: the ‘Eurasia Land Bridge’, China–Mongolia– Russia, China–Central Asia–West Asia, China–Indochina Peninsula, China–Pakistan and Bangladesh–China–India–Myanmar. Members and invited observers meet in BRI Forum, so far held in Beijing, to consider, coordinate and guide implementation policies and modalities. There is a BRI Secretariat, also based in Beijing, to service the Initiative. The BRI policy agenda and action plans have developed to include a range of economic and social policy ‘Silk Roads’. Two of these have increased in importance in response to the ‘4th Industrial Revolution’ and to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and represent important trends in the continuing evolution of the BRI’s policy and practice. These, in turn, are interwoven with a third significant development, the Chinese Government’s advocacy of a Global Development Initiative (GDI). This proposal can be seen as not only as an extension, or ‘scaling-up’ of the BRI, but as a means of synchronizing the BRI and other major regional development programmes more efficiently and effectively at the global level.
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), proposed by the Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 and officially launched in 2015, is China’s most ambitious geo-economic undertaking. It aims to promote the connectivity and development of trade routes, infrastructure and free trade areas; deepen financial integration; and boost people-to-people interactions across Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa through land and sea (Kozłowski 2018; Gu et al. 2016). Originating in China, the design and intent of the Initiative (originally termed ‘One Belt, One Road’, intentionally reminiscent of the ancient ‘Silk Road’ and maritime routes), reflected China’s own development experience and approach. This involves both state-led and private sector investment and project leadership centred upon critical infrastructure capacity-building. Since its inception, the BRI has evolved into a global membership and broadened and deepened its overall objectives centred on five key elements: policy dialogue, unimpeded trade, facilities connectivity, financial integration and people-to-people exchanges. To achieve these, the BRI’s stated operational mode is to build cooperative partnerships and promote exchanges and learning between participating countries. Up to January 2022, China had signed over 200 BRI cooperation documents with 145 countries and 32 international organizations, including 44 African countries and the African Union. The BRI countries account for over 40 per cent of global GDP, 40 per cent of world trade, and 60 per cent of world population, over 50 per cent of whom are living under the extreme poverty line. The key agencies primarily responsible for disbursing BRI funding include the Silk Road Fund, the China Development Bank and the Export–Import Bank of China. The multilateral Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is also a major financier of the BRI. The BRI comprises one ‘Belt’ and one ‘Road’. ‘The Silk Road Economic Belt’ is continental, traversing Eurasia. The ‘21st Century Maritime Silk Road’ reaches out through the South China Sea, the Gulf, the Atlantic to Central and South America, to the Pacific Ocean, the Arctic and to the African
The Digital Silk Road
The Digital Silk Road (DSR) is an important part of China’s BRI. It focuses primarily on improving the quality and reach of information and communications technology (ICT) within the participating recipient countries. While a lot has been explored around the BRI, its fast-growing dimension comes in the form of the DSR, whose potential is yet to be studied closely, especially in terms of the benefits it might bring to developing countries in the twenty-first century. The DSR was inaugurated in 2013 to collaborate on emerging digital technologies and trade by linking Asia to Africa and Europe (Ly 2020). Initially conceived as an ‘Information Silk Road’ and ‘Digital Highway’, it is now designated as the ‘Digital Silk Road’ and is multi-dimensional and forms an important pillar of China’s repeated calls for the global community to grasp more energetically opportunities presented by the digital revolution to create an innovative, ‘smart’ global economy, a primary aim of China’s own current economic plan and stra60
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tegic objectives. Apart from the smart cities, e-commerce and digital trade infrastructure, the railways and ports along the BRI will be supplemented through the ICT infrastructure and digital networks (Kozłowski 2018). The implementing agencies of the project not only include the Chinese government and state-owned enterprises, but also giant commercial and semi-private firms like Huawei and ZTE. The project involves laying transcontinental and cross-border optical cables to improve internet connectivity and breadth of coverage, and also envisages the expansion of satellite networks. The DSR has potential to contribute significantly to the United Nation’s (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) including those related to improving education and economic growth, or facilitate progress towards reduced inequalities and inclusive development.
The Health Silk Road
The need to strengthen the health and well-being infrastructure to reduce the risks not only from COVID-19 and its subsequent variants, but also from any other future major pandemic threats has led to the increased prioritization of health cooperation and connectivity by the BRI under the rubric of the ‘Health Silk Road’. It is also regarded as an important means of reinforcing and increasing intra-BRI member cooperation and to promote ‘people-to-people’ relations. The expansion of the BRI’s Health Silk Road (HSR) has been perhaps the most significant development in the light of the pandemic (Lewis et al. 2021). Although not clearly defined, the HSR covers a wide range of activities, including capacity-building; talent training; the establishment of mechanisms to control and prevent cross-border infectious diseases; health aid; and the convening of bilateral and multilateral health policy meetings and networks (Chow Bing 2020). This strengthened China’s partners’ responses to the pandemic, particularly those with relatively under-developed healthcare systems. The health-based bilateral and multilateral cooperation among the BRI countries gained renewed impetus due to the pandemic experience and need for a coordinated, collective response. An important aspect of this response was the harnessing of digital tools against the COVID-19 pandemic. China’s
major technology firms played a key role in supporting the response of the Chinese government and the BRI. Alibaba, Tencent and Huawei acted as important facilitators providing key technologies. For example, medical robots and medical image analysis technologies were deployed for rapid diagnostics, which not only boosted the accuracy of the process, but also facilitated safety of the medical staff by ensuring social distancing and preventing infections. Given the geographical spread, speed and scale of the pandemic, Huawei-led 5G technology was able to make tele-medicine accessible to remote regions and communities. This technology offered critical ‘real-time’ remote and digital consultation. This included providing up-to-the-minute information and knowledge-sharing, including a digitally functioning pandemic map. This provided ‘real time’ inputs of the positive cases and enabled the Chinese government to monitor the lockdowns more efficiently and calibrate the practical response more effectively. In addition, ‘crowd source tracking’ improved contact tracing throughout the Chinese population. Health QR codes tracked people’s movements and prevented the spread of the virus. This capability and experience have motivated China to expand the digital HSR, incorporating these important technological developments into the BRI health programme.
The Global Development Initiative
The Global Development Initiative (GDI) was proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping on 21 September 2021 at the 76th UN General Assembly. Initial understandings of the GDI suggest that it is an extension of previous initiatives such as the BRI that was announced in 2013. What is different is that it is adapted to respond to emerging changes in the international sphere arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and international targets set by the UN such as the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It is therefore important to recognize how the GDI is situated within larger discussions and policy initiatives that China and the international sphere have adopted in recent years, notably the emphasis placed on the importance of multilateralism as the primary means of addressing global challenges such as uneven development, poverty alleviation and overcoming of economic and social ineJing Gu
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qualities as well as climate change (Carty and Gu 2021). The GDI proposal stands as a linear progression from China’s national development approach and its infusion, along with a South–South cooperation ethos, into that of the BRI at the core of which is ‘people-centred philosophy of development’. This philosophy is itself a return to the early post-1949 commitment of New China to working from and meeting the needs of the people as its declared raison d’être (Li et al. 2018). The infrastructure-first approach is increasingly combined with a larger focus on sustainability issues and COVID-19 recovery to tackle global development challenges.
The BRI, sustainability and COVID-19
China embarked on the BRI in 2013, the same year in which the United Nations started to draft the SDGs. While both initiatives are formally independent and stem from different actors with different priorities – with China’s BRI addressing the importance of economic connectivity, trade and infrastructure and the SDGs emphasizing issues such as economic and gender equality, increasing food security and strengthening environmental protection and contributing substantively to climate change mitigation – they undoubtedly also share some common goals (Renwick et al. 2018). Hence, there is significant coincidence across these two global programmes with important opportunities for each undertaking to benefit the other, where the BRI could provide additional financial means to enable the achievement of the SDGs, and the SDGs can create a framework to guide projects under the BRI in terms of their social and environmental impacts. There is broad international consensus that the BRI has the potential to act as an important driver for the Sustainable Development Agenda and achievement of the Agenda’s associated SDGs. Nevertheless, the BRI is broad, open and evolving, without a single or shared understanding; indeed, it has become a label under which initiatives and aims of many kinds are being pursued. This ambiguity is itself a source of both opportunity and challenge (Gu et al. 2019). Underpinning the consensus is recognition that the shared global objectives and project-based implementation of these two transformative initiatives offer significant scope for policy Jing Gu
synchronization and practical action for many countries. Commonalities include truly global reach; shared transformative aspirations, principles, aims and agendas of global sustainable development; and both have experienced implementation issues. These commonalities across the respective development programmes offer significant and substantive potential for practical, effective synchronization of BRI–SDG policy and practice. Research has identified synergies following from shared goals and in-depth cooperation aimed at promoting, strengthening and integrating global sustainable development. The BRI can be an important catalyst to achieve the SDGs in BRI countries and, in turn, these studies indicate that the SDGs can provide the BRI with guidance and legitimacy in the way BRI investments are distributed across economies. Importantly, the BRI may constitute an effective way to help fill the substantial financial gaps hampering the fulfilment of the SDGs, especially in economically weaker BRI countries. As shown by a recent study undertaken by UNCTAD, investment gaps are particularly severe in the areas of electricity and energy infrastructure, transport, telecommunications, WASH, food and agriculture, climate change, health and education, which all fall under the scope of the BRI (UNCTAD 2020). From 2013 to June 2020, China had already invested about US$755 billion in BRI countries (Nedopil 2020). Conversely, the SDGs might also improve the BRI by mainstreaming concerns over sustainability and ensuring that negative consequences of the strategy, especially regarding social and environmental risks, are minimized and China remains a responsible stakeholder. Overall, there is a wide scope of action for the BRI and SDGs to mutually reinforce and strengthen each other’s agendas. In order to utilize these synergies as effectively and efficiently as possible, it will be key that actors enhance policy coherence and ensure that projects are aligned with national development priorities. If the 2030 Agenda’s anticipated economic and social benefits are to materialize in a sustainable manner, the planning, monitoring and evaluation of BRI implementation will need to be conducted in accordance with the architecture of goals, targets and indicators set out in the specific country contexts. This is especially the case
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following the expansion of the role of the HSR and the DSR within the BRI, discussed in more detail above. Clearly, the BRI and SDGs represent major transformative agendas. However, both have faced implementation challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these trends, resulting in devastating loss of life and livelihoods. The outbreak of COVID-19 has brought profound challenges to the BRI, affecting its nature, pace and scope. As countries have attempted to contain the virus, travel bans, nation-wide lockdowns and alternate restrictions have had significant impact on the global economy, disrupting supply chains, manufacturing and the movement of people and goods. Rising credit strains across BRI countries and the prospect of defaults on BRI-related loans have seen investment flows decrease precipitously. Like all states, the pandemic has forced China to realign its focus inwards, diverting official attention and resources away from the BRI. Although the country’s capability to invest remains – given its substantial foreign exchange reserves – several commentaries highlight that there is limited political impetus to scale the BRI back up to its pre-pandemic scope, given the pandemic’s economic fallout and the challenges facing China’s small and medium enterprise (SME) sector. However, the concrete effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on BRI-related outcomes depend, clearly, on the BRI participant country’s socio-economic complexion and resilience, COVID-19 caseload, effectiveness of governmental and civil response and international assistance attained.
Critical issues
Most of the concerns regarding BRI’s acceptance among low- and middle-income countries centre on issues of over-dependency. Such reliance is perceived as economic and technical dominance. In the case of the market, oligopolistic concerns are raised that a few powerful firms can dominate the infrastructure and economy, carrying significant implications for data security, affecting the sovereignty and ownership of the data. The BRI has attracted growing antipathy among some governments, especially the USA. According to the US Department of Defence, ‘China intends to use BRI to develop strong economic ties with other countries, shape their
interests to align with China’s, and deter confrontation or criticism of China’s approach to or stance on sensitive issues’ (cited in Kastner and Pearson 2021: 19). The BRI has been characterized by some commentators as an exercise in ‘debt trap diplomacy’(Jones and Hameiri 2020; Brautigam 2020). Some critical assessments argue that the objective of the BRI is to spread the ‘Chinese Model’ and authoritarianism abroad to increase China’s political engagement and global influence (Dezenski 2020). Clearly, such evaluations of the BRI are entwined in assessments of the changing distribution of power and influence in the states’ system, drawing forward claims that the BRI is a vehicle for China to advance and attain its national foreign policy interests and aims and geo-strategic agenda (Kastner and Pearson 2021). In fact, the BRI has become the focal point of geopolitical competition between China and the West. US President Joe Biden’s administration, along with the G7, announced a new initiative called Build Back Better World (B3W), seen as an alternative to China’s BRI, collectively providing hundreds of billions of US dollars of financial support for infrastructure to low- and middle-income countries with transparency and sustainability. The B3W connects the different parts of the world, and different G7 partners are responsible for different geographic orientations (White House 2021). Such arrangements can reduce risks on one single country and grant more flexibility to mobilize resources and facilitate operation and implementation. B3W has a different emphasis to China’s BRI: it is a values-driven initiative with special focuses on climate, health and health security, digital technology, and gender equity and equality (White House 2021). The B3W reflects a Western governmental assessment that the BRI has durability, a degree of ‘soft power’ attraction and that some aspects of this global project may have value and may have replicability. There are significant distinctions between the two initiatives. BRI is transitioning its environmental ‘green’ policies in the light of climate change and COP process commitments and with international concerns about the environmental impact of BRI projects, whilst the B3W was announced as a ‘green alternative’ to the BRI. Overall, the BRI has demonstrated durability and adaptability Jing Gu
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beyond the expectations of some critics. It is evolving with some synchronization with global and regional development processes, such as the SDGs, but with distinctive characteristics such as the importance of infrastructure as a driver of development and its ‘people-centred’ approach. Jing Gu
References
Brautigam, D. (2020). A critical look at Chinese ‘debt-trap diplomacy’: the rise of a meme, Area Development and Policy, 5(1), 1–14, https://doi .org/10.1080/23792949.2019.1689828. Carty, A. and Gu, J. (2021). Theory and practice in China’s approaches to multilateralism and critical reflections on the Western ‘rules-based international order’, IDS Research Report 85, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, https://doi.org/10.19088/IDS.2021.057. Chow Bing, N. (2020). Southeast Asia: COVID-19 and China’s Health Silk Road, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, https://asia.fes.de/news/health-silk -road. Dezenski, E.K. (2020). Below the Belt and Road: corruption and illicit dealings in China’s global infrastructure, Washington, DC: Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Gu, J., Chen, Y., Haibin, W. (2016). China on the move: the ‘New Silk Road’ to international development cooperation? In Gu, J., Shankland, A. and Chenoy, A. (eds) The BRICS in International Development. International Political Economy Series. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137 -55646-2_5. Gu, J., Corbett, H. and Leach, M. (2019). Introduction: the Belt and Road Initiative and the Sustainable Development Goals: opportunities and challenges, IDS Bulletin, 50(4), 1–22, https://doi.org/10.19088/1968–2019.136.
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Jones, L. and Hameiri, S. (2020). Debunking the myth of ‘debt-trap diplomacy’: how recipient countries shape China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Chatham House, https://www.chathamhouse .org/sites/default/files/2020–08–19-debunking -myth-debt-trap-diplomacy-jones-hameiri.pdf. Kastner, S.L. and Pearson, M.M. (2021). Exploring the parameters of China’s economic influence, Studies in Comparative International Development, 56(1), 18–44. Kozłowski, K. (2018). BRI and its digital dimension: twists and turns, Journal of Science and Technology Policy Management, https://doi .org/10.1108/JSTPM-06-2018-0062. Lewis, D.J. et al. (2021). Dynamic synergies between China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, Journal of International Business Policy, 4(1), 58–79. Li, X., Gu, J., Leistner, S. and Caral, L. (2018). Perspectives on the global partnership for effective development cooperation. In Gu, J. and Kitano, N. (eds) Emerging Economies and the Changing Dynamics of Development Cooperation, IDS Bulletin, 49(3), Brighton: IDS. Ly, B. (2020). Challenge and perspective for Digital Silk Road, Cogent Business & Management, 7(1), 1804180. Nedopil, C. (2020). Green Belt and Road Initiative Centre, IIGF Green BRI Centre, https://green -bri.org/. Renwick, N., Gu, J. and Gong, S. (2018). The impact of BRI investment in infrastructure on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, K4D Emerging Issues Report, Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies. UNCTAD (2020). International production beyond the pandemic, Geneva, United Nations Conference for Trade and Development, https:// unctad.org/system/files/official-docu-ment/ wir2020_en.pdf. White House (2021). Fact sheet: President Biden and G7 leaders launch Build Back Better World www (B3W) partnership, 12 June, https:// .whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements -releases/2021/06/12/fact-sheet-president -biden-and-g7-leaders-launch-build-back -better-world-b3w-partnership/.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
the impetus to invest in development waned. The 1990s saw a decline in bilateral aid from high-income countries (HICs) to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) as well as decreased funding to multilateral agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO) (Birn et al., 2017; Overseas Development Institute, 1994), which in turn weakened their power. Into this vacuum of funding and leadership in global health and development emerged the BMGF, the most prominent philanthro-capitalist actor of our era. Thanks to the success of the Microsoft Corporation, co-founded in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen, Bill Gates amassed a vast – and still growing – fortune by the 1990s. In 2000, Bill Gates with his then-wife Melinda, created the BMGF (Fejerskov, 2015). The Seattle, WA-based foundation initially focused on a few disease-control programmes, evoking the emphases of the Rockefeller Foundation, which served as the prototype of international health and development philanthropy in the first half of the twentieth century (Birn & Richter, 2018). Since its founding, BMGF’s portfolio has expanded rapidly, now boasting more than 1,700 staff members across nine offices in eight countries (BMGF, 2022).
Introduction
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is the world’s second largest foundation (after Novo Nordisk), with its 2020 endowment approaching 50 billion USD (BMGF, 2022). Following its launch in 2000, it has rapidly become one of the most powerful actors in global health and development, with the stated mission of ‘creating a world where every person has the opportunity to live a healthy, productive life’ (BMGF, 2022). In so doing, it has disbursed over 60 billion USD in grants to both US-based educational initiatives and multiple dimensions of development, from agriculture to global health and gender equality (BMGF, 2022). In conjunction with its growing influence, the BMGF has faced ongoing criticism for eschewing broader investments that address underlying determinants of well-being (e.g., living and working conditions, inequality, good quality healthcare) in favour of narrowly targeted market-based solutions (Birn et al., 2017). After providing a brief history of the BMGF and its current priorities, this entry explores prevalent critiques of the BMGF, focusing on the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa as an illustration.
Current areas of focus
The BMGF’s current international work, covering some 130 countries, spans the interconnected arenas of global development, global health, and ‘global growth and opportunity’, underpinned by a common goal of supporting ‘innovative ideas that could help remove barriers … prevent[ing] people from making the most of their lives’ (BMGF, 2022). The global development division oversees initiatives related to family planning, and maternal, nutrition and child health, while the global health division mainly tackles infectious diseases, such as malaria, HIV, and tuberculosis. The growth and opportunity division funds agricultural development, education, and water and sanitation activities (BMGF, 2022). Between 2016 and 2019, the BMGF provided an estimated 38 per cent of all private philanthropy for development, referring to transactions with ‘the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries as their main objective and that originate from foundations’ own sources’ (OECD, 2021).
Brief history
The rise of the BMGF and its expansive reach can best be understood by beginning with the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union and their allies used development aid as a political tool to garner support for their respective visions and ideologies for the post-war world order (Escobar, 1995; Gülseven, 2020; Jakupec, 2018). Amid escalating decolonization movements following the Second World War, the US-led Western bloc employed bilateral aid and leveraged UN organizations to finance public infrastructure projects such as dams and roads and various agricultural projects, as a means to contain communism (Lorenzini, 2019). The Soviet-led Eastern bloc similarly sought to extend their political, cultural, and economic influence through development efforts (Escobar, 1995). But after the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union was dissolved, 65
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BMGF approach
Globally, the BMGF awards grants and partners with governments, researchers, news platforms, private companies, and multilateral organizations including the World Bank and the WHO. Like the Rockefeller Foundation, the BMGF provides funding through institutions and organizations mainly based in HICs. The BMGF also uses a co-financing model, whereby other donors and recipient governments are expected to match or exceed the funding provided by the BMGF (Birn et al., 2017). For researchers, non-governmental organizations, and international organizations, the BMGF has served as a critical source of funding, helping reinvigorate global health and development efforts in the post-Cold War era and the age of neoliberal globalization, emphasizing the implementation of free market ideology (Birn et al., 2017; Moran & Stevenson, 2013). Through the BMGF’s financial backing of particular issues in global health and development (e.g. vaccines for malaria), it helps shape knowledge production and approaches that have become widely accepted and circulated (Harman, 2016). The unprecedented financial assets at the BMGF’s disposal, combined with its modus operandi – including harnessing sizeable resources from governments and multilateral institutions – have granted it increasing governance influence at both national and international levels, and enabled it to channel immense public and private monies according to its own goals and priorities. As a top donor to the WHO, the BMGF substantially moulds its agenda, especially via earmarked funding for polio eradication (Martens & Seitz, 2015), which has accounted for approximately 20 per cent of WHO’s budget in some recent years (Birn et al., 2017). In addition, the BMGF’s major support for the University of Washington-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which uses its own criteria to compile and analyse global health data (and make future projections), has both undermined the WHO’s authority regarding global health metrics and enabled BMGF to define needs according to the very issues it champions while overshadowing other priorities (Mahajan, 2019). The BMGF’s funding of global development reporting by major media outlets has further heightened the attention the founBernice Yanful and Anne-Emanuelle Birn
dation and its priorities garner, making the BMGF a desired partner for numerous global health and development actors, eager to be associated with successful initiatives and boost their own profiles (Birn & Richter, 2018). Accompanying BMGF’s considerable financial power is instrumental power (Manahan & Kumar, 2021), through which it exercises direct influence on international policymaking. For instance, BMGF is an equal partner in H8 – the eight leading health-related organizations, including the WHO, UNICEF, the World Bank, and public–private partnerships (PPPs), most receiving BMGF funding – that convenes to strategize on pressing global health issues, usually on camera (Birn & Richter, 2018; Moran & Stevenson, 2013; UNAIDS, 2011). The BMGF is also a principal donor for many of the most prominent PPPs, involving collaborations between the private sector and public agencies, typically heavily financed by governments (Birn et al., 2017; Moran & Stevenson, 2013), notably the Global Fund (to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI). Launched by the BMGF in 2000, GAVI brings together UN agencies, the World Bank, the vaccine industry, and HIC and LMIC governments to increase access to vaccines (Birn & Richter, 2018; Manahan & Kumar, 2021). The BMGF provided 29 per cent of GAVI’s budget between 2000 and 2010, declining to 17 per cent from 2016 to 2020, with concomitant contributions of donor governments and the European Commission rising (GAVI, 2021). Though GAVI touts having vaccinated over 800 million children worldwide while averting 15 million future deaths (GAVI, 2021), it has also been criticized for its top-down structure, the over-representation of the vaccine industry on its board, and failure to support local production and licensing of vaccines in LMICs to lower prices (Birn & Lexchin, 2011). Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the COVAX initiative, a super-PPP co-led by GAVI, WHO and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, was established to increase global access to COVID-19 vaccines (Storeng et al., 2021). All three leads receive BMGF funding, with the BMGF’s penchant for narrowly targeted business-oriented interventions (in place of public-sector
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solutions) imprinted in COVAX’s design and implementation. COVAX pools funds from HICs, World Bank financing schemes, and others, and negotiates agreements with vaccine-makers to coordinate the procurement and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines globally. COVAX promised to provide reduced price vaccines to lower-income countries on a rapid timeline (CBC News, 2021; GAVI, 2022). However, the slow pace of distribution – missing its target of distributing enough vaccines for at least 20 per cent of the population in 92 LMICs by the end of 2021 (Berkley, 2021; Ducharme, 2021) – and country eligibility restrictions have resulted in LMICs paying higher prices than HICs in some cases (Dyer, 2021). Unsurprisingly, COVAX to date has not supported the wide LMIC (and some HIC) calls for waiving intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines, which would increase global production and access and ostensibly help COVAX realize its stated goal. Instead, COVAX functions as a stop-gap measure (Goldhill, 2021) and has proven an inadequate antidote to vaccine apartheid and stockpiling by rich countries (Schwab, 2021). Further, the BMGF played a crucial role in dissuading the developers of the Oxford vaccine to open-license their vaccine, convincing them instead to partner with pharmaceutical companies (Legge & Kim, 2021). COVAX has also come under fire for neglecting the perspectives of civil society organizations and LMICs, leaving them at the mercy of pharmaceutical companies (Goldhill, 2021), and increasing financialization of the global health arena (Stein, 2021).
Critiques of the BMGF
Many of the charges levelled at COVAX mirror longstanding critiques of the BMGF and its brand of philanthrocapitalism, which seeks to solve social problems using business methods (Mushita & Thompson, 2021) and reproduces rather than addresses inequality (McGoey, 2015). Analysts argue that the BMGF advances a top-down approach to global health and development based on applying technology-based solutions to issues with complex social, political, and economic causes (Birn & Richter, 2018; Martens & Seitz, 2015; Moran & Stevenson, 2013), and prioritizing the elimination of diseases
through reductionist measures (Harman, 2016). In its preoccupation with diagnostic tools and innovative technologies, often produced by private industry and start-ups it finances, the BMGF has faced criticism for masking the structural determinants of multifaceted, interconnected problems. For instance, regarding healthcare, the BMGF regularly funds vertical programmes that engage the private sector and focus on individual diseases, rather than health system strengthening (Stevenson & Youde, 2021). The BMGF’s philanthropy has been much lauded in the press and elsewhere, lending the foundation legitimacy and helping craft its image as a global do-gooder. However, the BMGF’s ubiquity in global health and development spaces, and the heavy reliance on its funding, has meant that (potential) grantees and others working in global health and development often hesitate to challenge BMGF ideas (Harman, 2016; Moran & Stevenson, 2013). Critics argue that this creates an echo chamber, shielding the BMGF from scrutiny while rationalizing its undue influence over public policy, even as it remains unaccountable to the public. In exercising disproportionate influence over research and policy priorities globally, the BMGF can skew attention and resources away from the most pressing needs of the poor. Further questions have been raised regarding the BMGF’s relationship to intellectual property rights. Bill Gates himself has conceded that the BMGF’s endowment benefits from pharmaceutical and product patents, generating powerful conflicts of interests (Birn & Richter, 2018). In sum, the BMGF has intensified an increasingly undemocratic and uneven playing field, wherein it has helped co-opt public institutions in service of private interests, further entrenching inequities and their structural causes (McGoey, 2015). The following section examines the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa to further illustrate critiques faced by the BMGF.
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)
The BMGF created AGRA in 2006, with Rockefeller Foundation support, joining together state, private, and other partners Bernice Yanful and Anne-Emanuelle Birn
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(Mushita & Thompson, 2021) with the purported goals of increasing food production and improving food security. AGRA is modelled after the 1960s Green Revolution, initiated by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations to spread industrial agriculture throughout the Global South (Holt-Giménez, 2017), an effort that stalled in Africa. In its ‘new’ form, AGRA strives to increase food production and farmer incomes throughout Africa by incentivizing the uptake of agribusiness practices such as monocropping, the use of ‘improved’ seeds, and chemical inputs, such as synthetic fertilizers (Mushita & Thompson, 2021). Ultimately, it aims to accelerate the full integration of African food systems into the global food chain (Birn et al., 2017; Morvaridi, 2012). Rwanda is often cited as evidence of AGRA’s effectiveness, due to an estimated 66 per cent growth in maize yields from 2004/06 to 2016/18 (Wise, 2020). However, a closer examination reveals a much murkier picture both there and across the continent. First, increased maize output in Rwanda occurred in conjunction with declining yields of rice and stagnant yields of sorghum, a nutrient-rich grain (Wise, 2020). Second, across Africa, the funding provided by AGRA typically pales in comparison to the required expenditures by ‘beneficiary’ governments to modernize their food and agriculture systems according to AGRA’s guidance. As a case in point, Tanzania has spent approximately $50 million USD per year to subsidize high-cost farming inputs, far exceeding AGRA’s contribution. The Malawian government has similarly committed approximately 55 million USD a year, about 20 times greater than the funding provided by AGRA (Mushita & Thompson, 2021). Third, AGRA has not incorporated small-scale farmers as full partners in the design and implementation of its programmes. This lack of collaboration has occurred alongside accusations of AGRA’s involvement in biopiracy through usurping African genetic resources without compensating or crediting those who first developed them (Birn, 2014; Mushita & Thompson, 2021; Thompson, 2012). Many African civil society organizations have argued that despite AGRA’s claim to support smallholder farmers, it has inade-
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quately considered African voices and priorities, prescribing quick fixes for complex issues. These groups have also expressed concern around growing reliance on technologies that increase farmers’ dependence on big corporations such as Monsanto and Cargill (Manahan & Kumar, 2021). Many activists view AGRA as a significant threat to food sovereignty, compromising ‘the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems’ (Nyéléni, 2007). Despite AGRA’s articulated goals of addressing poverty, hunger, and malnutrition, recent evidence suggests that hunger in AGRA countries is actually rising, indicating that the initiative has failed to live up to its promises. Instead, AGRA has largely benefitted the private, commercial seed and input sectors, while ignoring more democratic and sustainable approaches to food and agriculture systems (Hendry & Kvesic, 2021; Mkindi et al., 2020; Morvaridi, 2012).
Conclusion
The AGRA case is illustrative of the BMGF’s approach to global health and development that privileges technocratic quick-fixes, based on market-based solutions. Though many health and development actors, and the BMGF itself, broadcast its successes, the BMGF has also been roundly criticized for sidestepping the complex, social, political, and economic underpinnings of the issues it seeks to address. Moreover, it has yet to contend with mounting calls to decolonize global health and development (Abimbola et al., 2021). With the recent announcement of BMGF’s new board of trustees intended to add diversity to the foundation’s leadership and Melinda French Gates’s newly declared independent approach to philanthropy (Yang, 2022), not to mention other changes afoot, such as the rise of LMIC philanthropies, and social movements decrying pandemic billionaires (Gneiting et al., 2020), it remains to be seen whether BMGF will change its modus operandi, and the extent to which it becomes publicly accountable, especially to people in LMICs (Beasley, 2022). Bernice Yanful and Anne-Emanuelle Birn
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Abimbola, S., Asthana, S., Montenegro, C., Guinto, R.R., Jumbam, D.T., Louskieter, L., Kadubei, K.M., Munshi, S., Muraya, K., Okumu, F., Saha, S., Saluja, D., & Pai, M. (2021). Addressing power asymmetries in global health: Imperatives in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. PLoS medicine, 18(4), e1003604. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal .pmed.1003604. Beasley, S. (2022). Gates foundation announces new and relatively small board of trustees. Inside Development. https://www.devex.com/ news/gates-foundation-announces-new-and -relatively-small-board-of-trustees-102509. Berkley, S. (2021). Dr. Seth’s Berkley’s reflections on 2021 and the global imperative for 2022. https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/dr -seth-berkleys-reflections-2021-and-global -imperative-2022. Birn A.-E. (2014). Philanthrocapitalism, past and present: The Rockefeller Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the setting(s) of the international/ global health agenda. Hypothesis, 12(1): e8, https://doi.org/10.5779/hypothesis.V12I1.229. Birn, A.-E., & Lexchin, J. (2011). Beyond patents: The GAVI Alliance, AMCs and improving immunization coverage through public sector vaccine production in the global south. Human Vaccines, 7(3), 291–2. https://doi.org/10.4161/ hv.7.3.15217. Birn, A.-E., Pillay, Y., & Holtz, T.H. (2017). Textbook of global health (4th edn). Oxford University Press. Birn, A.-E., & Richter, J. (2018). US philanthrocapitalism and the global health agenda: The Rockefeller and Gates Foundations, past and present. In H. Waitzkin & The Working Group on Health Beyond Capitalism (eds), Health care under the knife: Moving beyond capitalism for our health (pp. 155–74). Monthly Review Press. BMGF (2022). Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. https://www.gatesfoundation.org/. CBC News (2021, February 5). What is COVAX and why is Canada getting backlash for receiving vaccines from it? CBC News. https://www .cbc.ca/news/canada/covax-explainer-canada -backlash-1.5902072. Ducharme, J. (2021, September 9). COVAX was a great idea, but is now 500 million doses short of its vaccine distribution goals. What exactly went wrong? TIME. https://time.com/6096172/ covax-vaccines-what-went-wrong/. Dyer, O. (2021). Covid-19: Countries are learning what others paid for vaccines. BMJ, 372, n281. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n281. Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering development: The making and unmaking of the third world. Princeton University Press.
Fejerskov, A.M. (2015). From unconventional to ordinary? The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the homogenizing effects of international development cooperation. Journal of International Development, 27(7), 1098–112. https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.3149. GAVI (2021). Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. https:// www.gavi.org/. GAVI (2022). What is COVAX? https:// www .gavi.org/covax-facility#what. Gneiting, U., Lusiani, N., & Tamir, I. (2020). Power, profits and the pandemic: From corporate extraction for the few to an economy that works for all. Oxfam Policy and Practice. https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/power -profits-and-pandemic. Goldhill, O. (2021, October 8). ‘Naively ambitious’: How COVAX failed on its promise to vaccine the world. STAT News. https://www .statnews.com/2021/10/08/how-covax-failed -on-its-promise-to-vaccinate-the-world/. Gülseven, Y. (2020). Reconsidering development aid: A systematic analysis. World Review of Political Economy, 11(2), 232–55. Harman, S. (2016). The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and legitimacy in global health governance. Global Governance, 22(3), 349–68. https://doi.org/10.1163/19426720-02203004. Hendry, M., & Kvesic, D. (2021). Commentary on the 2020 annual report and the false promises of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. World Nutrition, 12(4), 221–3. Hewitt, A.P. (1994). Crisis or transition in foreign aid. Overseas Development Institute. https:// cdn.odi.org/media/documents/9649.pdf. Holt-Giménez, E. (2017). A foodie’s guide to capitalism: Understanding the political economy of what we eat. NYU Press. Jakupec, V. (2018). Development aid: Populism and the end of the neoliberal agenda. Springer International. Legge, D.G., & Kim. S. (2021). Equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines: Cooperation around research and production capacity is critical. Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, 4(Suppl 1), 73–134. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 25751654.2021.1906591. Lorenzini, S. (2019). Global development: A Cold War history. Princeton University Press. Mahajan, M. (2019). The IHME in the shifting landscape of global health metrics. Global Policy, 10(S1), 110–20. https://doi.org/10 .1111/1758–5899.12605. Manahan, M.A., & Kumar, M. (2021). The great takeover: Mapping of multistakeholderism in global governance. https://www.tni.org/en/ publication/the-great-takeover. Martens, J., & Seitz, K. (2015). Philanthropic power and development: Who shapes the agenda? https://archive.globalpolicy.org/images/pdfs/ GPFEurope/Philanthropic_Power_online.pdf.
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70 Elgar encyclopedia of development McGoey, L. (2015). No such thing as a free gift: The Gates Foundation and the price of philanthropy. Verso Books. Mkindi A., Maina, A., Urhahn, J., Koch, J., Bassermann, L., Goïta, M., Nketani, M., Herre, R., Tanzmann, S., Wise, T.A., Gordon, M., & Gilbert, R. (2020). False promises: the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. Biodiversity and Biosafety Association of Kenya. https:// www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/ Studien/False_Promises_AGRA_en.pdf. Moran, M., & Stevenson, M. (2013). Illumination and innovation: What philanthropic foundations bring to global health governance. Global Society, 27(2), 117–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13600826.2012.762343. Morvaridi, B. (2012). Capitalist philanthropy and hegemonic partnerships. Third World Quarterly, 33(7), 1191–210. https://doi.org/10 .1080/01436597.2012.691827. Mushita, A., & Thompson, C. (2021). Philanthrocapitalism and development. In H. Veltmeyer & P. Bowles (eds), The essential guide to critical development studies. (pp. 94–101). Routledge. Nyéléni (2007). Nyeleni 2007. Forum for food sovereignty. https://nyeleni.org/DOWNLOADS/ Nyelni_EN.pdf. OECD (2021). Private philanthropy for development (2nd edn). OECD iLibrary. https:// www.oecd-ilibrary.org/development/private -philanthropy-for-development-second -edition_cdf37f1e-en. Overseas Development Institute (1994). Crisis or transition in foreign aid. https://cdn.odi.org/ media/documents/9649.pdf. Schwab, T. (2021). Is the shine starting to come off Bill Gates’s halo? The Nation. https:// www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates -foundation-covid-vaccines/.
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Stein, F. (2021). Risky business: COVAX and the financialization of global vaccine equity. Globalization and Health, 17(1), 112. https:// doi.org/10.1186/s12992–021–00763–8. Stevenson, M., & Youde, J. (2021). Public-private partnering as a modus operandi: Explaining the Gates Foundation’s approach to global health governance. Global Public Health, 16(3), 401–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692 .2020.1801790. Storeng, K.T., de Bengy Puyvallée, A., & Stein, F. (2021). COVAX and the rise of the ‘super public private partnership’ for global health. Global Public Health, 1–17. https://doi.org/10 .1080/17441692.2021.1987502. Thompson, C.B. (2012). Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA): Advancing the theft of African genetic wealth. Review of African Political Economy, 39(132), 345–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2012 .688647. UNAIDS (2011). Health 8 group meet to discuss maximizing health outcomes with available resources and getting “more health for the money”. https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/ presscentre/featurestories/2011/february/ 20110223bh8. Wise, T.A. (2020). Failing Africa’s farmers: An impact assessment of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. https://sites.tufts.edu/gdae/ files/2020/07/20–01_Wise_FailureToYield.pdf. Yang, M. (2022, February 2). Melinda French Gates to no longer give bulk of wealth via Gates Foundation. The Guardian. https:// www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/02/ melinda-french-gates-wealth-gates-foundation.
Bretton Woods
Fixed but flexible exchange rates between convertible currencies aim to enhance world trade and put an end to interwar trade-related conflicts and economic disruptions. The 45 member countries of the newly established IMF agreed to keep their exchange rates within a one per cent bandwidth to the exchange rate agreed with the fund. Major re-evaluations of the exchange rate could only take place to address severe balance of payments disruptions and only upon consultation with the fund. The IMF was founded with a capital of approximately 8.8 billion USD. (Exchange rate parities were fixed in US dollar or in gold.) The IMF committed to provide interim loans conditional on a reform programme to prevent countries from deflationary interventions and from constraining trade or capital flows. The IMF did not control any of the reserve currencies – US dollar and gold. The United States guaranteed convertibility of the US dollar with gold. Soon after the new exchange rate system was established, liquidity needs increased with rising trade volumes. National central banks stockpiled interest-bearing US dollar instead of gold so that the US balance of payments deficit rapidly increased. In 1971, the US had to declare the end of gold convertibility and, in 1973, exchange rates were deregulated. The IMF was reformed: an artificial basket currency as medium of exchange – the special drawing rights – was introduced. Member states decided to let countries determine the exchange rate regime freely, while aiming at preventing major exchange rate disruptions. Further, decision-making in the IMF was reformed so that major decisions required an 85 per cent majority which introduced a blocking minority for the US and the European member countries. In essence, the Bretton Woods system was a compromise. John Maynard Keynes, chief negotiator for the British government at Bretton Woods, had initially planned a compensation mechanism in a global clearing union with comprehensive balance of payments financing at rigorous penalty rates in case of divergence and what Harry Dexter White, senior official in the American delegation at the Bretton Woods conference, had planned to be an international fund with the ability to lend to countries in financial distress based on paid-in quota shares. Originally, Keynes had proposed the creation of an International Clearing Union
The United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, held in July 1944 in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, aimed at inventing a new international and financial order after the Second World War. Negotiations about the design of global post-war reconstruction had begun already in the beginning of the 1940s. Finally, in 1944, based on the agreements signed in Bretton Woods, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) (later, World Bank) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were founded and came into formal existence in 1945. In 1947, after several years of negotiations that had begun in parallel to the Bretton Woods conference, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was signed to implement tariff cuts and govern trade relations among its signatories. In fact, the GATT was originally planned to be an interim codification of rules and regulations until the creation of an International Trade Organization (ITO) (Havanna Charter, 1947). Yet, the United States did not agree to the ITO’s foundation. Thus, the GATT, which formally came into existence in 1948, remained the governing framework for post-war trade relations for almost fifty years until the foundation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995. These institutions and agreements founded in negotiations around the Bretton Woods conference have been extraordinarily influential in mainstreaming political and economic concepts into practical policy. The Bretton Woods institutions – the IMF and the World Bank – and the GATT agreement and later WTO have been at the same time the most influential and most controversially debated multilateral institutions in development policy. These institutions have an almost global membership with governance and decision-making structures that allow for enormous assertiveness. At the same time, the political asymmetry in decision-making and the reform idleness of the three institutions have contributed to allegations of neo-colonialist and outdated structures. In view of the unregulated interwar period, a system of fixed exchange rates was agreed in Bretton Woods in which the currencies were held convertible to gold or the US dollar. 71
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(ICU) for the re-organization of international trade and finance that was discussed in the negotiations previous to the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. The ICU proposal included registering and settling all international payments by using a virtual common unit of account – the bancor – for invoicing all operations. The most important feature of this international currency was its uniquely fiduciary nature: it was not related to the quantity of gold or another good. Moreover, it was to be used only in international transactions among central banks. The most relevant part of the proposal was a mechanism for both deficit and surplus countries to adjust in order to prevent global imbalances. The idea was to share the burden of adjustment by taxing countries who had earned bancors in excess. If a country accumulated surpluses in the ICU, thereby accumulating bancors, and refused to adjust to greater import demand, it would be penalized. As is well known, from this wide-ranging approach, only the coordination of exchange rates was addressed by the Bretton Woods system, not the imbalances between surplus and deficit countries. Even so, the Keynes Plan still is subject to vivid academic debates and some of its main ideas were (and are) applied on a regional level in different areas of the world as regional payment systems. The idea of this so-called Bretton Woods system was to achieve the stability of a fixed exchange rate system and at the same time to support global trade by allowing adaptability to sudden shocks. Increasing global trade induced a growing demand for US dollar that could only be covered by constant current account surpluses vis-á-vis the US. The corresponding US current account deficit was prone to erode confidence in the US dollar (also known as Triffin Dilemma). The IBRD started operating based on a capital base of about 12 billion USD that could be leveraged with market capital. The first loan was agreed with France at that time. The focus was on long-term investment loans to member countries to enhance rebuilding their economies after the Second World War. Yet, the Marshall Plan that covered the economic recovery of Europe soon allowed the IBRD to concentrate operations predominantly on developing economies. The World Bank’s mission until today includes ending poverty. Laurissa Mühlich
The interwar period before and during the Second World War was marked by protectionist trade policies. By restricting trade, countries aimed at shoring up their economies at that time. Towards the end of the Second World War, large industrialized Allied countries, such as the Commonwealth member countries in particular (US, Canada and Great Britain), negotiated the GATT with the aim to rebuilding a prosperous global economy through tariff reductions with the core principles of most-favoured-nation treatment for all trade partners, non-discrimination against foreign goods in domestic markets and reciprocity (see WTO). The aim was to achieve a global increase in income, living standards, effective demand and access to natural resources through liberalized trade. The supposed merits of liberalized trade relations go back to the classical theory of comparative advantage in free trade by David Ricardo. Through eight different rounds of negotiations, GATT contributed to considerable tariff reductions in world trade. At the same time, from the 1970s onwards – around the time the Bretton Woods system collapsed – the utilization of non-tariff trade barriers (such as import quota, credit restrictions, export subsidies, technical standards and norms) increased substantially (also known as neo-protectionism). (Since then, eight rounds of trade negotiations had been held of which the eighth round was the basis for the foundation of the WTO.) The adequacy of tariff reductions for developing economies and emerging markets has repeatedly been called into question. Depending, for example, on the nature of export products of a country, free trade has been claimed to deteriorate rather than ameliorate the comparative position of developing economies in particular (due to the respective price elasticity of export products, changing comparative advantages due to changing production structures over time, and the like). The institutions founded in the conference of Bretton Woods – the IMF and the World Bank – have gone through several major phases of thinking that coined the debate about development: first, modernization theory and a growth cum debt conviction dominated the initial mind- and policy set. An influential model was Walt W. Rostow’s stages of growth, which allocated each country in a particular stage of development that required technical and cultural
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transformation to enhance development. Second, with the World Bank president McNamara, and Holis Chenery as first Chief Economist of the World Bank, the intention was to radically shift the focus to poverty eradication. The aim was to identify how foreign assistance could better contribute to achieving economic development to respond to the necessities of the poor. Third, in response to the debt crises in Latin America and further developing economies in the 1980s, so-called structural adjustment programmes brought the perceived importance of crisis management and macroeconomic adjustment to an almost global scale. Structural adjustment programmes were the exemplification of the debtor–creditor relationships that the Bretton Woods institutions had established until then. At that time, the Washington DC-based Bretton Woods Institutions adopted a ten-point list of policy recommendations that John Williamson had initially laid out as guidelines for Latin America to achieve economic stability and overcome debt risk. His suggestions were adopted by the Bretton Woods institutions and transformed into a policy set named the Washington Consensus that dominated reform obligations in structural adjustment programmes of the World Bank and in conditionality requirements by the IMF: fiscal discipline, tax reform, openness to foreign direct investment, competitive exchange rates, privatization, among others. Structural adjustment programmes were widely criticized for further impoverishing the poor due to endangering a country’s economic recovery. At the end of the 1990s, the World Bank itself stated the detrimental effects of the structural adjustment programmes, especially of the austerity-driven approach to reforms, on livelihoods of the poor. By the end of the 1990s, countries that had implemented the reform obligations of IMF and World Bank, mainly in East Asia, were hit by severe financial and economic crises. In particular, the East Asian crisis fuelled a rethinking in the IMF as the fund had not foreseen the crises despite rising current account deficits and capital outflow. Social unrest due to market pricing of food and fuel aggravated the countries’ social and economic situations. The importance of a nuanced sequencing of deregulation and liberalization was underlined together with the crucial role of
building up strong institutions and ‘good governance’. These changes have been called the Post-Washington Consensus by some. Much in contrast, China has ever since pursued a different development strategy that was guided by a certain degree of economic insulation, also known as the Beijing Consensus. While China is a sufficiently large and stable economy, many other emerging markets and developing economies are dependent on either temporary balance of payments finance or long-term investment financing from the Bretton Woods institutions. Over time, the mandates of the Bretton Woods twins became increasingly intertwined. Rather than stabilizing the global economy, the IMF increasingly became an agency for development that had originally been the mission of the World Bank. Today, however, the IMF advances increasingly long-term loans in case of structural balance of payments difficulties where the World Bank also provides loans as balance of payments support. Despite widespread criticism that the IMF’s and the World Bank’s many loan programmes have missed their targets, contributed to rising poverty and forestalled democratization movements, abolishing the Bretton Woods institutions altogether is not seen as an option. Rather, their urgent and comprehensive reform is a top priority to sustain their value added as multilateral coordination mechanisms. Global public goods such as, among others, climate protection, ecological diversity or global health require multilateral forums to mobilize resources and to coordinate policymaking. The Bretton Woods institutions, however, need to adapt to actual political and economic circumstances in their governance, decision-making structures and mandate, and they need to take into account country-specific requirements of social, human, cultural, ecological and economic development. Today, the Bretton Woods institutions are challenged with a considerably different environment than at the time of their founding. While they were formerly uncontested standard setters and dominated multilateral development policymaking in their respective field of mandate, today, dissatisfaction with the governance and decision-making structure in the institutions as well as with their lending policies, and disenchantment Laurissa Mühlich
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with reform obligations and crisis management have contributed to the creation of alternative institutions. Predominantly emerging markets, such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS), and also developing economies, contest the Bretton Woods institutions. They seek a broadening of their policy options for sustaining economic development and crisis response. Today’s global monetary and financial system is no longer concentrated in a single regulating agency with a global consensus on exchange rate and capital flow policies but a multipolar non-system in an environment of unregulated exchange rates and capital flows. The Bretton Woods institutions are complemented by institutions with overlap in membership and of intertwined institutional nature. The global monetary and financial system diversifies and decentralizes. Competition, in some cases, could spur reforms. At the same time, overlap and inconsistency can cause instability. The original efforts to achieve liberalized trade relations have resulted in numerous regionalized initiatives to reduce trade barriers between selected groups of countries in so-called free trade areas or customs unions. Several waves of regionalizing free trade have resulted in new protectionism along the borders of the newly emerging regional economic blocs. Whether regional trade integration could be understood an alternative, a supplement or even an accelerator to a multilaterally integrated free trade system is subject to an ongoing debate. Regional complements to the IMF have emerged since the 1970s in so-called regional financial arrangements that aim at preventing and backstopping financial crises in neighbouring countries. While their individual size is much smaller than the IMF, their lending capacity lives up to one of the IMF for some countries. Regional complements to the World Bank can be found in bank or fund mechanisms that are owned by emerging markets and developing economies that
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jointly provide the capital base for leveraging market capital to provide loan programmes for social and economic investments in their borrowing member countries. Mechanisms that complement the Bretton Woods institutions have been vividly debated in academia. While moral hazard behaviour and forum shopping are put forward to strengthen a centralized global monetary and financial system with the IMF and the World Bank as hubs, proponents of the new decentralized, pluripolar – in sum, complex – monetary and financial landscape highlight the opportunities for economic development and crisis response with the creation of new institutions, coalitions and partnerships. The Bretton Woods institutions have endured substantial changes in their environment that challenge their agility and ability to reform and will likely force them to reinvent their partnership and lending strategies amidst their complex surroundings. Laurissa Mühlich
Further reading
Bhagwati, J.N. (1991). The World Trading System at Risk. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Bhagwati, J.N. (1992). ‘Regionalism versus multilateralism’. The World Economy 15(5), 535–56. Eichengreen, B. (2006). Global Imbalances and the Lessons of Bretton Woods. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Grabel, I. (2017). When Things Don’t Fall Apart – Global Financial Governance and Developmental Financial in an Age of Productive Incoherence. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Keynes, J.M. (1980). ‘Activities 1940–1944: shaping the post-war world; the clearing union’. In D. Moggridge (ed.), The Collected Writings of J. M. Keynes, vol. 25. Macmillan, London. Stiglitz, J. (2002). Globalization and Its Discontents. W.W. Norton, New York. Williamson, J. (2005) ‘The strange history of the Washington Consensus’, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics 27(2), 195–206.
BRICS
‘emerging’ economies in the early 2000s did not start with these reports. By the end of the 1990s, a handful of developing countries were already perceived as key players in the global economy and finance sectors. The G7 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and US) had an active role in structuring opportunities to bring these countries together. In an official statement in 1999, the G7 indicated their interest ‘to broaden the dialogue on key economic and financial policy issues among systemically significant economies’. This led the creation of the G20 that same year, which established annual meetings of finance ministers from all G7 members, plus the European Union and 12 countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey. Then, at the 2003 G8 summit (G7 and Russia), France – the host country – invited leaders from 11 developing countries to participate in meetings with G8 leaders. In the following G8 meeting, hosted by the United States, which focused on Middle Eastern issues, emerging economies were not invited. French prime minister Jacques Chirac criticized this decision, stating that the G8 could not discuss major economic issues nowadays without discussing these issues with China, India, Brazil and South Africa. In 2005, the G8 invited the leaders of five countries (Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa) to attend the meeting. These countries – a.k.a. the ‘Outreach’ Group (O5) – were considered the most likely to be invited to join the G8. Then in 2007, a decision was made to introduce a structured approach for systematic engagement with the O5, known as the ‘Heiligendamm Process’. Then, in the context of the G8 summit of 2008, the heads of state from Brazil, China, India and Russia met ‘independently’ for the first time. The first meeting of the BRIC countries’ leaders detached from G8 summits took place in 2009, in Yekaterinburg, Russia. This is considered the ‘official’ birth of this group as an IGO. The following year, BRIC became BRICS, as South Africa accepted the membership invitation. Given this background, it becomes clearer why it is easy to find a disconnect in the literature over BRICS and ‘emerging’ economies. On the one hand, the acronym was introduced by Goldman Sachs’ economists in the early 2000s as a short-hand reference to countries
BRICS is an intergovernmental organization (IGO), whose acronym represents its five members: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. As of 2019, this group of countries represented almost one quarter of the world’s GDP, 30 per cent of the earth’s surface, and home to slightly over 40 per cent of the global population. Even for these reasons alone, the BRICS is an organization that deserves attention. While its political visibility became relatively lower in the late 2010s, its power in the international system should not be underestimated, particularly with the creation of the BRICS-based New Development Bank (NDB).
Origins
The BRICS has a rather odd origin in the context of IGOs: it was essentially ‘conceived’ before its own member countries considered creating it. In 2001, the investment bank Goldman Sachs published a report forecasting macroeconomic trends for the decade, entitled ‘Building Better Global Economic BRICs’. Signed by economist Jim O’Neill, it highlighted the ongoing economic growth of large emerging economies since the late 1990s. O’Neill focused his attention on four countries which he considered to be the world’s largest emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India and China – which he termed the ‘BRIC’. This report represents the first time this acronym appeared, making its emergence external to the countries involved. Then in 2003, the bank published another report on these countries, called ‘Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to 2050’. It (boldly) predicted that over the next 50 years, Brazil, Russia, India and China – the BRICs economies – would become a much larger force in the world economy. An information box was dedicated exclusively to South Africa, noting its potential ‘to play a part in the same kind of process’ as the BRIC countries in Africa – but the country was not considered to be yet in the same league. This report solidified the bank’s image as a reference towards ‘emerging’ economies in the financial realm. While the origin of the BRIC acronym should be credited to O’Neill (and Goldman Sachs), awareness of the importance of so-called 75
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then considered as the most relevant ‘new’ players for the global economy and finance markets. On the other, the BRICS became an IGO in 2009, when the leaders of these countries decided to come together with loose but common goals in mind. From this angle, as long as BRICS members share similar interests it does not matter much if there is significant heterogeneity among its members.
Goals and actions
In general terms, the ‘glue’ binding the BRICS is a shared desire to gain power in the international system, under an underlying premise that the existing status quo is not reflective of these countries’ importance. As stated by Brazilian president Luis Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva in 2010, BRICS aims to foster a new global trade and political geography. At the same time, the organization also seeks to strengthen bilateral relations among its members. While China–Russia and China– India have had a (relatively) rich interaction, all other relations were mostly historically thin in trade and politics, such as India–Brazil and South Africa–Russia. Thus, BRICS provides a space to bring its members together to both (1) leverage pressure in international settings and (2) increase commercial and diplomatic relations among its members. The BRICS is structured as a loose articulation. This inherent malleability allows individual member countries to opt into (or out of) specific actions. Cooperation is selective (Stuenkel, 2015, p. 159). Members sometimes embrace a unified stance towards specific issues, such as the collective stance against Australia’s proposal to refuse Vladimir Putin’s participation in the 2014 G20 meeting. Yet unity is not a membership expectation: for example, China and Russia are not eager to change the veto system in the UN Security Council as Brazil and India; and Brazil, China, India and South Africa (a.k.a. ‘BASIC’ group) coordinated their positions in several climate change meetings, with Russia opting to take a different route (see Cooper, 2016, pp. 61–2). These different positionings should not be taken as a failure of the BRICS to coordinate, but rather as a structural characteristic of the organization. BRICS members are free to choose in which settings or circumstances they wish to come together and challenge power distribution (i.e. members are not expected to act in unison). Deborah Barros Leal Farias
At the same time, this also invites disappointment and criticism – whether just or unjust – of the organization and its system-affecting power, which has been perceived as overpromising and under-delivering. Cooperation among BRICS members has not been restricted to heads of state meetings. Outside of the headlines, there have been a growing number of regular meetings between ministers from numerous areas: Finance, Foreign Affairs, Trade, Health Agriculture, Science & Technology, and so on. Business leaders from all five countries have met yearly since the early 2010s as part of the BRICS Business Council and Forum. There are also yearly forums on several issues, like Trade Unions, Urbanization, Friendship Cities, Sherpas, and so on. In 2018 alone, there were over 40 BRICS-articulated ‘events’, involving meetings of heads of state and ministers, councils, forums, working groups, and so on. As such, the BRICS is not as collectively engaged in high profile matters and not (yet?) the game-changer in global governance as some expected it to be. Nonetheless, the intra-BRICS ‘low-key’ engagements demonstrate an increasing density in members’ relations.
New Development Bank
Arguably the most important and tangible accomplishment of the BRICS so far has been the creation of the NDB. The proposal for a BRICS-based development bank was presented in Fortaleza Declaration (2012), and the agreement to formally create the NDB was signed in 2014. The NDB has been operational since 2016, headquartered in Shanghai, China and with regional offices in South Africa and Brazil. According to the Declaration, the Bank was created with the main purpose of mobilizing resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects not just in BRICS countries, but also in other emerging economies and developing countries. It was conceptualized as a complement to existing efforts of multilateral and regional financial institutions responsible for similar activities. Initially, the idea was that Bank’s capital would be raised from each of the founding countries contributing an equal 10 billion USD. Voting power would correspond to each country’s subscribed shares in the capital stock of the Bank, with no veto power. All UN members can become
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Bank members, although the BRICS’ shares will always be at least 55 per cent of voting power. As of March 2021, the NDB’s portfolio had 76 approved projects – many in infrastructure and renewable energy – totalling 28 billion USD, with about one-quarter of projects being approved in local currencies (as opposed to USD), a proportion which is expected to grow. Deborah Barros Leal Farias
References
Cooper, A.F. (2016). The BRICS: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. O’Neill, J. (2001). Building Better Global Economic BRICs. Goldman Sachs Report n.66, https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/ archive/archive-pdfs/build-better-brics.pdf. Stuenkel, O. (2015). The BRICS and the Future of Global Order. Lexington Books.
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Chandra Talpade Mohanty
ing critique, Mohanty has committed herself to theorizing and practising a feminist pedagogy whose purpose is to facilitate the decolonization of knowledge and practice antiracist, anti-imperialist feminist critiques of economic, political, and social structures and institutions in the academy in pursuit of more just, democratic futures (Alexander & Mohanty, 2013; Mohanty, 1987, 1989, 2003, 2006, 2013). Third World feminism gained increasing significance during the second wave of women’s movement (it peaked in the 1970s in the US). It distinguishes itself from other feminisms insofar as it centres women in the Third World as an analytical and political rather than biological, geographical, or cultural category. Within Western academic feminist thought, Mohanty’s Third World feminist perspective challenges the gender essentialism embedded in hegemonic Eurocentric Western feminism that blindly normalizes a single category of women and universalizes the experience and effects of gender subordination by obscuring differences among women who are shaped by histories of colonialism and imperialism (1988 [1986]). To do so, she investigates ‘the links among the histories and struggles of third world women against racism, sexism, colonialism, imperialism, and monopoly capital’ (Mohanty, 1991, p. 4) and illuminates not only the context-specific subordination but equally, if not more importantly, that of the agency of women in the Third World. Situated within this antiracist and anti-imperialist Third World feminist community, which included US-based feminists of colour, such as hooks, postcolonial feminists, such as Trinh, and the contributors to her co-edited book, Third World women and the politics of feminism, Mohanty’s Third World feminist perspective is equally significantly shaped by historical materialism and power-focused analytics (Abdel-Malek, 1981; Foucault, 1978, 1980; Smith, 1987).
Chandra Talpade Mohanty (born 1995) is an Indian-born feminist scholar-activist who brought Third World and then transnational feminist perspectives into feminist, international development, and postcolonial studies. Mohanty’s Third World feminist perspective (Martin & Mohanty, 1986; Mohanty, 1984, 1987, 1988, 1991), in particular, ‘Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarships and colonial discourses’ (original published in 1986 [dated in 1984]; the revised version published in 1988) shook up Western feminist and international development studies. It engaged in the politics of knowledge and of location and the everyday struggles of women in the Third World, which refers to ‘the colonized, neocolonized or decolonized countries (of Asia, Africa, and Latin America) whose economic and political structures have been deformed [through colonialism], and to black, Asian, Latino, and Indigenous peoples in North America, Europe and Australia’ (Mohanty et al., 1991, p. ix). She drew on postcolonial feminism, historical materialism, and power-focused analytics to shed light on the intersectionalities of (hetero‑)sexism, racism, colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. Building on her earlier perspective, Mohanty later broadened her scope and has developed a transnational feminist perspective that strengthens critiques of global capitalism (1997, 2003a, 2003b), the state and other governing institutions (2006, 2013; Mohanty et al., 2008). Her transnational feminist perspective continues to call for transnational feminist solidarities across multiple social borders, such as race, gender, class, sexuality, and nation (Carty & Mohanty, 2015; Mohanty, 1997, 2003b, 2006, 2013; Mohanty et al., 2008; Mohanty & Carty, 2018). Concurrent with this evolv78
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Her standpoint is most clearly articulated in two key texts: ‘Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarships and colonial discourses’ (1988 [1984]) that she wrote as a part-time teacher and an immigrant woman at an elite US institution (Cornell University, NY) and ‘Cartographies of struggle: Third World women and the politics of feminism’ (1991) that she wrote as an introduction to the co-edited book with Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres entitled Third World women and the politics of feminism (1991) which originated in the 1983 conference titled ‘Common differences: Third World women and feminist perspectives’ as assistant professor of Women’s Studies and the Sociology of Education at Oberlin College, NY. By integrating these theoretical traditions, Mohanty’s feminist perspective offers internal critiques of hegemonic Eurocentric universalist Western feminist representations of historically specific and dynamic Third World women with pre-given, frozen, and unitary identities. Her critiques illuminate blind spots in hegemonic feminist analyses: intersections of colonialism and imperialism with gender, race, and other forms of power that thought to differentially produce the everyday lives and struggles of women in the Third World. They make visible relational hierarchies among women in the Third World and between women in the Third World and those who represent them (i.e. Western feminists). Like Marx and other scholar activists, Mohanty’s scholarship aims not only at understanding but ultimately at changing the world. Mohanty’s Third World feminist perspective goes beyond internal critiques within feminist thought. It is necessarily coupled with the construction of solidarities among women in the most marginalized communities (1991). By turning our attention to a different yet common context of struggle against (hetero‑)sexist, racist, and imperialist structures among women in the Third World across different sociocultural and historical locations, Mohanty has us see women in the Third World as ‘a political constituency’ (Mohanty, 1991, p. 7) who come to form an oppositional alliance against colonial and imperialist structures that use gender, race, and other power relations. What unites diverse Third World women across differences in time, space, and history is this oppositional political commonality, ‘a common
context of struggle’. Influenced by historical materialism that sees the working class as the revolutionary vanguard, her perspective enables us to see women in the Third World as the change agents who (potentially) build solidarities based on a common context of struggle across differences. Mohanty has consistently intended to facilitate the construction of solidarities among women in the most marginalized communities. While her perspective was first identified as Third World feminist, her approach later has come to be identified as a transnational feminism with her work with M. Jacqui Alexander entitled ‘Introduction: Genealogies, legacies, movements’, which is an introduction to the co-edited book entitled Feminist genealogies, colonial legacies, democratic futures (Alexander & Mohanty, 1997), her chapter in the co-edited book entitled ‘Women workers and capitalist scripts: Ideologies of domination, common interests and the politics of solidarity’ (Mohanty, 1997), and subsequently with her single-authored book entitled Feminism without borders (Mohanty, 2003b) that she wrote as associate professor and professor of Women’s Studies at Hamilton College, NY respectively and beyond (Alexander & Mohanty, 2013; Mohanty, 2015, 2018) that she wrote as professor and, after 2013, distinguished professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Syracuse University, NY. The choice of the word ‘transnational’ as opposed to ‘global’ is intentional insofar as transnational feminism differentiates itself from hegemonic liberal global feminism which has a Eurocentric, universalist tendency to homogenize women’s experiences and ignore their context-specific agency by constructing Western, more privileged feminists as saviours. One driving force behind the shift from ‘Third World’ to ‘transnational’ is Mohanty’s evolving conceptualization of capitalism and its opposition. The way Mohanty identifies capitalism corresponds to an orthodox understanding of historical materialism in which the mode of production or the economy is the base and in which one type of relations of production dominates each stage of the development of the forces of production. While Mohanty has drawn on antiracist, anti-imperialist Third World feminist tradition and the power-focused analytics to Chizu Sato
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examine complex relations between the local and the global, capitalism is seen as ‘a foundational principle’ of social life at this time (2003b, p. 183). It is the dominant, and oft constructed as the only, mode of production that produces and articulates a superstructure constituted by gender, race, and other power relations. Women in the Third World are constructed first and foremost as workers who are thought to share common interests that originate from the different yet similar experience of the class position they all occupy in capitalist relations of production. Her understanding of capitalism’s production of concrete material effects has been clearly stated by her in the introduction to her 1997 essay: ‘This has been an especially difficult essay to write – perhaps because the almost total saturation of the processes of capitalist domination makes it hard to envision forms of feminist resistance that would make a real difference in the daily lives of poor women workers’ (p. 4). Her power-focused perspective enables her to conceptualize capitalism not only as exploitative but also as dominating. Her capitalism is global, ever-expanding, pervasive, and dominating, which makes it difficult for her to come up with a viable feminist politics. From her combined perspective that sees the working class as the potential revolutionary vanguard of change (historical materialism), Third World women as change agents (Third World feminism), and power as both domination and enabler (power-focused analytics), the only viable strategy is to organize equally if not larger and more powerful place-based feminist solidarities among Third World women across borders who act together to counter the capitalism and intersecting oppressive structures. Her deliberate focus is on ‘continuities in the experiences, histories, and strategies of survival of [Third World women] workers’ (Mohanty, 1997, p. 8; emphasis in original) through systemic analysis of institutional processes supports this project. Her perspective pays attention to the interworkings of the systemic nature of power (e.g. heterosexism, racism, casteism, and nationalism) earlier with global capitalism (1997, 2003) and later also with the state and other governing institutions (2006, 2008, 2013) as they locate diverse groups of women in the marginalized communities differently. However, it differs from some postmodernist feminist perspectives that suggest systemic analyses of institutionalized power, grounded Chizu Sato
in the (implicitly singular) epistemology of marginalized communities of women to be essentialist (2003, 2013) insofar as Mohanty’s perspective makes it possible to see global capitalism (1997, 2003) or the interlocking institutionalized system of power (2006, 2008, 2013) as a common context of struggle in relation to which explicitly diverse women in marginalized communities can relate their experiences, share these experiences with others, find commonalities, build common cause, and form oppositional place-based activisms transnationally (1997, 2003). A combination of historical materialism, postpositivist realist epistemology (antithetical to postmodern relativism) and Third World and transnational feminisms shapes her theorization of politics. Parallel to historical materialism’s economism (economy as prior to superstructure, which is prior to consciousness), ideologies shaped by capitalism that constitute oppressive structures are thought of as obscuring the consciousness of Third World women such that they cannot see clearly the structures that exploit and dominate them. They are, thus, unable to act on their supposed common interests to enact transnational feminist solidarities against those interlocking structures. When women in the marginalized communities do not identify themselves with their theoretically given subject position in relation to capitalist exploitation and other interlocking institutionalized power that utilize gender, race, and other oppressive institutionalized power structures, they are thought of having inaccurate (or ‘false’) consciousness, as having not yet recognized their historical mission as revolutionary subjects (1997). Drawing on the concept of ‘epistemic privilege’ from feminist standpoint theory (Harding, Hartsock, and Smith), which has one root in historical materialism (Marx and Lukács), Mohanty (1997, 2003, 2013) extends ‘epistemic privilege’ to women in the most marginalized communities. As they are exploited and dominated by capitalism, patriarchy, nationalism (2013), militarism (2006, 2008) and other oppressive institutionalized power structures (2013), they potentially occupy ‘a special social location in the international division of labor which illuminates and explains crucial features of the capitalist [and other, such as neoliberal state (2013)] processes of exploitation and domination’ (Mohanty, 1997, p. 7; emphasis in original). The knowledge pro-
Chandra Talpade Mohanty 81
duced by women in the most marginalized communities who recognize their historical position thereby common interests is understood as ‘accurate’ (1997, 2003). The ‘accurate’ (or true) consciousness gained through the identification with a common context of struggle is a necessary condition for constructing transnational feminist, antiracist, anticapitalist solidarities, viable enough to counter the global capitalism and the state and other governing institutions that she powerfully constructs from their respective locations. While she left the field of early childhood education upon the completion of her PhD (the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1987), theorizing an antiracist, anitcapitalist, and anti-imperialist feminist pedagogy and practising it in the US imperialist, neoliberal academy have been the core part of Mohanty’s scholarly activism (Alexander & Mohanty, 2013; Mohanty, 1987, 1989, 2003, 2006, 2013). Mohanty has critically recognized the function of Western or privileged higher education in producing problematic, Eurocentric, universalist knowledge about Third World women. Furthermore, she has increasingly taken issue with the coupling of postmodernist feminist critiques and the neoliberal knowledge economy that flattens difference (2003, 2013) insofar as it makes radical feminist, antiracist, anti-imperialist projects irrelevant. She sees the neoliberal academy as an important site for her political intervention to decolonize knowledge and to practise materialist, antiracist, anticapitalist feminist critiques. In the article entitled ‘Under Western eyes revisited: Feminist solidarity through anticapitalist struggles’ (2003) Mohanty puts forward an antiglobalization pedagogy that she names the ‘feminist solidarity or comparative feminist studies’ model to be used by feminist educators in the neoliberal academy. It differs from two other models, the ‘feminist-as-tourist’ model and the ‘feminist-as-explorer’ model, which, respectively, essentialize women or their cultures and conceive of those objects of study (women and cultures) and those who study and their cultures as discrete. Mohanty’s feminist solidarity model encourages educators to highlight not only historically developed specificities and differences, but also commonalities that cut across those specificities and differences through the comparative
examination of ‘internal racism, capitalist hegemony, colonialism, and heterosexualization’ in the country where subjects are taught so that learners can identify how the local and the global co-exist and relate to each other and how they are co-implicated into those processes of ‘global domination, exploitation and resistance’ (2003, p. 241). Ultimately, the feminist solidarity model aims to produce active citizenship with a transnational consciousness; individuals who can imagine connections between one another through ‘mutuality, co-responsibility, and common interests’ (p. 242) across differences by making ‘power, privilege, agency and dissent’ (p. 244) visible to build ‘cross-national feminist solidarity and organizing against capitalism’ (p. 230) and the state and other governing institutions (2013) in their respective locations. This pedagogical model is valuable insofar as the academic culture in which Mohanty works is pervaded by the neoliberal knowledge economy (difference as commodity) and some postmodernist critiques (systemic analyses as essentialist) that flatten historically developed differences without showing their relationality (2003, 2013). While Mohanty’s scholarship is widely read and largely positively accepted, it does not go without critique. Both partly stem from the historical materialism she employs. One area of critique relates to her historical materialist-inflected realist epistemology that recognizes marginalized communities of women as having potential ‘epistemic privilege’ (which differs from ‘epistemic advantage’ (cf. Haraway, 1988)). Their knowledge, once they identify their historical mission in relation to capitalist and other institutionalized power structures, is presented as ‘accurate’, and women of those marginalized communities possessed of their accurate knowledge become the driving force for resistance. Mohanty’s firm commitment to gender justice for women in the most marginalized communities implies that the knowledge, grounded in the experiences of women of non-marginalized communities is less accurate and not as valid (2013) and that the relationship between women of the most marginalized and non-marginalized communities is epistemologically predetermined as unequal (Sato, 2014). This raises serious questions as to how to form a viable alliance Chizu Sato
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between women with diverse backgrounds for gender justice based on this predetermined epistemic hierarchy. Another critique concerns her systemic analyses of institutionalized processes of racism, (hetero‑)sexism, nationalism, and class exploitation. Her analysis is seen as reductionist and totalizing from postmodernist feminist perspectives that focus on specificities over commonalities across differences (2013). Her response to this critique has been to remark the necessity of making visible both differences and commonalities to identify a common context for struggle among women situated in specific historical contexts across borders as the vanguard for change. However, her systemic analyses, with their focus on the examination of ‘continuities’ of capitalist exploitation and domination (1997, 2003), pay little attention to abundant economic differences within and economic processes other than capitalism that pervade the everyday struggles of women in the most marginalized communities (Sato, 2014). Mohanty has persistently argued for the importance of recognizing specificities that constitute everyday struggles of women in marginalized communities while her theory appears to limit her ability to recognize them. While there is a possibility that highlighting specificities may make it more difficult to unite women across differences, Gibson-Graham’s (2006) perspective illuminates how diverse economic practices can contribute to the decolonization of the essentialist notion of capitalism embedded in Monday’s analyses and better account for context-specific class injustice and interests. Following this critique, the decolonial feminist project for which she so passionately advocates would be strengthened by abandoning capitalocentrism and incorporating the diverse economies perspective. Mohanty has consistently demonstrated her ethico-political commitment to gender justice by putting everyday antiracist, anti-imperialist struggles of women in the most marginalized communities at the centre of her scholar-activism. She has and continues to do this with utmost urgency and collaboratively with people with whom she shares a common context of struggle. She engages topics such as decolonization of knowledge, critiques of liberal global feminism, postmodern relativism, global capitalism, US imperial Chizu Sato
war-state, militarism (2008), neoliberal corporate academy, and the colonial project of the Israeli state (2013), the cross-generational histories of feminist of colour activism (Carty & Mohanty, 2015; Mohanty & Carty, 2018), and feminist pedagogy. Her Third World and transnational feminist perspectives have been one of the most influential correctives to hegemonic Western feminist analyses about women in the most marginalized communities. Her interventions motivate and provide means for scholars from diverse backgrounds in diverse locations to be active citizens who take responsibility for a place-based urgent matter collectively by making visible how the local and the global relate, anchoring everyday antiracist and anti-imperialist struggles by women in marginalized communities from their respective locations (2003, 2006, 2013). Chizu Sato
References
Abdel-Malek, A. (1981). Social dialectics: Nation and revolution. State University of New York Press. Alexander, M.J., & Mohanty, C.T. (eds) (1997). Feminist genealogies, colonial legacies, democratic futures. Routledge. Alexander, M.J., & Mohanty, C.T. (2013). Cartographies of knowledge and power: Transnational feminism as radical praxis. In R. Nagar & A. Swarr (eds), Critical transnational feminist praxis (pp. 23–45). State University of New York Press. Carty, L. & Mohanty, C.T. (2015). Mapping transnational feminist engagements: Neoliberalism and the politics of solidarity. In R. Baksh & W. Harcourt (eds), The Oxford handbook of transnational feminist movements (pp. 82–115). Oxford University Press. Foucault, M. (1978). History of sexuality: volume one. Random House. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge. Pantheon. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2006). A postcapitalist politics. University of Minnesota Press. Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism as a site of discourse on the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–99. Martin, B., & Mohanty, C.T. (1986). Feminist politics: What’s home got to do with it? In T. de Lauretis (ed.), Feminist studies/critical studies (pp. 191–212). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi .org/10.1007/978–1-349–18997–7_12. Mohanty, C.T. (1984). Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Boundary 2, 12/13(spring/fall), 333–58. https://doi.org/10.2307/302821.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty 83 Mohanty, C.T. (1987). Feminist encounters: Locating the politics of experience. Copyright 1 (fall), 30–44. Mohanty, C.T. (1988). Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Feminist Review, 30(1), 61–88. https:// doi.org/10.1057/fr.1988.42. Mohanty, C.T. (1989). On race and voice: Challenges for liberal education in the 1990s. Cultural Critique, 14(winter), 179–208. https://doi.org/10.2307/1354297. Mohanty, C.T. (1991). Cartographies of struggle: Third World women and the politics of feminism. In C.T. Mohanty, A. Russo & L. Torres (eds), Third World women and the politics of feminism (pp. 1–47). Indiana University Press. Mohanty, C.T. (1997). Women workers and capitalist scripts: Ideologies of domination, common interests and the politics of solidarity. In M.J. Alexander & C.T. Mohanty (eds), Feminist genealogies, colonial legacies, democratic futures. Routledge. Mohanty, C.T. (2003a). Under Western eyes revisited: Feminist solidarity through anticapitalist struggles. Signs, 28(2), 499–535. Mohanty, C.T. (2003b). Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/ 10.1515/9780822384649.
Mohanty, C.T. (2006). US empire and the project of women’s studies: Stories of citizenship, complicity and dissent. Gender, Place & Culture, 13(1), 7–20. Mohanty, C.T. (2013). Transnational feminist crossings: On neoliberalism and radical critique. Signs, 38(4), 967–91. Mohanty, C.T., & Carty, L.E. (eds) (2018). Feminist freedom warriors: Genealogies, justice, politics, and hope. Haymarket Books. Mohanty, C.T., Riley, R.L., & Pratt, M. B. (2008). Introduction: Feminism and US wars – mapping the ground. In R.L. Reily, C.T. Mohanty & M.B. Pratt (eds), Feminism and war: Confronting US imperialism (pp. 1–16). Zed Books. Mohanty, C.T., Russo, A., & Torres, L. (eds) (1991). Third World women and the politics of feminism. Indiana University Press. Sato, C. (2014). Toward transnational feminist literacy practices. Rethinking Marxism, 26(1), 44–60. Smith, D. (1987). The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology. Northeastern University Press.
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Child labour
Trends and status
Data do show substantial progress against child labour – globally, it has fallen from 245.5 million in 2000 to 160 million in 2020 (before the current Covid-induced global recession). However, there has been a regression in the recent (2016–20) period in sub-Saharan Africa, where the incidence of child labour, after falling from 25.3 per cent in 2000 to 22.4 per cent in 2016, has gone up to 23.9 per cent in 2020 (Table 1). Within Asia the problem of child labour is more severe in South Asia. It is very likely that these regressive trends will be reinforced by the effects of the Covid-induced global recession.
Definition of child labour
Child labour is defined by both United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and International Labour Organization (ILO) as being work done by children that either is dangerous and harmful to children or interferes with their schooling. Child labour again can be divided into two types – one that is performed as unpaid labour within the household and the other that is performed for a wage (i.e. as a waged employee). Unpaid labour within the household is itself of two sub-types – labour that contributes to household economic activity, such as work in agriculture; and labour that contributes to unpaid care work, such as looking after younger siblings. In each of the above cases one must consider the age of the child. Most countries allow for some amount of care work to be performed by children, particularly, girls. This, however, reflects a gender bias that unpaid care work is the responsibility of girls. This along with early marriage and low investment in girls’ education, compared to boys, results in higher levels of school dropouts among girls than boys; strengthening a gender bias that lasts all through the lives of girls and women. The 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of Children reflects this necessity of universal education. Article 28 requires that nations ‘recognize the right of the child to education … and … in particular … make primary education compulsory and available to all’. Further, Article 32 recognizes ‘the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development’. The elimination of child labour is a foundational requirement of membership of the ILO. All member states are expected to take action to end child labour, paying particular attention to what are called the worst forms of child labour (i.e. those that involve physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, and forms of hazardous work).
Table 1
Percentage of children aged 5 to 17 years in child labour, by region
2008
2012
2016
2020
Sub-Saharan Africa
25.3
21.4
22.4
Asia and the Pacific
13.3
9.3
7.4
23.9 5.6
Latin America and the
19.0
8.8
7.3
6.0
Caribbean
Source: ILO/UNICEF (2020).
Within the above overall trends, there are some more facts to be noted about child labour (ILO/UNICEF, 2020): 1. Of 160 million children worldwide as child labour, as many as 79 million are performing hazardous work. 2. Most child labour is within children’s own family unit; 72 per cent are contributing family workers. 3. The agricultural sector accounts for the largest share (70 per cent) of child labour worldwide. 4. There are now more children as child labour in sub-Saharan Africa than in the rest of the world put together. One more supposed fact from the data is that child labour is more prevalent among boys than girls in every age group (ILO/UNICEF, 2020). This, however, is incorrect. Given that girls are more likely than boys to drop out and not complete schooling, it would be surprising to find more boys than girls in child labour. The explanation for this anomaly lies in the presence of the uncounted child labour of those girls who carry out some of 84
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the unpaid household work, particularly in looking after siblings while parents are at work. In the absence of state-provided childcare, this is likely to be a frequently occurring phenomenon accompanying low-wage employment. The result is also that there is an under-counting of girls in child labour (Edmonds & Thevenon, 2019); with girls who are neither at school nor in employment, but looking after siblings, being missed in child labour statistics, as argued in Rustagi and Leiten (2010). Although the low- and middle-income countries of the global South are the centres of contemporary child labour, today’s upper-income countries have also gone through phases of development that ‘included gross exploitation of children as agricultural, industrial and service-sector workers’ (Hines, 1996, p. 7), with all the horrors shown in the novels of Charles Dickens and Emile Zola. Currently, however, child labour, in the global North is at vastly different levels compared to the global South. Thus, there is much to be learned about how today’s upper-income countries overcame high levels of child labour.
Determinants of child labour
In seeing what policies could work to drastically reduce, even end child labour, we should look at its determinants. Most important is the insufficiency of family income (Edmonds & Thevenon, 2019). A historical analysis of the Industrial Revolution in Britain stresses the role of family income: ‘children worked in factories because their families were poor; as family income increased, child labour decreased’ (Nardinelli, 1990, p. 112). A study of India (Bharadwaj et al., 2016) showed the supply curve of child labour sloping down with wages (i.e. an increase in wages reduced supply of child labour and vice versa). Another study of India’s rural employment guarantee scheme also showed the supply of child labour going down with an increase in adult wages. Some models of child labour explicitly base it on low adult wages (Basu, 1999). Along with a supply of child labour there also must be demand for child labour. We have mentioned one form of demand for child labour – to acquire traditionally family-transmitted knowledge of crafts. More important, however, is the business
demand for cheap and docile labour. All through the history of industrialization and, possibly more so of proto-industrialization (Cunningham & Viazzo, 1996) there has been a demand for child labour in order to reduce costs of production. In the current system of global production characterized by hyper-competition among suppliers, resulting in a ‘race to the bottom’ in labour standards, child labour is often part of production systems, particularly in difficult-to-monitor locations. The vulnerability of low-income families is one of the social foundations of global production (Phillips et al., 2014) and child labour is utilized as a management practice in cost-cutting strategies within global value chains (Crane, 2013). Weak government and regulatory mechanisms compound the use of child labour as a cost-cutting strategy in global production. In dealing with child labour in the capitalist economy, it is interesting to see why child labour has become a problem to be dealt with. Historically, children working was not considered child labour with its negative connotations. What we call child labour was an accepted part of most traditional, non-capitalist economies. In Bolivia, for instance, it was argued that child labour was part of their traditional, indigenous system and did not need to be eliminated. ‘… in the Andean society … since very young the children worked with their parents in the fields and all this and there was not this negativity associated with this. There is a dignification with it that’s really strong. It’s a big part of their bringing up’ (Stewart, 2017). In traditional societies, the way knowledge was acquired was basically through children working with their parents, or as apprentices in craft guilds (Nathan, 2023). Carrying out tasks as helpers and observing what was done, children acquired the required knowledge, whether of agriculture or crafts, through learning by doing. Very few forms of knowledge, such as of ritual or warfare, required literacy or the ability to read sacred texts. In the modern capitalist world, however, there is a need for both literacy and even numeracy. Factory workers need to be able to read instructions in manuals. In addition, in order to solve problems they encounter in production, workers need some understanding of the principles of the processes they Dev Nathan
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are carrying out. Consequently, a long period of basic schooling has become necessary to participate in all but the least-paid forms of manual and domestic labour. The knowledge economy (Renn, 2020) changes from learning by doing to learning by study; education resulting in both literacy and numeracy thus makes it imperative for workers of contemporary capitalist economies to spend many years in school and other systems of formal education. This is the instrumental reason for limiting any work done by children to such an amount that it does not affect their education. In addition, there is the intrinsic value of education in developing capabilities, acquiring the status of a right in the contemporary world. Knowledge of traditional craft skills, however, may still be passed on in the parents-to-children learning by doing and observing manner. But for children to have the choice of occupations as they grow up, it is necessary to provide them with a general education. In fact, with the growing digitization of economic and social relations, even craftworkers need to know to operate new technologies, such as smartphones, reinforcing the necessity, even in an instrumental manner, of education as a means of acquiring general knowledge. The continuation of the traditional method of craft education is then also a reason for the continuance of child labour within the home in a capitalist economy.
Policies
Policies to deal with and end child labour must encompass both the demand for and supply of child labour. They must also distinguish between child labour as waged employees, including those where forms of force are involved, and child labour as home-based workers within the family. In the category of home-based child labour, again there is a distinction between those performing tasks considered economic tasks in national income accounts, and those, mainly girls, performing care work that is not included in national income accounts. The most important distinction for policy is that between child labour as waged employees and as home-based workers; though it should be noticed that children might well move from one type of child labour to the other type. This distinction leads to very difDev Nathan
ferent prescriptions for types of interventions. In the case of wage employees, particularly so for those in types of forced labour and hazardous work, there is a clear requirement of legal intervention, which might take the form of carceral action against employers, the rescue of such child labour and their rehabilitation in education and family life. Such legal intervention, however, has two limitations. First, there have been concerns that removing children from forms of wage employment may end up pushing them into hazardous work and worse forms of labour. This was seen in the case of children who used to work in garment manufacture in Bangladesh and football stitching in Pakistan (Lund-Thomsen et al., 2012); though a macro-study of child labour in global value chains does not reveal such cross-sector displacement (Ugarte et al., 2020). The possibility of displacement, however, points to one ever-present weakness in policies that regulate employment of child labour in the formal sector – they do not end the supply of child labour, who might well be forced to seek employment in the informal sector and in hazardous work, along with the risks of trafficking. Thus, demand-side interventions, though necessary, are not sufficient to end employment of child labour and point to the need to look at the larger development and social context leading to the supply of child labour. As mentioned earlier, most child labour is present in home-based work with their families and that too mostly in agriculture. If there are 100 million workers worldwide then it would require action against up to 100 million families. It would not be possible to carry out carceral actions against such a large number of persons. Further, it would violate the human rights of parents who take such decisions under economic duress. Indirect or developmental approaches would need to be taken. Compulsory education is an important indirect intervention for ending the supply of child labour (Weiner, 1991; Edmonds & Thevenon, 2019). Paying attention to this problem becomes even more important in the context of the Covid-19 recession, where the digital divide pushes millions of children of families that cannot afford smartphones out of education. It needs to be pointed out that universal education was not just a child rights issue in East Asia but was also critical
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in that region’s successful industrialization (Amsden, 1989). However, there are difficulties in implementing universal education, which range from poor infrastructure and poor-quality education to lack of an incentive in terms of higher earnings for the educated (UNICEF, 2021). But in looking at the factors that result in children leaving school, India’s Periodic Labour Force Survey data for 2017–18 showed that among boys it was the need to supplement household income, while among girls it was the need to do domestic chores. It is very likely that these negative factors are not specific to South Asia, but would also apply in, say, sub-Saharan Africa. What this would mean is that a compulsory education policy would need to be supported by (1) income supplements for poor households to compensate for the income that boys would otherwise have brought in; and (2) state- or community-provided childcare facilities to free school-going girls from the responsibility of domestic chores. In addition, however, it is necessary that parents must have the aspiration for their children to be educated and become something different from what they themselves are. Appadurai (2004) and Nathan (2005) bring out the importance of aspirations in driving development, including that of universal education. As a woman worker in a brick kiln is reported to have said, ‘We do not want our children to be murkho (fools) like us’ (Sarkar, 2010, p. 19). The importance of parents’ aspirations for their children to be educated is strikingly brought out in a study of child labour in industrializing Japan. By the time of the 1879 compulsory education law, 98 per cent of Japanese children were already in school because of the importance placed on literacy in Japanese homes (Saito, 1996). Educational aspirations for children can work even within narrowly constrained household incomes; but the human rights and developmental implications of education make it desirable that states provide income and childcare support for poor families, with the added requirement of social security in times of economic downturn.
Conclusions
Child labour as a mass phenomenon disappears as a country moves out of poverty (Udry, 2003). But that should not lead to
a policy of waiting for that to happen to universalize education. In fact, as the example of East Asia shows, the universalization of education and, hence, the ending of child labour is itself a major step in moving out of poverty. For households and economies, universal education can raise the floor of entry into the labour force. In the world today, there are more children in child labour in sub-Saharan Africa than in the rest of the world put together (ILO/ UNICEF, 2020). Thus, a breakthrough in this region is needed to end child labour. However, this should be accompanied by stringent policy implementation in South Asia and other parts of the world, requiring a combination of regulation and policies, including compulsory education, provision of childcare facilities, income support for poor households and social security to protect against variations in income, as being currently witnessed in the pandemic-induced global recession. Dev Nathan
References
Amsden, A. (1989). Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization. Oxford University Press. Appadurai, A. (2004). The capacity to aspire. In V. Rao & M. Walton (eds), Culture and Public Action. Stanford University Press. Basu, K. (1999). Child labour: cause, consequences and cure. Journal of Economic Literature 37, 1083–119. Bharadwaj, P., Lakdawala, L., & Li, N. (2016). Perverse consequences of well-intentioned regulations: evidence from India’s child labour ban. Discussion paper series 25. Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study. Crane, A. (2013). Modern slavery as a management practice: exploring the conditions and capabilities for human exploitation. Academy of Management Review 38(1), 45–69. Cunningham, H. & Viazzo, P.P. (1996). Child Labour in Historical Perspective 1800–1985: Case Studies from Europe, Japan and Colombia. UNICEF, International Child Development Centre. Edmonds, A. & Thevenon, O. (2019). Child labor: causes, consequences and policies to deal with it. OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers No. 235. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/ f6883e26-en.pdf?expires=1630551702& id=id&accname=guest&checksum=3B B31A319A2F292EA3A51339B7733705.
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88 Elgar encyclopedia of development Hines, J. (1996). Foreword. In H. Cunningham & P.P. Viazzo (eds), Child Labour in Historical Perspective 1800–1985: Case Studies from Europe, Japan and Colombia. UNICEF, International Child Development Centre. ILO/UNICEF (2020). Child Labour: Global Estimates 2020, Trends and the Road Forward. UNICEF. Lund-Thomsen, P., Nadvi, K., Chan, A., Khara, N., & Xue, H. (2012). Labour in global value chains: work conditions in football manufacturing in China, India and Pakistan. Development and Change 43(6), 1–27. Nardinelli, C. (1990). Child Labor and the Industrial Revolution. Indiana University Press. Nathan, Dev. (2005). Capabilities and aspirations. Economic and Political Weekly. January 1, 2005. Nathan, Dev. (2023). Knowledge and Global Inequality. Economic and Political Weekly 58(7). https://www.epw.in/journal/2023/ 7/special-articles/knowledge-and-global -inequality.html. Phillips, N., Bhaskaran, R., Nathan, D., & Upendranadh C. (2014). The social foundations of global production networks: towards a global political economy of child labour. Third World Quarterly 35(3), 428–46. Renn, J. (2020). The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene. Princeton University Press.
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Rustagi, P., & Leiten, K. (2010). The Nowhere Children. Institute for Human Development. Saito, O. (1996). Children’s work, industrialization and the family economy in Japan, 1872–1926. In H. Cunningham and P.P. Viazzo (eds), Child Labour in Historical Perspective 1800–1985: Case Studies from Europe, Japan and Colombia (pp. 73–90). UNICEF, International Child Development Centre. Sarkar, I. (2010). Assessment of Child Labour Free Brick Kilns in Malda District, West Bengal. Save the Children/Bal Raksha Bharat. Kolkota. Stewart, K. (2017). Is child labor always wrong? A view from Bolivia. The Guardian. https:// www.theguardian.com/global-development/ 2017/feb/24/is-child-labour-always-wrong-the -view-from-bolivia-podcast-transcript. Udry, C. (2003). Child labor. Center Discussion Paper No. 856, Yale University. Ugarte, C., Olarreaga, M., & Saiovici, G. (2020). Child labour and global value chains. Discussion Paper DP 15426. Centre for Economic Policy and Research. https://repec.cepr.org/repec/cpr/ ceprdp/DP15426.pdf. UNICEF (2021). Annual Report. New York: UNICEF. https://www.unicef.org/reports/ unicef-annual-report-2021. Weiner, M. (1991). The Child and the State in India: Child Labor and Education Policy in Comparative Perspective. Princeton University Press.
Citizen aid
groups, such as people living with disabilities, which are often neglected by national welfare programmes. Some citizen aid activities spring up in the context of disasters, such as earthquakes or floods; most notable are those which emerged recently in Haiti, Nepal, and the Philippines. Others grow over a number of years in response to evolving situations, such as refugees and migrants arriving in Europe or in the Middle East, or at the US–Mexican border. A poignant case are the initiatives that have emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic, often in the form of community-based mutual aid groups. The aim of drawing attention to such informal aid is not to delimit what merits inclusion in such a category, but understanding some of their characteristics, given that they might similarly be described as forms of charity, philanthropy, or volunteering. The latter is an especially important feature, without subsuming citizen aid entirely.
Aid and development have long been considered the preserve of professional organizations and institutions. The term ‘citizen aid’ draws attention to recently visible growth in informal activities, such as in response to the needs of refugees or natural disasters. It also points to longer histories of non-professional involvement in development and aid. Recognizing citizen aid as an alternative form of development is to position the professional development sector in a wider landscape of such practices. A key assumption of citizen aid is that supporting others is not the prerogative of those trained to do so, but part of the human condition.
Defining citizen aid
There are a wide range of definitions of informal, non-professional aid and development, from ‘Do-it-yourself-Aid’ to private aid initiatives (Fechter & Schwittay, 2019; Kinsbergen, Schulpen & Ruben, 2017; Rozakou, 2017). The term citizen is not used in a narrowly legal sense, such as based on national citizenship, but in a broader understanding of being part of a community, assuming responsibility for others. Citizen aid refers to privately funded, initially small-scale projects or initiatives, in countries of the global South and North. Citizen aid activities are characterized by their spontaneous inception and often respond in the first instance to an immediate need. They are sited in local neighbourhoods or depend on social networks which span regional or national borders. They can be described as ‘small organisations, founded by non-development specialists, run by volunteers and funded by individuals, focused on the direct provision of goods or services to individuals and communities overseas’ (Clifford, 2016, p. 480). Citizen aid projects do not necessarily address the same range of development challenges as the formal sector. They are often focused on child- and youth-related activities such as offering education and training, as well as facilitating income generation. Some offer support via soup kitchens or food banks; others revolve around health and care-related interventions, for example for those affected by HIV/AIDS, or work with marginalized
Voluntary nature
Citizen aid activities, at least in their early stages, are initiated and carried out by people in a voluntary, unpaid capacity. As some of these projects formalize as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), they may, in due course, employ paid staff. While many large-scale, established organizations consist of volunteer programmes, such as United Nations Volunteers or the US-based Peace Corps, the voluntary nature of citizen aid means that project founders rely on other forms of income while they run their projects. This can change if their projects grow and become formalized. While some are registered as NGOs, others are not; some include features of operating as a social enterprise, a small business, or an amalgamation of these. The significant increase of such activities in the last decade signals a voluntarization of aid (Schnable, 2021). This means that an increasing proportion of global aid activities are implemented through informal, privately financed, voluntary means. While detailed research on the economies of citizen aid is scarce, some evidence suggests that some of these projects become social enterprises, or operate like an NGO, with income-generating activities alongside private fundraising to sustain their work.
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Amateurs or professionals?
A controversial aspect of citizen aid concerns whether it should be characterized as being ‘amateur’, with the lack of legitimacy and qualifications, and the potential for causing harm and abuse, that this notion invokes. Question of legitimacy and accountability are crucial and have only begun to be addressed. These challenges are not unique to citizen aid, in the sense that large, formal aid organizations are frequently criticized for their lack of downward accountability towards the populations they serve, as opposed to the attention given to upward reporting mechanisms to satisfy donor requirements. In contrast, citizen aid activities have closer links to, and are differently embedded in, the communities in which they are active. In addition, being financed at least partly through private donations means that despite formal accounting mechanisms being underdeveloped or absent, trust and personal knowledge between those involved may offer some form of control. There is potential for abuse, such as in privately run orphanages which do not adhere to recognized standards of child protection; medical interventions delivered by lay people; or even child abduction by church groups, such as in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. Describing citizen aid wholesale as being undertaken by amateurs is problematic insofar as many practitioners, while they act in a voluntary capacity, often possess relevant training and skills, but choose to engage these in a pro bono capacity. Citizen aid is therefore also carried out by professionally trained people, even full-time aid agency staff, who choose to carry out private citizen aid on the side, in their holidays or spare time.
Outlook
What is the significance of these informal, alternative forms of aid and development? In the first instance, they unsettle a notion of development as an exclusively professional, formal sector. This notion captures only partially the global resource flows, including labour, time, and money, which are aimed at
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supporting others. It means that established understandings of aid as driven by institutions and actors of the global North, often framed in Western-liberal understandings, fall short of encompassing the range and diversity of peer-to-peer efforts to support others and each other. The emergence of citizen aid is not a recent phenomenon but reveals that formal development that dominates research and practice rather as an interlude in the historical context of mutual aid (Springer, 2020). In practical terms, overlooking informal approaches to aid and development risks missing opportunities for scaling up, joining forces, and learning from alternative practices, which often prioritize personal relationships, trust, and reliance on local communities. They encourage different forms of accountability and open avenues for mutual aid that are becoming increasingly important in order to address the impacts of the climate crisis, among other challenges. Anne-Meike Fechter
References
Clifford, D. (2016). International charitable connections: the growth in number, and the countries of operation, of English and Welsh charities working overseas. Journal of Social Policy, 45(3), 453–86. http://doi.org/10.1017/ S0047279416000076. Fechter, A.-M. & Schwittay, A. (2019). Citizen aid: grassroots interventions in development and humanitarianism. Third World Quarterly, 40(10), 1769–80. Kinsbergen, S., Schulpen, L., & Ruben, R. (2017). Understanding the sustainability of private development initiatives: what kind of difference do they make? Forum for Development Studies, 44(2), 223–48. Rozakou, K. (2017). Solidarity humanitarianism: the blurred boundaries of humanitarianism in Greece. Etnofoor, 29(2), 99–104. Schnable, A. (2021). Amateurs without Borders: The Aspirations and Limits of Global Compassion. University of California Press. Springer, S. (2020). Caring geographies: the COVID-19 interregnum and a return to mutual aid. Dialogues in Human Geography, 10(2), 112–15.
Civil society and development
The idea of civil society has a long heritage that can be traced back to ancient Greece. With the rise of capitalism in Western Europe from the late eighteenth century onwards the concept began to take on an array of diverse meanings with both positive and negative connotations. For example, the Scottish Enlightenment thinker, Adam Ferguson, in his book The History of Civil Society (1767), argued for civil society as a way to counter the loss of public spirit and the corrupting tendencies of commercialism and manufacturing. One of the most influential thinkers in linking civil society with democracy was Alexis de Tocqueville, whose book Democracy in America (1835) underlined the role of a pluralistic, self-organizing civil society independent of the state as an indispensable condition of a democracy (Keane, 1998). Lipset’s (1959) classic work on the essential elements of a democracy echoes de Tocqueville in noting the importance of a civil society, where citizens can freely assemble, voice their opinions and organize around shared interests. This view of civil society as closely aligned to democratization and capitalist development has become highly influential in contemporary development thinking and policy. For Karl Marx writing in the mid- to late nineteenth century, civil society was intrinsically linked to the rise of capitalism and the bourgeoisie. Civil society reflected a sphere of crass individual materialism and bourgeois property relations, a site of class relations that entrenched the power of the dominant class. Though the concept of civil society had fallen out of usage by the twentieth century, it was revitalized in the 1980s with the translation of the works of Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci’s perspectives on civil society inspired the left in Europe to rethink their political strategies at a time when the wave of neo-liberalism unleashed by Thatcher, Reagan and Mahathir across the world seemed to gain ideological dominance. Gramsci’s work offered an emancipatory version of civil society that recognized both state and civil society as sites of power relations and class struggle (Simon, 2015). By developing a counter-hegemony that could challenge dominant, oppressive ideas in society, Gramsci provided a strategy for opening the spaces of civil society to marginalized voices seeking alternative visions of society.
From the mid-1980s onwards the concept of civil society has become part of everyday discourse amongst academics, policymakers, politicians and activists. International development and financial institutions have absorbed the language of civil society into their mission statements, policy analyses and operations, recognizing and legitimating the multiple potential roles of civil society in development processes. Yet civil society remains a contested idea. Whilst democratic states view a pluralistic and open civil society as an essential ingredient of a liberal democracy, authoritarian states typically constrain civil society, especially those elements that are perceived to challenge the status quo. Nevertheless, since the early 2000s, governments across the world, whether authoritarian or democratic, have tightened the policy and legal environments pertaining to civil society.
What is civil society?
Civil society is a contested concept, endowed with a multiplicity of empirical referents and normative purposes. Its appropriation by actors across the ideological spectrum reflects its conceptual malleability and elasticity. In many ways it resembles an intellectual hatstand, where each can take from it an interpretation that suits their needs (Wood, 1990). Nevertheless, it has proved to be a resilient concept that has gained widespread currency since the late twentieth century. Civil society has both a normative and empirical content that distinguishes between civil society as an ideal-type and actually existing civil society. Civil society refers to the multitude of civic organizations that populate the space between the state, market and family, embody shared interests and goals and provide a space for deliberation on public issues. In practice, the boundaries between civil society, state, market and family are blurred. Empirically, civil society might include women’s groups, LGBT groups, professional associations, social movements, farmers’ organizations, trades unions, chambers of commerce and trades associations, and internet chat forums, though the precise empirical manifestations will vary contextually and historically. 91
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Why did international development institutions deepen their engagement with civil society from the mid-1980s onwards?
The surge of interest in civil society amongst international development and financial institutions was not coincidental. It came at a particular historical conjuncture where the global political order was radically transformed through a combination of factors. The end of the Cold War in 1989 was hailed by thinkers such as Francis Fukayama as the ‘end of ideology’. No longer was the world split between a capitalist West and a communist East. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 seemed to vindicate the supremacy of liberal democracy and capitalism as the only way forward. This ushered in a rethinking of the ideologically infused developmental debate around whether the state or the market should be the driver of change. In its place came a triadic developmental paradigm of state, market and civil society, three corners of a triangle that were assumed to be mutually reinforcing, working in harmony, and equally positioned (Howell & Pearce, 2001). In the late 1970s and 1980s, neoliberal thinkers and politicians lambasted the performance of states in developing countries. In response to numerous crises in the late 1970s, including the oil shock, recession and indebtedness, international financial institutions provided lending conditional upon macro-economic policy reforms. The implementation of the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) in Africa led to a rolling-back of the state through decentralization, streamlining, privatization and outsourcing. By the end of the 1980s, the SAPs were deemed a failure. This led to a growing interest in the governance failures of aid-recipient states. With the end of the Cold War, Western governments could embrace a ‘good governance’ agenda that focused on democratizing states, ensuring effectiveness, competence and probity, and strengthening the rule of law. A key element in this ‘good governance’ agenda was civil society as a watchdog on the state, a promoter of transparency and accountability, and a defender of human rights and civil liberties. This critique of so-called Third World states and the authoritarian states of the former Communist bloc took place against a background where the comparative advantages of non-governmental organJude Howell
izations (NGOs) were gaining recognition amongst academics and donors. The rise of neo-liberalism in the 1980s and the outsourcing of services boosted the development of NGOs internationally. NGOs were deemed to have qualities that states often lacked. These included being closer to the grassroots, more aware of the diversity of needs, flexible and less bureaucratic, more innovative and responsive. Contracting out state services to NGOs facilitated the streamlining of states and budget cuts. Civil society became reduced in development institution parlance to NGOs that either provided welfare services or could be usefully deployed in the democratization agendas of Western governments and donors. Parallel to this, the growing influence of Robert Putnam’s work on social capital amongst international development and financial institutions reinforced the emerging dominance of a neo-Tocquevillian understanding of civil society, especially in the USA. Putnam’s basic argument was that democracy worked best where there was civic community. Social capital, that is, the stock of trust, norms and networks that facilitate coordination were at the heart of civil society and democracy. The coming to power of Bill Clinton in the early 1990s created a favourable political context for the promotion of civil society. Many of the foreign policy bureaucracy staff who joined United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the Clinton era came from NGO backgrounds. In brief, a multiplicity of factors lay behind the absorption of civil society into the lexicon and operational armoury of international development and financial institutions from the mid-1980s onwards.
How have development and civil society become interlinked?
It was against this background that development institutions began to engage more systematically with civil society. Development institutions saw various reasons for cooperating with civil society, such as promoting democratization, holding states to account, advancing good governance, reducing poverty, providing services and humanitarian assistance and facilitating participatory processes. The primary vehicle for this engagement were NGOs or non-profit organizations. As international development institutions gained experience, they began to diver-
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sify the range of actors they worked with, including business and trades associations, women’s groups, LGTB groups and human rights organizations. In working more closely with civil society organizations, particularly NGOs, it was not just a matter of involving them in implementing projects but also of intervening more fundamentally in the shaping of civil society in recipient countries. To this end, international development institutions established dedicated offices, positions and programmes. For example, in 1989, the World Bank established the NGO Unit, partly to fend off criticism of World Bank policies and operations (Howell & Pearce, 2001). By the mid-1990s, the World Bank had shifted its discourse, renaming its NGO liaison officers as civil society specialists. Similarly, the UNDP, which had a much longer trajectory of working with NGOs that could be traced back to the mid-1970s, established a special Division for NGOs in 1986. By the mid-1990s the shift in discourse to civil society led to the relabelling of the NGO Unit as the Civil Society and Participation Unit, reflecting the intention to engage with a wider body of actors than NGOs. Since the late 1980s, the UK Overseas Development Administration (ODA) had begun to provide direct funding to NGOs through the Joint Funding Scheme. The change in government in 1997 and the newly coined Department for International Development led to a more strategic perspective that envisioned wider engagement with civil society actors that went beyond northern NGOs. These new units, divisions, specialist officers and civil society strategies sought to build the capacity of local civil society organizations, facilitate networks of knowledge exchange and seed the formation of new organizations that could promote liberal norms and a rights-based agenda. Capacity-building activities might include supporting training in management and financial systems, the development of governance structures in NGOs, enhancing the capacity of NGO staff to write proposals and reports, providing opportunities for building international connections and expanding knowledge of international best practice in different fields. Supporting civil society took place within a broader normative
framework around democratization and good governance.
Why has the policy and political environment around civil society tightened since the early 2000s?
By the turn of the millennium, international development institutions had accumulated considerable experience of working with NGOs and began to take stock of this. This coincided with a period when development institutions were rethinking their aid programmes, leading to new approaches, such as the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, which emphasizes principles such as ownership, mutual accountability and harmonization. With the growth of non-governmental shadow summits, UN country representatives queried the role of NGOs and their claims to legitimacy and representativeness. Academics and policymakers began to interrogate the accountability and transparency of NGOs, whilst NGOs also began to assess whether they had become too close to government (Edwards & Hulme, 1996). Added to this, the attacks on the Twin Towers in September 2001 and the subsequent launch of the War on Terror cast suspicion upon civil society organizations (Howell & Lind, 2009). The passing of the Patriot Act in 2001 specified new regulatory requirements for NGOs, including a clause whereby providing ‘material support’ such as services, training or expertise to designated terrorist organizations was illegal (Sidel, 2007). NGOs contested the law, arguing that the vagueness of the term ‘material support’ left it unclear as to what constituted a violation of the law. A year later the USAID introduced the requirement for all NGOs receiving USAID funds to sign an Anti-Terrorist Certificate, vouching that none of the NGO’s staff, partner organizations or beneficiaries had any material links to terrorism. These developments, along with their growing portfolio of regulatory measures, cast a chill over civil society. Not only did international development institutions and Western governments take a fresh look at civil society, but aid recipient countries, too, became concerned at the implications for political control of foreign funding channelled to local domestic groups. Between 1993 and 2021, 39 out of 153 Jude Howell
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low- and middle-income countries receiving foreign aid had passed restrictive legislation that limited the amount of foreign funds domestic NGOs could receive, how they could use these funds, or set up onerous mechanisms for channelling and reporting foreign aid (Dupuy et al., 2016). In many instances, such steps occurred on the heels of an electoral victory when a brief window of opportunity existed to clamp down on perceived political opponents. Though this did not necessarily imply that these countries were averse to the concept of civil society, it did point to increasing concern about international efforts to promote civil society in other contexts. Authoritarian states, too, were becoming increasingly suspicious about the political purposes of domestic civil society organizations receiving foreign funds and international NGOs. In the wake of the Colour Revolutions in Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Ukraine in the mid-2000s, the Russian and Chinese governments began to scrutinize local organizations that received foreign funds along with international foundations and NGOs. In 2012, Russia passed an NGO law which constricted the possibilities for foreign governments, international NGOs and philanthropic institutions to support local civil society organizations. The Chinese government followed suit. In 2010, the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange issued a notice requiring local organizations receiving foreign funds to open special foreign exchange bank accounts and provide notarized documentation. This was followed in 2016 (effective from January 2017) with the passing of the Overseas NGOs Act that required foreign NGOs to register with the relevant level of the Ministry of Public Security, unlike domestic NGOs that registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs. The 2016 legislation severely constricted the room for manoeuvre of foreign NGOs and foundations to fund local organizations and carry out activities in China. Yet, authoritarian states did not seek to wholly restrict civil society; they often tolerated and even promoted the development of welfare services-oriented NGOs that were instrumentally useful for welfare, social control and legitimation purposes. Nevertheless, their vision of civil society remains a sanitized one where political debate, advocacy and policy influence by non-governmental actors should be sharply circumscribed. Jude Howell
The global COVID-19 pandemic since 2020 has further constricted the spaces available to civil society actors domestically and globally. Curfews and lockdowns, for example, have often failed to provide exemptions for civil society organizations, hindering the delivery of vital services, as occurred in Burkina Faso, Belize and Rwanda (ICNL, 2021). Not only have governments limited access to information about COVID-19, which can affect their ability to provide timely and appropriate services, but they have excluded civil society organizations from decision-making processes. These twists and turns serve as a reminder that civil society is a contested concept and a field of action defined by both cooperation and conflict. The promotion of liberal norms through civil society building projects and programmes since the early 1990s reflects global power relations, provoking backlashes against foreign funding of civil society justified in terms of political sovereignty. When international development institutions work with civil society, they become part of the political jigsaw of the contexts in which they operate. Who they support creates new matrices of winners and losers, new configurations of power that might be disturbing to or indeed supportive of political elites, and diverse conceptualizations of ‘the good society’. In the end, if civil society is to be sustainable, it is best home-grown and home-financed.
Looking ahead
Civil society remains an everyday part of political and policy discourse. International development institutions continue to value the role of civil society actors in service provision, policy advocacy, as innovators of practice, as watchdogs on the state and market and as defenders and promoters of rights. For governments adopting new public management approaches to welfare, civil society groups provide a convenient way of reducing costs and trimming the state. Though the discourse of civil society continues to be adopted and adapted by a variety of ideological actors, the last two decades demonstrate that civil society as an emancipatory concept has come under increasing threat. In the wake of the War on Terror, the rise of populist regimes and the effects of creeping authoritarianism in government responses to the COVID-19 global pandemic,
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the spaces for civil society, particularly as regards advocacy, rights promotion and criticism of government policy are closing (Oram & Doane, 2016). The constriction of civil society should be a matter of concern for all those espousing ideals of openness, social justice and inclusion. Jude Howell
References
Dupuy, K., Ron, J., & Prakash, A. (2016). Hands Off My Regime! Governments’ Restrictions on Foreign Aid to Non-Governmental Organizations in Poor and Middle-Income Countries. World Development, 84, 299–311. Edwards, M. & Hulme, D. (1996). Too Close for Comfort: The Impact of Official Aid on Non-governmental Organisations. World Development, 24(26), 961–73. Howell, J. & Lind, J. (2009). Counter-Terrorism, Aid and Civil Society. Palgrave Macmillan.
Howell, J. & Pearce, J. (2001). Civil Society and Development: A Critical Exploration. Lynne Rienner Publishers. ICNL (2021). Top Trends: Covid-19 and Civic Space. ICNL. Keane, J. (ed.) (1998). Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives. University of Westminster Press. Lipset, S.M. (1959). Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Development. American Political Science Review, 53, 69–105. Oram, J. & Doane, D. (2016). Why Shrinking Civil Society Space Matters in International Development and Humanitarian Action. European Foundation Centre. Sidel, M. (2007). More Secure, Less Free? Anti-Terrorism Policy and Civil Liberties after September 11. University of Michigan Press. Simon, R. (2015). Gramsci’s Political Thought: An Introduction. Lawrence and Wishart. Wood, E.M. (1990). The Uses and Abuses of “Civil Society”. Socialist Register, 28(87), 60–84.
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Class
to class that moved readers from ‘class as social stratification’ to a ‘semi-relational’ Weberian approach, and finally to a relational Marxian approach. All three were important for Wright, and fed into each other, but the last was the most all-encompassing. Weberian and Marxian approaches to class share an interest in the unequal ownership of property and inequality in the marketplace, but a Marxian approach goes one step further. It does not only ask ‘what do people have’ and ‘what do they with it’, but also ‘how did they get it in the first place’ (Wright 2009; Bernstein 2010 for a similar formulation). The latter question requires exploration of unequal relations within the production process, and this foregrounds processes of exploitation and dispossession (Harvey 2003; Marx 1967). Vast inequalities in ownership of property in the present relate in no small part to dramatic acts of dispossession by the powerful in the past: the British aristocracy’s highland ‘clearances’ that torched villages and displaced Scottish peasants to make way for sheepwalks, or the colonization of Amerindian or Maori lands in the Americas or Aotearoa. Such processes of large-scale appropriation continue in the present – in Guatemala, Indonesia and Cambodia to make way for rubber and oil palm plantations, and in many other places besides (e.g. Pietalainen and Otero 2019). These are also appropriations of natural resources, stocks of which are depleted in ways that impact differently across countries and social classes (Moore 2015). Dispossession also occurs through less dramatic processes, such as when smaller farmers yield land to larger farmers with whom they have unpaid loans. If we understand class as a socio-economic position, we map the distribution of land. If we understand it as an historically embedded social relation, then we try to understand how and why land came to be so unevenly distributed in the first place. If dispossession explains much about class position and class relations, so too does exploitation. And while most labourers work informally, wages appear to recompense labourers for all of the time spent in the production process, but Marx argued, contrary to Adam Smith (1776), that the working day was in fact divided between ‘socially necessary’ labour time, which is that part of the working day when the labourer
The concept of class conveys at once a condition, a relation, and a core dynamic of social life under capitalism. Class understood as a condition describes inequality by referring to the relative social, economic and political position of individuals, households and social groups in terms of things like income and the ownership of property. Class understood as a relation refers to a vast array of human interactions from everyday life to the world-historical (e.g. Bensaïd 2002). Treating class as a relational concept moves discussion from description to analysis, and from superficial forms and moments towards class’s fundamental relationship with capitalism. Classes cannot exist in isolation from one another and are defined by their relationships with other classes. But class position is not only the outcome of external relations of one class with another, but also of the internal relations that make it a multifaceted concept. Class is gendered and racialized (Du Bois 2015 [1903]; Federici 2004) and inflected by other axes of oppression and differentiation such as ethnicity and caste (Bernstein 2010; Shah et al. 2018). When class is understood in these terms, its links to world-historical dynamics become clearer, and its ability to explain inequality becomes greater. And for many the purpose of studying class is to reduce inequality. This short chapter tries to outline a relational approach to class – one that goes beyond the attribution of class position based on individual or household characteristics to a focus on how social classes are reproduced through unequal relations in sites of production, exchange and reproduction. It outlines five dimensions of this broad approach to class: dispossession, exploitation, social reproduction/patriarchy, ideology/racism, and class consciousness/collective action.
Five dimensions of class Dispossession and exploitation Even if class is understood in relational terms, this does not mean that there is no place for understanding class as a social hierarchy demarcated by particular characteristics. This is what the late Erik Olin Wright (2009) argued in his three-way approach 96
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produced value equivalent to the wages she would receive, and ‘surplus’ labour time which is that part of the working day when the labourer is exploited because she is no longer working for her wages but for the capitalist, providing the surplus value that is turned into profit when commodities are sold in the market. Classes of capital and labour, and those in between The extraction of surplus value from the worker during surplus labour time pits the two main social classes of capitalist societies against one another: classes of capital and classes of labour, or those who own means of production and accumulate through exploitation and those who depend on wage-labour to make a living. The plural classes underlines the many different types of capitalists and labourers. Classes of capital encompass petty capitalists (at one end of a long continuum, and defined by some as part of the ‘petit bourgeoisie’) who only employ a handful of workers, but still accumulate through exploitation, and vast transnational corporations at the other end. As well as scale, the term classes of capital can also denote different sectors, or those occupying different niches in the marketplace. Classes of capital exist in competition with one another as well as having antagonistic relations with classes of labour over the distribution of value as wages and surplus-value. Class relations, then, are intra-class as well as inter-class. They also occur less directly, such as the many ways through which government policies and other state and non-state institutions mediate everyday relations. Policies are shaped by class interests both when they are forged and when they are implemented in actual social settings. They favour capital in most places, and at most times, while usually allowing for the social reproduction of classes of labour. Those exploited by capital in more and less oppressive ways are the ‘classes of labour’, a category that encompasses all those who depend on wage-labour for all or just part of their livelihood. Classes of labour are involved in a multitude of forms of precarious informal wage-labour, as well as petty forms of self-employment such as street-vending or small farms that cannot provide a living from the land alone and must be combined with
wage-work. Most labourers work informally, but classes of labour also encompass those with contracts and access to labour laws and social security (formal workers). And while both are exploited by capital, the conditions of each are not discrete. It would be wrong to posit only classes of capital and classes of labour, even if we allow for their plurality. Wrong also not to note that some households oscillate between classes of capital and classes of labour over life-cycles. The categories are not always clear-cut. The preponderance of wage-labour in nineteenth-century England meant that, for Marx, society was divided between two principal social classes – those who exploit and those who are exploited. But there are also sections of society that are harder to locate as either capital or labour, such as the relatively high-paid managers of capitalist enterprises. For some, such individuals belong to the middle classes: those who have a higher income, higher levels of consumption, and are comfortably able to access all aspects of social reproduction from food and clothing to higher education and decent housing. The middle class ‘do not own their own means of production’, and ‘sell their labour power’, but ‘do not seem part of the working class’ (Wright 2000b: 15). They often occupy a contradictory role in the production process. Their political role is vital: where they lean towards classes of labour, their combined political weight is often too much for the ruling class to bear, but where they lean towards classes of capital, any push for redistribution is likely to run aground (e.g. Esping-Anderson 1990). The numbers belonging to the middle classes of course vary from country to country, relating both to the amount of wealth generated and to its distribution. Classes of labour, though, remain by far the most numerous of the categories – something shown by large data sets and detailed case studies (Pattenden 2023). Class and gender Exploitation, then, is central to positioning people in broad class categories, marked above all else by whether they exploit others or are exploited by others, or whether, in the case of the middle classes, their incomes lead to investments that allow them to join the ranks of capitalists. But exploitation is about Jonathan Pattenden
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much more than the extraction of surplus value in the production process (Baglioni et al. 2022). While classes of labour are exploited in the labour process, they would never enter those workplaces if it was not for the reproductive labour that produces those labourers in the first place, and reproduces them during their working lives through such things as childcare, preparing food, and looking after the sick – work done predominantly by women, and above all by working class women who cannot afford to buy in reproductive labour in the form of child-minders, cooks, or nurses. Accumulation within a capitalist economy depends on the reproductive labour that produces a workforce for employers. But what does this mean for understandings of class? As well as expanding the scope of exploitation, it also helps to reveal the differentiated ways in which human beings are incorporated into economies. As well as doing more reproductive work (and more work overall), women may have less control over household income, less power, and reduced access to food within the home. Female labour on small family-worked farms or petty businesses may also be appropriated by male family members. This means that different class positions can exist within the same household. A petty capitalist male farmer, for example, may live with female wage-labourers whose worse economic conditions arise in no small part from the unequal social relations between them. Ideology, patriarchy, and racism This very concrete manifestation of the interplay between gender and class is part of a much broader picture: patriarchy and capitalism are co-constituted in ways that have both material and political significance. Female labour is systematically unpaid (most reproductive labour) or under-paid (unequal wages). This lowers the costs of production in multiple ways, but it also creates divisions between men and women that have been manipulated by capital to increase control over labour, both in particular workplaces and in society more generally, from nineteenth-century English cotton mills to twentieth-century Dutch electronics factories and on to Yoon Suk-Yeol’s recent (2022) election victory in South Korea on an anti-feminist ticket that was particularly Jonathan Pattenden
popular among young men (Federici 2004; Kalb 2004). Patriarchal ideology is invoked not only to wed male dominance in the home or the community to underpayment of women in the workplace (Federici 2004), but also to drive a wedge between workers. When women workers mobilized in South Korea in the 1970s, for example, employers mobilized male workers to stop them (Koo 2001). The same strategies of divide and rule have marked the interplay between class and race, ethnicity and caste. Dominant men in Indian villages have often played ‘lower’ sub-castes off against each other. Casteism, like racism, can be seen as being above all an ideological mechanism for dividing classes of labour (James 1938: 35; Du Bois 2015 [1903]), as well as for reducing the costs of labour and lengthening surplus labour time and the rate of surplus value extraction. It can also be seen, as is apparent in the spike in racist rhetoric by politicians within what might be called a wave of ‘authoritarian populism’, as a means by which some groupings amongst classes of capital try to gain political ascendancy over others. In India, Dalits, distinguished from others on the basis of caste/race, are more likely to be working class and poor (Shah et al. 2018). The same is true of Koreans in Japan, of Black Americans in the United States and Mayans in Guatemala. In many cases there has been direct physical violence (the massacres of tens of thousands of Guatemalan Mayans in the late twentieth century, for example, or the current wave of state-supported violence against Muslims in India), as well as sustained assaults on their economic well-being. In each case, racist ideology is a key part of the story.
Class and politics: towards a conclusion
What does this tell us about class? That it is indeed marked by socio-economic and socio-political hierarchies; that it is indeed a way of characterizing positions in those social hierarchies; but also that it arises from unequal relations in the past and the present, in workplaces, communities, homes, political institutions, and local and global markets. What is more, class cannot be separated, as we said at the outset of this chapter, from other axes of discrimination and differentiation. Contrary to the silo approach of ‘identity
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politics’, class is not a singular concept but a multifaceted one. Capitalism (re)produces it over time and uses it politically to create divisions and maintain its dominance. This needs to be understood in specific social settings, as well as in terms of a broader relational whole. Class, though, is not only a tool of the dominant to divide classes of labour, or the outcome of the appropriation of wealth from some by others. It is also a means of redressing inequality. The dynamics of class relations throw up common interests that could unite many of those who belong to classes of labour. But these means of redress vary in scope over time and place. E.P. Thompson (2013 [1963]), in his history of early industrial England, was impressed by the agency of the English working class. His focus, though, was often on a section of classes of labour who had greater structural and associational power (Wright 2000a) – artisans and craftspeople who had unusual skills, and a relatively developed collective consciousness. The term class consciousness, which refers to a collective appreciation of shared circumstances and interests, is not always so marked. It is always present as everyone understands their immediate circumstances, but it develops more fully in places where social life and working lives are less hierarchical – in communities of miners, for example, who all share similar conditions within and beyond the workplace (Petras and Zeitlin 1968), more than in caste-ridden Indian villages were hierarchical patron– client relations tie agricultural labourers to the larger landowners who employ them. In other words, class consciousness tends to develop and be translated into collective action in locations that are less hierarchical and less oppressive. As well as everyday social relations, broader contexts also affect the capacity for collective action. The structural and associational power of classes of labour tend to be greater where commodities are drawn more clearly and more time-sensitively into the global economy than they are in remote brick kilns or migrant-worked greenhouses (e.g. Selwyn 2009 versus Scott 1985). Social agency is a given, but if due attention is not given to the structures of which it is a part then assertions of its primacy short-circuit understanding of where and how it might assert itself to reduce social inequality.
More generally the ‘retreat from class’ has diverted attention from the class relations that (re)produce social inequality. People’s socio-economic and socio-political position – their class – results from historical processes of dispossession and appropriations of surplus value in the spheres of production and social reproduction. Racist and patriarchal ideologies justify those inequalities and impede the collective action of classes of labour. Class, to return to where we started, is a multifaceted relational concept and the key to understanding how configurations of social classes change over time lies in a broad and challenging approach to the term. Jonathan Pattenden
References
Baglioni, E., Campling, L., Mezzadri, A., Miyamura, S., Pattenden, J. & Selwyn, B. (2022), Exploitation and labour regimes: production, circulation, social reproduction, ecology. In E. Baglioni, L. Campling, N.M. Coe & A. Smith (eds), Labour Regimes and Global Production. Newcastle, UK: Agenda. Bensaïd, D. (2002), Marx for our Times. London and New York: Verso. Bernstein, H. (2010), Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change. Halifax: Fernwood and Kumarian. Du Bois, W.E.B. (2015 [1903]), The Souls of Black Folk. New Haven: Yale University Press. Esping-Andersen, G. (1990), Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity. Federici, S. (2004), Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. London: Penguin. Harvey, D. (2003), The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. James, C.L.R. (1938), The Black Jacobins. London: Penguin. Kalb, D. (2004), ‘Bare legs like ice’: recasting class for local/global inquiry’. In D. Kalb & H. Tak (eds), Critical Junctions: Anthropology and History Beyond the Cultural Turn (109–36). New York: Berghahn Books. Koo, H. (2001), Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Marx, K. (1967), Capital, Volume 1. London: Penguin. Moore, J. (2015), Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. New York and London: Verso. Pattenden, J. (2023), Progressive politics and populism: Classes of labour and rural-urban political sociology – An introduction to the special issue. Journal of Agrarian Change 23(1): 3–21.
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100 Elgar encyclopedia of development Petras, J. & Zeitlin, M. (1968), Agrarian radicalism in Chile. British Journal of Sociology 19(3): 254–70. Pietalainen, E. & Otero, G. (2019), Power and dispossession in the neoliberal food regime: oil palm expansion in Guatemala. Journal of Peasant Studies 46(6): 1142–66. Scott, J. (1985), Weapons of the Weak. New Haven: Yale University Press. Selwyn, B. (2009), Labour flexibility in export horticulture: a case study of northeast Brazilian grape production. Journal of Peasant Studies 36(4): 761–82. Shah, A., Lerche, J., Axelby, R., Benbabaali, D., Donegan, B., Raj, J. & Thakur, V. (2018), Ground Down by Growth: Tribe, Caste, Class and Inequality in Twenty-First Century India. London: Pluto.
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Smith, A. (1776), The Wealth of Nations. London: Penguin. Thompson, E.P. (2013 [1963]), The Making of the English Working Class. London: Penguin. Wright, E.O. (2000a), Working-class power, capitalist-class interests and class compromise. American Journal of Sociology 105(4): 957–1002. Wright, E.O. (2000b), Class Counts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wright, E.O. (2009), Understanding class: towards an integrated analytical approach. New Left Review 60: 101–16.
Communication for development Communication plays a fundamental role in the field of development. Identifying effective channels and establishing processes that enable not only information transmission between development agencies and communities, but also dialogue between all actors, is crucial to ensure that interventions are both developed and delivered successfully. Communication for development (C4D, also termed as development communication), both as an area of research and practice, places its focus on creating engagement with local communities and civil society through media and communication, in order to work together towards positive change. Its emphasis on participation and inclusion calls for the contribution from all groups, including those more disadvantaged, in defining and shaping the course of development. Following the historical and practical progress of development as a field, also C4D has observed an evolution in its guiding principles and approaches. This entry offers an overview of the progression in this area, illustrating how this has responded to different stages and notions in development work. It also makes reference to the growth of a newer domain in C4D work, which surveys its practice in the context of conflict and emergencies.
Origins of communication for development
According to the definition developed by the 1996 United Nations General Assembly, the aim of communication for development is […] to support two-way communication systems that enable dialogue and that allow communities to speak out, express their aspirations and concerns and participate in the decisions that relate to their development.1
The path to such designation has been marked by a number of different practices and theoretical perspectives that have followed an evolution over the past few decades, occurring alongside the various approaches to development theory.
At its inception, in the 1970s, C4D focused strongly on rural development and agricultural extension. Within two decades, several authors were influential in advocating the need of implementing tailored communication interventions for agricultural development, including Quebral (1971), Rogers and Shoemaker (1971), Schramm and Lerner (1976) and van den Ban and Hawkins (1988). This body of work was rooted, in particular, in Rogers’ (1962) Diffusion of Innovation model, which draws from mass communication theory and is linked to the Modernization paradigm that characterizes those years. According to Modernization scholars, development is a process whose aim is to strive for the achievement of the Western notion of progress, associated with elements of economic growth, free trade, urbanization and individualism (Porras and Steeves, 2009). Whilst a drive towards further exploring C4D in agriculture – particularly through the work of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – is still present, development communication initiatives have progressively expanded to include a broader range of topics, among which health has been especially prominent. Progress is also related to the different theoretical and practical approaches that have shaped this field. These show how the role of communication, initially regarded as key to changing individual behaviour, has increasingly been recognized in influencing broader social structures and power dynamics, which are crucial in ensuring that change is accepted and maintained.
Behaviour change communication
A planned use of mass media such as radio and television to promote positive ‘behaviour change’ was one of the starting points in the application of communication as a tool for development education with a wider scope. This practice also gave birth to the discipline of education entertainment, known by many as ‘edutainment’, who distinct feature is that of educating an audience while entertaining. This approach recognizes that people tend to acquire knowledge and behaviour through modelling and imitation of the media. Social marketing, developed by Kotler and Zaltam (1971), is another perspective that draws from a Modernization framework and that aligns a change in behaviour with commercially likened strategies and considerations.
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While some argue that edutainment and social marketing can still be considered as the top-down transmission of information initially adopted by Western practitioners, with time, these interventions have started to pursue the line of a more ‘bottom-up’ approach, distancing themselves from Lasswell’s (1948) ‘transmission of information model’ that most communication theories had, until the 1970s and 1980s, adhered to. For example, more and more organizations are incorporating a strong participatory research component in their edutainment programming, where the goal is to understand and integrate communities’ traditions and values in the creation of their programmes’ content (see, amongst others, the work of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as Search for Common Ground and Equal Access International).
Participation in communication
Another important move in the growth of the discipline of communication for development has been the acknowledgement of the flaws of theories of Dependency and Modernization and the shift towards a People-Centred Development approach from the 1980s, particularly through the work of Robert Chambers (1983). Thus, a new perspective has begun to gain ground through the consolidation of the idea, among development planners, that the establishment of a dialogue with projects’ beneficiaries is needed in order to conceive, carry out and evaluate activities effectively. At the same time, practitioners have recognized that the only way for beneficiaries to take ownership of the projects is by having a say in the decisions that are made. Waisbord (2008) articulated three key dimensions of participation in development programmes, where communication plays a key role: the first one acknowledges that the course of action to take in the face of problems should be decided by the community through processes of dialogue and critical problem-solving, rather than by external agents; the second one recognizes that decisions taken by agencies and programme professionals cause a disconnection with the community’s motivations; the third one specifies that community members must take part in all programmes’ activities, embarking on Valentina Baú
a journey towards empowerment. In essence, as Gumucio Dagron and Rodriguez (2006) also emphasize, people and communities are at the centre of development and participatory communication allows their local knowledge and perspectives to come to the surface and thus influence the development process.
Communication for social change
The different perspectives discussed above on the application of participatory methodologies in communication for development have led to the rise of a new field that aims to take further the individual behaviour change communication approach. The field goes under the name of Communication for Social Change (CfSC) and can be defined as: […] a process of public and private dialogue through which people themselves define who they are, what they need and how to get what they need in order to improve their own lives. It utilises dialogue that leads to collective problem identification, decision-making and community-based implementation of solutions to development issues. (Byrne et al., 2005, p. 1)
This area has been extensively studied by a number of scholars and practitioners, initially through the establishment of the CfSC Consortium. In one of the key publications released by this group, Figueroa et al. (2002) explain the importance of dialogue as a process in which each party tries to understand not only what others believe, but also their own beliefs. This represents a form of collective action, where both parties undergo the experience of shaping and re-shaping their convictions. Authors such as Wilkins (2000), Gumucio Dagron and Tufte (2006) and Servaes (2008) have brought together the initial body of work on the use of CfSC. This has now been expanded to include important advancements in this field by scholars such Wilkins et al. (2014) and Thomas and de Fliert (2014). With the rise of this new view of communication in the context of development work, more indigenous forms of communication have gained attention and are now considered as valid tools for stimulating dialogue and critical awareness. These include instruments such as music, theatre, dance, and also video and radio, which offer a channel to give voice to marginalized groups. At the same time, the
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shift that has occurred in communication for development has been both towards a vision of communication as a complex and dynamic exchange, which needs to take into account the broader social and cultural settings in which it is occurring, and towards a stronger view of the media as channels of participation for communities in decision-making processes. UNICEF is one of the main international development actors that adopts C4D practice throughout its broad spectrum of work with children and families. The agency has a dedicated C4D unit at its headquarters, and specialized C4D teams across its country offices, which ensure communication is effectively embedded in its programme development and implementation.
Communication for development in peacebuilding
The role of C4D as a crucial instrument for peace after conflict, and for the establishment of a stable and positive co-existence between groups that were engaged in violence, is now also being recognized. This has given rise to the field of communication for development in peacebuilding, which focuses on the use of communication in the re-establishment of peace. This is crucial since, as Baú (2016) states, […] the present nature of conflict in the developing world, which sees civilians as main actors in the fighting, calls for a redefinition of the peacebuilding process from the bottom up. Communities become primary agents in this course of action, and their perspectives and stories play a fundamental role. Communication interventions that help articulate those voices, initiate a dialogue for reconciliation with opposing groups, and create a connection between local and national peace efforts, are critical in the attainment of a social change that leads to sustainable development in the aftermath of violence. (p. 805)
Therefore, analysing and developing interventions that make use of selected media channels and targeted content, often produced through the stories of affected communities, is another facet of C4D that contributes to the betterment of the conditions of those who have experienced conflict.
At the same time, when looking at the context of humanitarian interventions, it becomes evident how the media and communication can also play a critical role. This is why, in recent years, a new approach to the use of the media and communication during conflict and other disasters has been emerging: this has been termed in the humanitarian sector as Communicating with Communities (CwC). With the aim of addressing the short-term complexities and issues that arise in the immediate aftermath of a crisis, CwC uses the media to seek ways to provide a rapid response to emergencies. Not only is this approach useful in creating and managing channels that help to assist communities with their immediate needs, but it is also crucial in preventing further conflict; this is seen as a result of its core element of placing communication at the centre, which provides the opportunity for participation and feedback that is needed in strengthening relationships, trust and dialogue (Baú, 2019). Humanitarian agencies such as the Red Cross, International Organization for Migration and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees adopt this approach in their work.
Conclusion
Initially, development interventions focused on the individual and failed to take into account the social, political and economic context. Similarly accompanied by a lack of structural analysis, the role of communication in development was simply considered as a process of persuasion aimed at the adoption of new behaviours or technologies by communities in developing areas of the world. Today, both scholars and practitioners have begun to recognize the limitations of unidirectional approaches based on knowledge transfer, and the attention has shifted towards processes that give voice to those at the grassroots and remove them from the mainstream view that regarded them as passive recipients of information. This has not only led to the development of more effective approaches to the use of the media and communication, such as the shift from individual behaviour to social change through the introduction of participatory communication, but it has also enabled the establishment of additional areas of practice, which turn to advantage the possibilities that different channels and processes offer in both Valentina Baú
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re-connecting and in connecting with communities, such as the areas of peacebuilding and humanitarian work. Valentina Baú
Note
1. UN General Assembly December 1996.
References
Resolution
51/172,
Baú, V. (2016) ‘Communication for development in peacebuilding: directions on research and evaluation for an emerging field’. Critical Arts, Vol. 29, No. 6, pp. 801–17. Baú, V. (2019) ‘Re-designing the media in humanitarian interventions: communicating with communities at times of crisis’, in Shaw, I. and Selvarajah, S. (eds), Reporting human rights, conflicts and peacebuilding: critical and global perspectives, pp. 67–81. Palgrave Macmillan, London. Byrne, A., Gray-Felder, D., Hunt, J. and Parks, W. (2005) Measuring change: a guide to participatory monitoring and evaluation of communication for social change. Communication for Social Change Consortium, South Orange. Chambers, R. (1983) Rural development: putting the last first. Harlow, Longman. Figueroa, M.E., Kincaid, D.L., Rani, M. and Lewis, G. (2002) Communication for social change: an integrated model for measuring the process and its outcomes. Communication for Social Change working paper series, Working Paper Series: No. 1, Rockfeller Foundation, New York. Gumucio Dagron, A. and Rodriguez, C. (2006) ‘Time to call things by their name: the field of communication & social change’. Media Development, Vol. 53, No. 3, pp. 9–16. Gumucio Dagron, A. and Tufte, T. (2006) Communication for social change anthology: historical and contemporary readings. Communication for Social Change Consortium, South Orange.
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Kotler, P. and Zaltman, G. (1971) ‘Social marketing: an approach to planned social change’. Journal of Marketing, Vol. 35, pp. 3–12. Lasswell, H. (1948) ‘The structure and function of communication in society’, in Bryson, L. (ed.), The communication of ideas, pp. 37–51. Harper, New York. Porras, L.E. and Steeves, L. (2009) ‘Feminism in a post-development age’, in McPhail, T. (ed.), Development communication: reframing the role of the media, pp. 141–58. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester. Quebral, N.C. (1971) ‘Development communication in the agricultural context’, paper presented at the symposium In Search of Breakthroughs in Agricultural Development held in honor of Dr Dioscoro L. Umali, 9–10 December, College Laguna, University of the Philippines, Los Baños, The Philippines. Rogers, E.M. (1962) Diffusion of innovations. Free Press, New York. Rogers, E.M. and Shoemaker, F.F. (1971) Communication of innovations: a cross-cultural approach. Free Press, New York. Schramm, W. and Lerner, D. (1976) Communication and change in the developing countries. East-West Center Press, Honololu. Servaes, J. (2008) Communication for development and social change. Sage Publications, London. Thomas, P.N. and de Fliert, E. (2014) Interrogating the theory and practice in communication for social change: the basis for a renewal. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. van den Ban, A. and Hawkins, H.S. (1988) Agricultural extension. John Wiley & Sons, Oxford. Waisbord, S. (2008) ‘The institutional challenges of participatory communication in international aid’. Social Identities, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 505–22. Wilkins, K.G. (2000) Redeveloping communication for social change: theory, practice and power. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham. Wilkins, K.G., Tufte, T. and Obregon, R. (eds) (2014) The handbook of development communication and social change. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester.
Community capacity-building The term ‘community capacity-building’ (CCB) emerged into public policy domain in the early 2000s. Its usage grew rapidly and briefly, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, seemed ubiquitous, particularly in the context of urban policy, regeneration and social development (Noya et al. 2009). In 2000, a UK report described CCB as ‘the New Holy Grail’ (Duncan and Thomas 2000: 15); the government’s national regeneration programme then contained 3,000 CCB initiatives. Increasing use of the term throughout civil society seemed, however, to raise more questions than it answered. What does the term mean and is there anything truly distinctive about the practice of community capacity-building? This entry briefly reviews the origins of the concept, and the ways in which it was used, and critiques it, particularly in light of its early adoption by so-called ‘Third Way’ governments. We do not review the term ‘community’ here, although it is obviously critical to this discussion; in the community development entry, it is noted that there are very many definitions of the concept of community, all of them based on the process of social interaction. Community development itself is also a contested concept. The idea of ‘community’ has been central to the development of what UK New Labour governments from 1997 to 2010, and their counterparts in other countries, have regarded as the Third Way approach to social and economic policy, lying between the policies of the Old Left (characterized by excessive state control and collectivism) and those of the New Right (marked by privatization and excessive individualism). However, as Mendes noted (2006: 247), ‘“Spraying-on” community as a solution to social problems provides no guarantee of progressive outcomes.’ And, of course, the political context in many countries has now moved radically to the Right. Since the late 1990s, the term ‘community capacity-building’ began to be used widely within both ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries to describe activities involving work with local deprived communities, to promote fuller engagement with social, economic and political life. As with the term
‘community’, however, there was little clarity in its use; and it was not immediately clear why it should have emerged so strongly then into policy discourse. Sustained references to capacity-building actually date from the early 1990s. The work of UN agencies such as its Commission on Sustainable Development (UNDP 1991) focused on the role of the UN itself in supporting capacity-building. McGinty (2003: 5) suggested this was seen as ‘building capacity for the formulation of plans and strategies in support of sustainable development …’ This definition emerged in the context of water sector capacity-building. Srinivas (2005) suggested this was about ‘building the capacity of cities and urban areas to handle their environments [covering] human resource development, organisational … institutional and legal framework development’. UNCED (1992: 232) suggested that capacity-building ‘encompasses the country’s human, scientific, technological, organizational, institutional and resource capabilities’ (see UN 1996). McGinty later argued that acknowledging that the UN needed better capacity in its interface with communities became ‘the point at which the [modelling] of community capacity-building for provider organizations and government shifted to a more participative mode’, and links with community development acknowledged. Capacity-building then elided in policy discourse into community capacity-building. Within Europe, the first allusion to CCB came in a European Commission report (EC 1996: 68) regarding strategies for community economic development in areas of ‘low economic activity whose members have lost the ability to compete in the labour market’. The approach in the North initially relied heavily on US experience, following its Community Investment Act, which facilitated access by community-based organizations to advice and training in ‘the market’, focusing more on providing business and management skills to individuals. Some Northern thinking was also, however, influenced by the development literature where what had frequently been ‘top-down’ project work was increasingly replaced by a recognition of the need to ‘strengthen people’s capacity to determine their own values and priorities and organise themselves to act on this’ (Eade and Williams 1995: 64).
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From these contradictory origins, the concept became prominent in a wide variety of national and policy contexts, some more concerned with building the strengths and capacities of organizations (not necessarily those which worked with ‘communities’), others more specifically to do with CCB, building the capacity of communities themselves. Although CCB is the focus of this discussion, boundaries remain blurred: thus, building the capacity of organizations within deprived communities was seen to be a part of CCB. The use of the narrower term ‘capacity-building’ remained common in the development literature from both North and South (James and CABUNGO 2005). Widespread use of the term CCB within many Northern countries led to it becoming the target of sceptical humour. At one UK conference, it was caricatured as ‘developing local skills in a way that ensures people are able to know what is missing’ (cited in Beazley et al. 2004: 5); at another it was likened to public participation which was ‘like eating spinach, because ultimately it is good for you’ (cited in ibid.: 1). Indeed, the term had come to convey such a range of meanings that it was often seen to increase confusion rather than provide clarity, leading some activists to suggest it should be dropped altogether. There remained, however, a strong view that ‘the broad ideas and activities described as “capacity building” … are essential in eliminating poverty’ (http://www .developments.org.uk/data/14/ms_capacity .htm) making it difficult to dismiss entirely. However, as Stoker and Bottom (2003: 6) noted, ‘with every new policy area, there is a new jargon to be invented and learnt … this perspective applies with particular force in the area of community capacity-building’. Their analysis of the way in which New Labour characterized the ‘problem’ leading to the need for CCB included ‘a lack of formal engagement in politics, lack of capacity to engage in institutions of democracy, reflecting social exclusion, lack of basic infrastructure to support community life, and the need to support individuals so that they can become full members of society’ (ibid.). This sense of confusion in the UK, including in government departments’ pronouncements, led to attempts to interrogate its meaning, most concluding that community development might be seen as a slightly wider term and the ‘capacity-builders’ responsible for Gary Craig
CCB were generally identified as generic community development workers. The UK Charity Commission, which regulates the activity of UK charities, then decided to include ‘community capacity-building’ in its limited list of allowable charitable aims. The Commission defined communities as limited to those which were socially and economically disadvantaged. It defined CCB as Developing the capacity and skills of the members of a community in such a way that they are better able to identify and help meet their needs and to participate more fully in society.
This is close to – if shorter than – the definition of community development emerging from the international conference on community development held in Budapest in 2004 (iacdglobal.org/Budapest Declaration). One UK government department (DEFRA 2003: 2) saw the outcome of CCB as leading to strengthened communities, increased levels of volunteering, targeting social exclusion and greater community involvement in local service delivery: here organizational and community capacity-building appear interlinked. The requirement then for the voluntary and community sectors to build their organizational capacity in order ‘to expand their role in the provision of public services’ (part of a shift from state provision: Cairns et al. 2005: 872) resonates with US experience, where capacity-building was largely perceived as an organizational management technique. This highlighted the latent conflict between the goals of community organizations for themselves and the goals of government for such organizations. Experience elsewhere has not been helpful in distinguishing CCB from community development. In Canada, where the process of strengthening communities was often described as establishing ‘resilient’ communities, community capacity was defined as ‘the combined influence of a community’s commitment, resources and skills that can be deployed to build on community strengths and address problems and opportunities’ (Bruce 2003: 25). CCB is thus Any activities which the community undertakes (on its own or with the help of others) to improve or build its own collective commitment, resources and skills. (ibid.)
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In Australia, the term CCB was adopted equally enthusiastically both by statutory and voluntary interests. Victoria State encompassed many policy initiatives under the umbrella of CCB (http://www.dvc.vic.gov .au). One programme noted ‘community capacity-building has become a central objective in a wide range of public policies and programmes … Most analysts and practitioners in the human services field would count this as a positive development despite the fact that the concept of “community capacity” is seldom precisely defined … [and] measures to indicate whether or not it has been “built” are only in the developmental stage’ (Hounslow 2002: 35). In the field of health promotion, CCB was, however, associated officially with building infrastructure, partnerships and organizational environments, and problem-solving capability in communities and systems (Hawe et al. 2000). In New Zealand, a national CCB initiative focused on partnership working between communities and local and central government, characterized as ‘strengthening communities’ (http://www.waitakere.govt.nz/ ourpar/strengthcomm.asp). Linguistic confusion was similar to that regarding the term community development, in that CCB, as noted above, did not always seem to be concerned, in other contexts, with working directly with deprived populations themselves but focused on organizational management and development, characteristic of American experience. In common with many other examples, local residents appeared not to exercise control over their programmes – another instance of ‘top-down’ CCB posing as a ‘bottom-up’ form. Many examples have emerged worldwide of CCB initiatives with minorities and especially First Nations people, generally communities of identity with high levels of deprivation. The Western Australian government had ‘a specialist role in working with indigenous communities [i.e. the Aboriginal Koori] on capacity-building initiatives and on strengthening relationships between local governments and indigenous people’ (http://www.dlgrd.wa.gov.au/ regionDev). A top-down CCB approach in New Zealand in work with Maoris aimed to reduce the effects of their greater exposure to alcohol-related crime (Casswell 2001). New South Wales’ government, addressing the
over-representation of Koori young people in detention, argued that better direction of existing resources to help build capacity amongst Aboriginal communities was important as a preventative approach. Many Black and minority groups worldwide might respond that, although CCB may be a key issue for their organizations, structural racism and discrimination often meant that they had limited access to funding and expertise on their own terms (Chouhan and Lusane 2005), a theme echoed worldwide in the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020. In many arenas of governance, the drive for partnership working emerged alongside the concept of community capacity-building. Much analysis of partnership working pointed to the uneven capacity of partners (Glendinning et al. 2002). In particular, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), especially community groups, were often represented by volunteers: one of the key roles of more powerful and better resourced partners might therefore be to help build the capacity of the weakest partners but there was disagreement in the literature as to whether that was appropriate given that stronger partners often tacitly or explicitly set policy agendas for the partnerships in question (Balloch and Taylor 2002). Partnership working has in fact increasingly been criticized for building the capacity of the powerful (and their organizations) and not the weak, or for building the capacity of the weak only insofar as it accords with the interests of the powerful. There clearly has been substantial linguistic and ideological confusion surrounding the term CCB, just as with the terms community, and community development. This isn’t helped by the fact that, despite warm governmental rhetoric, there is still little evidence as to whether CCB actually works. The community development literature has begun to grapple with questions of its effectiveness (Craig 2002) but this has not spilled over into analysing the effectiveness of CCB. CCB as concept and practice can be criticized from four different perspectives. First, given marginal differences between the proclaimed goals and methods of community development and CCB, it seems superfluous to introduce a new concept into the policy lexicon. Given the origins of the term, it seems quite likely that the elision between the two concepts, from capacity-building’s initial Gary Craig
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focus – developing the strengths of organizations – into a catch-all term covering a range of activities at ‘community’ level, was accelerated by political fashion: new governments adopting new terminology to distance themselves from predecessors’ programmes. The second, related, critique is that, as with the term ‘community’, the concept of CCB is applied uncritically – as the ‘spray-on additive’ – to a very wide range of activities, many of them having little to do with community control of the skills, knowledge, assets and understanding of local deprived communities (which is at the heart of ‘true’ community development). CCB was misrepresented by global organizations such as the World Bank, and by national governments, describing what were effectively ‘top-down’ interventions with local communities required to engage in programmes with pre-determined goals – such as the privatization of public services within a context of tight fiscal control – as a condition for receiving funding, approaches far removed from ‘bottom-up’ community development interventions. Thirdly, those working with local communities question the motives of those promoting CCB ‘from the top’. Beresford and Hoban (2005: 45) argue that ‘capacity-building to develop people’s confidence, self-esteem and understanding [should] support their empowerment and participation. It is not the same as skill development to equip people to work in the way that agencies traditionally work’: that is, that CCB is pursued by powerful partners to incorporate local communities into established structures and mechanisms rather than facing the challenges to existing structures which effective working with deprived communities presents. Diamond (2004) notes that local authority capacity-building sought to co-opt local activists into individualized rather than collectivized local communities’ experience. In a similar vein, Mowbray (2005: 263), in analysing the Victorian government’s CCB programme, is less critical of the way in which activities within this initiative are developed than of how government ‘restrains their scope and rhetorically reconstructs their character and impact’. In particular, government effectively made funding available only to communities with pre-existing well-established structures, ensured that any activities which might be regarded as political (such as advocacy by community Gary Craig
members) were excluded, claiming credit for the action plans of participating communities. The ability of the community to act on its own behalf, on issues which it identified, in a manner which it determined itself, was compromised by government’s need to promote its own social and political agendas. This story is a familiar one to many community development workers and those in the communities – in North and South – with which they have worked. Responding to the UK government’s review of its support for CCB, the body representing community development training argued that the experience of many communities is that ‘community capacity-building’ programmes (with a myriad of titles), have been imposed on them; with perceived needs, desired outcomes and preferred methods part of the package which they have not had the opportunity to identify, develop or agree. … the ‘community’ (often not self-defined) is exhorted to play its part in an environment where inequalities of resources, power, information and status are not even acknowledged, never mind addressed. (FCDL 2004: 3)
Inequalities between established ‘communities’ and those struggling for resources, they argued, were exacerbated. Studying CCB projects working with Australian Aboriginal Koori people, Tedmanson (2003: 15) observed that This new capacity-building jargon signifies an entrenchment of notions of what constitutes capacity, who defines capacity and what constitutes the relationship between the dominant culture capacity-builders and those identified as capacity deficient. … The term community capacity-building will have little … meaning to … the Anungu peoples … where concepts such as Yerra … are cited as encompassing reciprocity and community obligation. Supporting, helping, sharing, giving of time and resources, cultural affirmation and taking care of country are responsibilities not viewed as special individualised effort but as cultural competencies. … discussions of community capacity-building in indigenous contexts must avoid the paternalistic construction of a ‘deficit’ in the Aboriginal domain.
The most fundamental critique is that ‘cultural difference is viewed as a weakness … a capacity deficit [in knowledge, skills and experience] to be rebuilt … a problem to be
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“solved”’ (ibid.). Beazley et al. (2004: 6) analysed the weakness of the ‘deficit model’. First, ‘it pays no attention to the capacity of institutions to overcome inherent barriers to engagement’, that is, the problem lies not with communities but the institutions, structures and processes which affect them; and secondly, definitions of CCB built on the deficit model again ‘give no indication of an endpoint. What is capacity being built towards or is it an end in itself?’ (ibid.). Essentially, the fundamental aim of community development is to ensure that greater political power lies with local communities. The endpoint might thus be ‘less comfortable, more empowered and awkward but self-determined communities’ (ibid.). Partridge (2005) argues that CCB is a ‘term invented by social managers. It explains the lack of “buy-in” to their regeneration schemes by implying a lack of skill on the part … of deprived communities … neighbourhoods are deprived and regeneration schemes don’t work because of an analogous lack of “capacity” in the inhabitants. A nice form of blaming the victim.’ He suggests the term might be seen as useful only where it applies equally to the lack of capacity both in neighbourhoods and of powerful partner agencies to listen to, engage with and share power with communities effectively. Do such powerful agencies have the capacity to ‘lose face, cope with residents’ decisions going against them?’ (ibid.). This analysis suggests that a view of communities as somehow deficient in certain skills and capacities to enable them to engage effectively with other actors in local governance misses the point. Communities have skills, ideas, capacities: but these are often latent or unacknowledged. A new challenge to the deficit model began to be addressed over the past ten years by the asset-based approach to community development which seeks, not to address deficits, but build on the strengths of local communities (see the entry community development in this Encyclopedia). The task for powerful partners in CCB partnership working should be to listen to communities’ demands and respond appropriately, most of all when what local communities are demanding may be in conflict with external agendas; and thus for the former not to continue with predetermined
goals. But this may not just be difficult for powerful partners; it may be precisely what – despite the rhetoric of CCB – they are not interested in. For example, there can be little doubt that governments’ understanding of CCB is linked to its desire (particularly with growing concerns about terrorism) to have more stable, organized/controlled communities with which it can more easily engage/ control to pursue its own ideas of community cohesion, community safety, child and family policy and criminal justice (Rodger 2005). The ‘carrot’ of funding is key here in getting community groups to ‘buy in’ to government agendas and much of the local CCB could be seen as ways of creating local structures fitting with government funding requirements. Given the wide-ranging critique that has been mounted against CCB approaches, it is perhaps unsurprising that the language of capacity building has largely faded from public policy, now appearing only intermittently, sometimes interchangeably with community development. This process has been accelerated since the late 2010s by a strong shift to the right in political terms in many so-called mature democracies, with governments in countries such as the USA, Brazil and Hungary acting in authoritarian and neo-fascist manners with stridently top-down policy and practice. The demise of CCB may accelerate as it becomes clear that the issue is not about governments promoting CCB with its false sense of consensus around community ownership and control, but about the imposition of social and economic programmes which serve the interests of the rich and powerful. Gary Craig
References
Balloch, S. and Taylor, M. (2002). Partnership working, Policy Press, Bristol. Beazley, M., Griggs, S. and Smith, M. (2004). Rethinking approaches to community capacity building, University of Birmingham. Mimeo, Birmingham. Beresford, P. and Hoban, M. (2005). Participation in anti-poverty and regeneration work and research: overcoming barriers and creating opportunities. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, York.
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110 Elgar encyclopedia of development Bruce, D. (2003). Insights on community capacity building, available at dwbruce@mta.ca. Cairns, B., Harris, M. and Young, P. (2005). ‘Building the capacity of the voluntary non-profit sector: challenges of theory and practice’, International Journal of Public Administration, 28, 869–85. Casswell, S. (2001). ‘Community capacity building and social policy – what can be achieved?’, Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, 17, 22–35. Chouhan, K. and Lusane, C. (2005). Black voluntary and community sector funding: its impact on civic engagement and capacity building. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, York. http:// www.jrf.org.uk Craig, G. (2002). ‘Towards the measurement of empowerment: the evaluation of community development’, Journal of the Community Development Society, 33(1), 124–46. DEFRA [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] (2003). Community capacity-building and voluntary sector infrastructure in rural England. DEFRA, London. Diamond, J. (2004). ‘Local regeneration initiatives and capacity building: whose “capacity” and “building” for what?’, Community Development Journal, 39(2), 177–205. Duncan, P. and Thomas, S. (2000). Neighbourhood regeneration: resourcing community involvement. Policy Press, Bristol. Eade, D. and Williams, S. (1995). The Oxfam handbook of development and relief. Oxfam, Oxford. EC [European Commission] (1996). Social and economic inclusion through regional development. European Commission, Luxembourg. FCDL [Federation for Community Development Learning] (2004). Building civil renewal. FCDL, Sheffield. Glendinning, C., Powell, M. and Rummery, K. (eds) (2002). Partnerships, New Labour and the governance of welfare. Policy Press, Bristol. Hawe, P., King, L., Noort, M., Jordens, C. and Lloyd, B. (2000). Indicators to help with capacity-building in health promotion. NSW Health Department, Sydney.
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Hounslow, B. (2002). ‘Community capacity building explained’, Stronger Families Learning Exchange, Bulletin 1, 20–22. http://www.aifs .gov.au/sf/pubs/bull1. James, R. and CABUNGO (2005). Building capacity to mainstream HIV/AIDS internally: experience in Malawi. INTRAC, Oxford. McGinty, S. (2003). ‘Community capacity-building’ [conference presentation], Australian Association for Research in Education. Brisbane, Australia. http://www.aare.edu.au. Mendes, P. (2006). ‘Classic texts No 5’, Community Development Journal, 41(2), 246–8. Mowbray, M. (2005). ‘Community capacity building or state opportunism?’, Community Development Journal, 409(3), 255–64. Noya, A., Clarence, E. and Craig, G. (2009). Community capacity building, OECD, Paris. Partridge, G. (2005, November 4). Personal communication. Rodger, J. (2005). ‘Subsidiarity as a ruling principle in the welfare society’, paper given at Osservatorio Nazionale Sulla Famiglia, Bologna, 8 October. Srinivas, H. (2005, November 10). Personal communication. hsrinivas@gdrc.org. Stoker, G. and Bottom, K. (2003).’ Community capacity-building’, public lecture given at Lorne, 25 July. Tedmanson, D. (2003). ‘Whose capacity needs building?: open hearts and empty hands, reflections on capacity building in remote communities’ [conference presentation]. 4th International Critical Management Studies Conference, University of South Australia. UN [United Nations] (1996). Community capacity-building, New York, UN Commission on Sustainable Development. UNCED [United Nations Conference on Environment and Development] (1992). Capacity building: Agenda 21’s definition, Chapter 37. UNCED, New York. UNDP [United Nations Development Programme] (1991). Symposium for water sector capacity building. UNDP/International Institute for Hydraulic and Environmental Engineering, Amsterdam.
Community development Community development is a term heavily contested throughout its existence, both professionally (i.e. as a distinct practice) and ideologically, and it has also gone under many names. Today there are many activities worldwide which come under the title of community development, some of which make uncomfortable bedfellows. The two major tensions emerging frequently have been: (i) whether community development is a professional activity as the term profession is normally used (involving skills training, accreditation and entry to an exclusive practice domain, as in law and medicine) or an activity which can be engaged with by anyone, regardless of skill level or experience, dependent only on a particular political or ideological stance; and (ii) what is the appropriate relationship between community development work and the state? Put bluntly, is community development concerned with liberation or control? These issues have emerged over the past 50 years as community development practice has grown, with many governments at both national and local levels directly or indirectly employing growing numbers of community development workers. These have, contradictorily, often seen governments as their main target (or obstacle) for achieving progressive social change. These questions might together also be characterized as to whether social change could be promoted from within communities (whether place- or, more latterly, issue-based) by local activists, or imposed from the outside, by ‘professionals’ employed to do so by some external agency (usually but not always, an organ of the state). This of course also begs the question of how ‘community’ is defined: this is dealt with elsewhere in this Encylopedia but it is worth noting that an attempt to define it 60 years ago identified 200 definitions, reducible only to the theme that it was something to do with social interaction. The antecedents of what came to be known as community development probably lay with the work of charitable (and sometimes, religious) organizations which, in many countries, situated themselves in poor districts in order to work with and improve the conditions of the inhabitants. This work tended overwhelmingly to be situated in cities: the idea of a specifically rural strand of com-
munity development was only to emerge much later as a result of the theoretical and organisational work of key activists such as Freire1 which helped to create movements for the poor in rural areas in, for example, Latin American and South Asian countries. In some countries, prestigious universities with wealthy students established what were known as settlement houses where students had opportunities to work with poor neighbourhoods, providing enhanced educational experiences, welfare support and health care to deprived individuals and families. Some of these date from the mid-nineteenth century. Such settlement houses (or neighbourhood houses as they are generally known in the USA), still exist today (for example, Oxford House and Cambridge House, in London, UK, and Sydney University Settlement in Australia) although their mode of working has moved far from the paternalistic approach characterising their early days. Some have become sites of radical community action. In their early days, these agencies would have been regarded politically as instruments of social control rather than of liberation although there are examples of settlements supporting the autonomous action of working-class people, for example to help form trades unions in workplaces notorious for poor pay and working conditions. Incidences of autonomous working-class community action also emerged from time to time as in the case of the women of Glasgow, Scotland, who, in 1917, whilst their husbands were away fighting in the First World War, were faced with outrageous rent increases. These were stopped following major rent strikes by these women. After the end of the war, and the consequent upheaval regarding national boundaries and the creation of new states, the League of Nations issued a statement on the question of self-determination for all people, in which education (of the masses) was to play an important role. Those who were professionally engaged in executing education programmes in what were still, in most cases, colonized countries might be regarded as the forerunners of paid community development workers in those countries, although not named as such. These workers tended overwhelmingly to be from the colonizing country rather than the indigenous people. The League’s statement prompted responses in a number of countries, particularly those with colonies: for example, in
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the British Colonial Office, an Educational Advisory Committee was established which … pursued research and field study with the constant aim of improving education in the colonies. … (There was) … a swing away from a preoccupation with schools to concern for education for life in the wider community … (and) the role of school as an agent to assist community improvement.2
Again, these improvements, such as they were, were won for local people (or given to them) and not by them and reflected the continuing desire of colonizing countries to control the resources (and the people) of the colonies. For example, in the Cameroon, colonized at various times by Germany, France and the UK, collaboration between health, education and agriculture through local agents … was probably emphasised to enable the dependencies to increase the production of raw materials, in view of the world economic recession of the 1930s.3
From the early part of the twentieth century, autonomous movements for the liberation of colonized people were emerging strongly in many countries, often led, ironically, by key indigenous political figures forced to operate within the imperial centres for fear of being imprisoned for sedition in their countries of origin. These movements were later to be caught up in tensions between capitalistic and communist countries. During the 1930s recession, forms of ‘bottom-up’ organizing also emerged from working-class communities, particularly amongst unemployed workers, who formed a nationwide movement in some, particularly industrialized, countries4 to resist government policy on, for example, wage cuts. These were an industrial parallel to working-class community-based activism, led by people who distrusted the formal organs of trades unionism which they felt had sold out to government5 or where trades unionism was non-existent. An early identity for community development emerged from these disparate activities in a 1948 statement from the United Nations, which gave what was probably the first formal definition of the activity, one which recognized the possibility of a movement for Gary Craig
social change emerging from within deprived communities, rather than being imposed from outside by, for example, state agencies. It stated that community development was … a movement to promote better living for the whole community, with active participation and if possible on the initiative of the community, but if this initiative is not forthcoming, by the use of techniques for arousing and stimulating it … it includes the whole range of development activities … whether these are undertaken by governments or unofficial bodies.6
The notion of the state actively arousing activity in local communities was one which would come back to haunt states a few decades later! By 1953, the level of activity which participants felt could be described as community development was reflected in the creation, in the USA, of the International Association for Community Development (IACD). At the time and since, American community development largely consisted of agricultural extension work both in rural states in the USA and overseas, managed by local state-employed community development workers. Training was largely provided in the USA’s Land Grant universities. Much of the work undertaken was later reported in the journal Community Development,7 the organ of the (American) Community Development Society, founded in the late 1960s. Many colonial states became independent in the period 1957–70, some of them employing their own community development workers. These were largely controlled by government ministries and worked to promote the development of rural areas, particularly through education and agricultural work. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, some of these countries had large cohorts of such workers: Cameroon, for example, had more than a thousand community development workers employed by the government but these often operated with little training for the complexities of their tasks. The UK NCSS report referred to earlier was based on the emergence of a form of community development supported by voluntary (i.e. non-state) organizations (NGOs) whereby workers were appointed to help the integration of residents living in the many new housing developments and New Towns
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which had been built to replace the hundreds of thousands of houses damaged in bombing raids during the Second World War. Housing shortages also provoked the development of direct community action in the form of squatting, with homeless people taking over and occupying empty buildings, including many former government buildings. These campaigns were often short-lived, losing ground as squatters were themselves rehoused in new homes from the late 1940 onwards. As former colonies became independent, sometimes resulting from armed struggles against the imperial powers, as in Kenya, Indonesia, Malaya and Vietnam, former expatriate community development/education specialists returned to their home countries bringing with them models of practice and theory. These had served the purposes of the colonial powers. Typical of this approach was the writing of Batten (1957),8 who emphasized the difference between directive and non-directive approaches to community development, a distinction which, to many of those new to the field in the industrial North, seemed almost meaningless. Batten and his former colonial colleagues made a significant contribution to the emerging profession, establishing a new journal, the Community Development Journal (CDJ),9 in 1966. Early issues reflected the experience of Batten and others in trying to make sense of an overseas rural practice being applied to urban ‘Western’ countries. Their models were, however, quickly seen to be inappropriate to the highly urbanized centres of the former colonizing powers, and new models emerged. These were accompanied by a rapid growth in the literature which widened from a focus on colonial and later, American experience to other contexts. The domestic political context in many countries began to change substantially from the early 1960s onwards and this too was reflected in both literature and practice. New urban movements emerged, with a radical edge, exemplified by community organizers such as Chicago-based Saul Alinsky,10 on whose work many ‘western’ community development workers drew, on radical and revolutionary protests (often led by students, as in Paris, for example), and on a growing disillusionment with the structures of welfare states (for example, in terms of the housing and labour markets) constructed after the
Second World War, which were coming to be seen as bureaucratic and an obstacle to newly formulated goals for community development, such as equality, fairness and social justice. However, although Alinsky’s work was a stimulating break from the rather less combative literature of the ex-colonialists, it was still set within a context where community organizers were simply attempting to work alongside deprived communities and get them a fair share of the pluralist cake. Probably the period from the 1960s to the early 1980s represented the timeframe within which community development became most prominent in the national consciousness of many countries: it was also the point at which some of the tensions both in terms of definitions, and conflict between community development and the state, came most to the fore. In the late 1960s, the USA, under the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, committed itself to a national War on Poverty. This involved targeted programmes in areas of considerable deprivation – usually inner city areas with a large Black population – in which community organizers played a central part. The programme failed to make significant impacts on levels of poverty, not least because the deprivation they addressed was structurally created and the levels of resources committed by the federal government, though significant in comparison with previous initiatives, were relatively small. This has always been a criticism of community development, that it tended to make substantial claims for its ability to promote social change but rarely has had the resources to do so, not least in terms of the timeframes required to generate widespread participation by the ‘poor’.11 Later in the 1960s, the UK established its own national Community Development Project (CDP), a programme of 12 projects scattered across Great Britain with teams of community workers and researchers with substantial budgets. Although the UK government sought to address a number of ‘inner city’ issues with this programme, including the concentration of deprivation in these areas and failings in local childcare, its ‘blaming’ orientation was not one which encouraged local people to express their views. A caucus of local project teams developed an analysis of inner city decline, focusing on the impacts of public expenditure cuts and the withdrawal of investment by major companies (a product Gary Craig
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of capitalistic restructuring), profoundly challenging the view that local people were, in many ways, the cause of their own difficulties. The programme published a wide range of publications based on this analysis12 which had a long-lasting effect on discussions about community development both within the UK and further afield. This structural analysis, as it came to be known, did not sit easily with the UK government which moved rapidly to close the local projects. Although the local CDPs undertook much neighbourhood work with local groups, their contribution in this regard from what were extremely well-funded projects attracted less attention. One further legacy of the CDPs was a recognition that women played a highly significant but understated role in local community action. Community action at a local level then had a boost from the emergence of a magazine, Community Action, published in the UK but circulating more widely, which valorized the work done by unpaid activists organizing at neighbourhood level. This magazine, produced by volunteers, punched well above its weight for upwards of 30 years. In contrast, the professionalization of community development was simultaneously boosted by the creation of quasi-professional organizations representing community development interests, in a number of countries. These were sometimes created by split-offs from longstanding professional social work bodies (with community work often seen from their perspective as the third social work method alongside case work and group work). These representative professional organizations appeared in many Western European countries (and later on in East and Central Europe also), many linking to form the Combined European Bureau for Social Development. This pressed the European Union to fully recognize community development as an integral aspect of broad-based social welfare programmes. Similar community development-focused networks were created in many countries outside Europe including, for example, Australia, South Korea and New Zealand, along with a Francophile global network of animateurs.13 By this time also the IACD’s centre of gravity had moved to Western Europe, and Belgium in particular, and, for a while enjoyed a growth in spread and membership across the world, as well as having consultative status with Gary Craig
the UN. Reflecting also the growth of interest in community development worldwide, the CDJ was now publishing material from many new contexts (eventually covering over 100 different countries), becoming the most prominent international journal devoted to the issue. Although many local and national governments had climbed on board the community development bandwagon by the 1990s, using it to address many aspects of deficient welfare provision, it often remained marginally located within state structures (although found in a variety of locations such as health programmes or local economic development work) and was correspondingly the first sort of activity to feel the effect of the cuts in expenditure imposed by the International Monetary Fund in the mid- to late 1970s (and later austerity programmes). Professional community development never felt like a profession with a secure identity or career structure other than in countries where it acted as part of a government’s toolkit for managing potentially dissident populations: as the experience of the UK, USA and many other countries were to show, where it offered a significant challenge to state control by encouraging informed and active opposition amongst local communities, its funding was quickly withdrawn and the programmes neutralized. At the end of the twentieth century, an internal coup addressing issues of mismanagement and corruption led to the IACD in a renewed form moving its base to Scotland. From here, often existing on very limited resources, it extended its reach often by working in partnership with local organizations or by generating regional events. In 2004, for example, as many East and Central European countries joined the EU, the IACD created the Budapest Declaration14 from a conference involving delegates from 33 countries, to spell out its vision of community development. This was a very wide-ranging statement emphasizing the role of community development in strengthening civil society through the actions of local community development projects and was followed in later years by similar Declarations regarding work in Africa (Yaounde), Asia (Hong Kong) and Australasia (Melbourne).15 Also at the end of the twentieth century, a challenging new form of community development emerged called asset-based community development (https://
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www.nurturedevelopment.org/asset-based -community-development/). This focused on the (often latent) assets and strengths in a community as the platform for building community resilience, rather than regarding communities – as much community development had done – as a centre of disadvantage needing external support. By the twenty-first century, community development was part of the landscape of most countries’ social welfare provision, broadly defined, but the particular mode of provision, its freedom to act independently of state control, its relationships with autonomous community action on the one part and professional social work on the other varies enormously from state to state. Community development in Ireland has little in common with community development in China with the latter much more reflecting a rigid top-down approach. The IACD has attempted to corner the market in definitions although its own definition (see note 13) has continued to be criticized for placing too much emphasis on its professional attributes and not enough on unpaid and often oppositional community activism. State-sponsored community work is often hedged around with forms of control to ensure that it does not pose a political threat to dominant power-brokers. At the same time, what is encouraging about it is that it often attracts people highly committed to the values of fairness, equality and social justice who are prepared to use participatory community development as a vehicle for promoting these values. The arguments about appropriate nomenclature – community action, community work, community development, social planning, capacity building (q.v.), social development (q.v.) and so on – are of secondary importance seen from this perspective.16 What seems to be most important is not about the methods, skills or knowledge required to practice these activities, although these are important to practice effectively, but the values which inform them. Gary Craig
Notes 1.
See, for example, Freire (1971). Freire’s view of community education in relation to social change, expressed in this book, is this: ‘There is no such thing as a neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument which facilitates the integration of generations into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the “practice of freedom”.’ 2. NCSS (1962), p. 32. 3. Kwo (1983), p. 204. 4. Such as the Industrial workers of the world, or Wobblies as they were widely known. 5. See, for example, Edwards (1979), pp. 30ff. 6. United Nations (1948), p. 53. See also United Nations (1955). 7. The journal was initially called the Journal of the Community Development Society and only later was renamed as Community Development. Although it claimed an international readership, the Editorial Board and a very significant majority of papers published have always related to experience in the USA or to the work of American researchers working abroad. 8. Batten (1957). 9. The changing nature of community development literature over the life of the CDJ is reflected in Craig et al. (2011). 10. See Alinsky (1971). 11. See Marris and Rein (1967). 12. See CDPIIU (1975). 13. See https://infed.org/animateurs-animation-learning -and-change/. 14. See http://www.iacdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/ 2017/01/Postion-statement-Budapest.pdf. 15. For details of these, see https://www.iacdglobal .org. 16. For one attempt to distinguish between them, see ‘What is community development?’ at https://infed .org/mobi/what-is-community-development/.
References
Alinsky, S. (1971) Rules for radicals, Random House, New York. Batten, T.R. (1957) Communities and their development, Oxford University Press, Oxford. CDPIIU (1975) Gilding the ghetto, CDPIIU, London. Craig, G., Mayo, M., Shaw, M. and Taylor, M. (2011) The community development reader, Policy Press, Bristol. Edwards, B. (1979) ‘Organising the unemployed in the 1930s’. In G. Craig, M. Mayo and N. Sharman (eds), Jobs and community action, Routledge, London. Freire, P. (1971) The pedagogy of the oppressed, Penguin, Harmondsworth. Kwo, E. (1983) ‘Community education and community development in the Cameroon’, Community Development Journal, 19(4): 204–13. Marris, P. and Rein, P. (1967) Dilemmas of social reform, Atherton Press, New York.
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116 Elgar encyclopedia of development NCSS (1962) Community organisation: an introduction, National Council for Social Services, London. United Nations (1948) Report on the mission on rural community organisation and development
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in the Caribbean area and Mexico, United Nations, New York. United Nations (1955) Social progress through community development, United Nations, New York.
Conflict sensitivity and do no harm The term ‘conflict sensitivity’ is an umbrella for a diversity of analytical frameworks and tools. These tools, adopted by development, humanitarian and peacebuilding agencies, seek to help agencies to adapt interventions to the complexities of conflict. It is often used interchangeably with the term ‘do no harm’, although, as elaborated below, do no harm is better thought of as one specific conflict sensitivity approach (perhaps the most widely adopted), with its own specific tools. The concept of conflict sensitivity grew out of the work of the Collaborative for Development Action (CDA) during the 1990s, culminating in Mary B. Anderson’s (1999) Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace – or War, and Kenneth Bush’s (1998) A Measure of Peace: Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA) of Development Projects in Conflict Zones. The term conflict sensitivity itself emerged from consultations initiated by Saferworld and International Alert in 2000, which quickly led to a Conflict Sensitivity Consortium (CSC) of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that continues today and has now grown to 35 members. Conflict sensitivity revolves around analysis of the conflict context, careful consideration of the potential interaction between a proposed intervention and the context, and adaptation of the design and implementation of interventions to ensure all potential negative and positive impacts are systematically considered. Emphasis is given to analysing the wider context surrounding the conflict, to make the point that all socio-economic issues, political tensions, root causes, structural factors, and so on, are considered, because they all have the potential to contribute to violence conflict (CSC, 2004). The stated aims of all conflict sensitivity approaches are thus to adapt interventions to minimize harm and maximize positive systemic change. Conflict sensitivity is more a perspective by which to plan, monitor and evaluate, than a specific methodology or toolkit. That said, CSC did develop the toolkit in 2004, for conflict impact assessment (CSC, 2004), with regular updates (e.g. CSC, 2012). The concept was then popularized by this, and
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED) and UK publishing their own principles (OECD, 2001; DFID, 2002). The rapid deployment of large numbers of new conflict advisors and specialists since the early 2010s, however, shows that conflict sensitivity is only now being brought into mainstream practice. As recently as 2015, there were still calls urging detailed conflict analysis be adopted across the development sector, and that conflict sensitivity should not be treated as just another box to tick (Gullette & Rosenberg, 2015). Conflict analysis has become increasingly important to the planning and implementation of international development and humanitarian programming in conflict-affected situations, due to the proliferation and increased prominence of intra-state conflict since the end of the Cold War, and the expansion of the aid sector into regions with more persistent conflict and poverty. Agencies have increasingly had to grapple with the impact of conflict on their programming, and their programmes on conflict dynamics. The foundational understanding behind conflict sensitivity is that all international development–humanitarian–peacebuilding activities are external and interventionary, and that as such, their implementation will always impact conflict–peace dynamics. The impact may be either positive or negative, and the contribution is, on its own, usually a weak force towards conflict or peace outcomes, compared to other international, national, regional and local factors. Nonetheless, there is mounting evidence that the social, economic and political impacts of international interventions can amplify grievances, incentivize conflict or exacerbate tensions (Uvin, 1999; Anderson, 1999). Interventions can contribute to the worsening of conflict, as demonstrated in relation to Rwanda (Uvin, 1998; De Waal, 1997), Sri Lanka (Goodhand & Atkinson, 2001; Goodhand, 2006), and Afghanistan (Goodhand, 2002), for example, or be subverted as an instrument of war (Brown et al., 2009; le Billon, 2000; Slim, 1997). Furthermore, the unevenness of development progress tends to exacerbate inequalities, at least initially, and it is known that the grievances caused by poverty plus inequalities – particularly ‘horizontal inequalities’ between ethnicities or religious groups – significantly increases the likelihood of con-
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flict (Kaldor, 1999; Collier & Bannon, 2003; Stewart, 2008). In other words, conflict sensitivity is premised on the understanding that the design and implementation of interventions has the potential to reduce, sustain, amplify or even trigger conflict (Anderson, 1999; Smilie, 1998). Careful analysis of the context, actors and dynamics of a conflict is thus required, followed by careful analysis of project design to try to anticipate the interaction between potential interventions and conflict, then the adoption of proposed design to minimize harm and maximize positive impact. The popularization of this understanding means conflict sensitivity is now widely seen as essential in the planning and monitoring of international interventions in conflict-affected regions and is thus being mainstreamed. The most common negative critiques of practice, however, argue that while the texts and manuals promote both harm minimization and maximizing positive impact equally, practitioners most commonly use these tools to first minimize risk to their programmes, then attempt to avoid significant unintended consequences, while largely ignoring considerations of how to potentially support positive systemic change (Goodhand, 2006; Mac Ginty, 2006).
Do no harm
Do no harm (DNH) is the most well-known and widely adopted conflict sensitivity approach. Derived from the principle of non-maleficence in the Hippocratic Oath, a fundamental precept of bioethics encapsulated by the Latin maxim primum non nocere (‘first do no harm’), it has become widely embedded in the ethics of humanitarian and development assistance (Slim, 2015). DNH was developed out of Anderson’s (1999) book of the same name, and the research and programme around that. The analysis for DNH focuses principally on proximate causes and local issues. Its conflict analysis seeks to identify social cleavages, connectors and ‘local capacities for peace’. The framework builds on calls for analyses that ‘deconstruct’ a conflict, by ‘mapping’ all conflict issues, actors, strategies and actions (Burton, 1990), and observations that conflict resolution is most effective when built upon existing points of potential conciliation or the ‘public culture’ shared between Anthony Ware
conflict groups (Lederach, 1995; Schirch, 2004). However, while Anderson (1999) and key texts all talk about minimizing harm and maximizing positive impacts as equal components, in practice, priority is widely given to avoiding inadvertently strengthening dividers or weakening connectors, potential positive impact a secondary concern. In practice, ‘connectors’ or ‘bridges’ between parties are to be analysed for ‘local capacities for peace’, meaning pre-existing local connections, counter-narratives and norms, around which proposed interventions could then be re-orientated with the aim of strengthening local initiatives or positive attributes. The centrality of ‘local capacities for peace’ to DNH is important to note. ‘Local’, of course, relates to the level at which the conflict exists, and thus could be located at regional, national or district levels. However, given a large number of the agencies adopting DNH to implement projects at village-level, the village/communal level is an inherent dimension of ‘the local’ in ‘local capacities for peace’. Indeed, most anecdotes offered in Anderson and DNH updates since are interpersonal or intercommunal, more than higher-level socio-economic or political connectors. An inherent presupposition in DNH is thus about the potential of local individual and communal agency for peace (or conflict), hence the need for international organizations to support bottom-up peacebuilding agency as much as formal top-down action. Leading DNH promoters (e.g. Garred & Goddard, 2010) thus suggest that practitioners make persistent efforts at combining DNH with grassroots participatory facilitation approaches, such as Participatory Learning and Action (PLA). Recent tools for conflict analysis rely on interviews with elite local key informants combined with bottom-up data from ordinary local through activities such as listening exercises (e.g. CDA, 2016a, 2016b).
Peace and conflict impact assessments (PCIA) and aid for peace
Do no harm was preceded marginally by Bush’s (1998) Peace and Conflict Impact Assessments, which emerged out of the search for different approaches and early warning systems after the Rwandan geno-
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cide. The approach argues that peacebuilding should be considered an impact rather than activity of interventions, and therefore focuses on analysing potential impacts of interventions towards peaceful coexistence or renewed violence. For Bush, the most significant impacts, positive or negative, might be on institutional capacity, including capacity to resolve conflicts, or on security, structures and processes. Analysis thus focuses not on actors, grievances and so on, as much as wider conflict dynamics such as state legitimacy, rule of law, human rights, civil society and media, and economic inequalities. Significantly, though, proponents note that PCIA is mostly adopted at the hyper-local rather than national or regional level, highlighting a need for hyper-local participation in reimagining local structures and processes, and building local agency to effect bottom-up change. Bush argues that indicators of impact should be co-created by local recipients, and PCIA emphasizes grassroots empowerment and community participation. Aid for Peace is more recent reimagining of PCIA (Paffenholz & Reychler, 2007; Bush, 2009). Its key texts call for a refocusing of attention on the peacebuilding possibilities of aid, not simply conflict risk reduction. Its analysis seeks to identify local, specific peacebuilding needs and the peacebuilding relevance of potential development interventions, then anticipate the two-way impact of potential interventions between conflict and interventions by assessing the likely chain of results. From title to methodology, it emphasizes peacebuilding more than risk minimization. Bush (2009) also calls for increased inclusion and participation of ‘violence-affected groups in decision making at the community level’, and work to enhance the capacities of participants on the ground to identify and assess the real and potential peace/conflict impacts of interventions, then formulate and implement their own nonviolent solutions.
Criticisms
These approaches are all variations on a theme, and only the leading examples of a wide range of conflict sensitivity tools and approaches. Critics suggest that, in practice, they all focus more on problem-solving and avoiding unintended consequences of international interventions, than on deliber-
ately contributing to conflict transformation, allowing risk minimization to overshadow opportunities for enhancing local peacebuilding agency (e.g. Goodhand, 2006; Mac Ginty, 2006; Mac Ginty & Richmond, 2016). Critics also argue that conflict sensitivity tends to ignore local power relations and the wider political economy. DNH, in particular, has a reputation for minimalist application, meaning its utility is perceived as helping agencies reduce risk to their programmes first, and sometimes to avoiding making conflict worse, but rarely as a tool aiding peacebuilding (as, for example, noted by DNH proponent Garred, 2011). This is perhaps somewhat unfair, based more on the minimalist application of the idea by agencies, taking the name more than the substance of the approach. It thus may not represent best-practice, or ideal implementation, but it does highlight popular conception (perhaps largely because of the emphasis in the name over the balance in materials) and a common, superficial level of implementation. Anthony Ware
References
Anderson, M.B. (1999). Do No Harm: How aid can support peace – or war. Lynne Rienner. Brown, S., Goldwyn, R., Groenewald, H., & McGregor, J. (2009). Conflict Sensitivity Consortium Benchmarking. Conflict Sensitivity Consortium. Burton, J. (1990). Conflict Resolution and Prevention. St. Martin’s Press. Bush, K. (1998). A Measure of Peace: Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA) of development projects in conflict zones. International Development Research Centre. Bush, K. (2009). Aid for Peace: A handbook for applying Peace & Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA) to Peace III projects. International Conflict Research Institute (INCORE), UN University. CDA (2016a). Conflict Analysis Framework: Field guidelines and procedures. CDA Collaborative. CDA (2016b). Do No Harm Workshop Trainer’s Manual. CDA Collaborative. Collier, P., & Bannon, I. (2003). Natural Resources and Violent Conflict. World Bank. CSC (2004). Conflict Sensitive Approaches to Development, Humanitarian Assistance and Peacebuilding: Tools for PCIA. Conflict Sensitivity Consortium. CSC (2012). The Conflict Sensitivity Consortium presents the How To guide to conflict sensitivity. Conflict Sensitivity Consortium.
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120 Elgar encyclopedia of development De Waal, A. (1997). Famine Crimes: Politics and the disaster relief industry in Africa. James Currey. DFID (2002). Conducting Conflict Assessments: Guidance notes. Department for International Development. Garred, M. (2011). Conflict-Sensitive Expressions of Faith in Mindanao: A case study. Journal of Religion, Conflict and Peace, 4(2). http:// www.religionconflictpeace.org/volume-4-issue -2-spring-2011/conflict-sensitive-expressions -faith-mindanao-case-study. Garred, M., & Goddard, N. (2010). Do No Harm in Mindanao. CDA Collaborative. Goodhand, J. (2002). Aiding violence or building peace? The role of international aid in Afghanistan. Third World Quarterly, 23(5), 837–59. Goodhand, J. (2006). Aiding Peace? The role of NGOs in armed conflict. Lynne Rienner. Goodhand, J., & Atkinson, P. (2001). Conflict and Aid: Enhancing the peacebuilding impact of international engagement. International Alert. Gullette, D., & Rosenberg, D. (2015). Not Just Another Box to Tick: Conflict-sensitivity methods and the role of research in development programming. Development Policy Review, 33(6), 703–23. Kaldor, M. (1999). New and Old Wars. Polity. Le Billon, P. (2000). The Political Economy of War: What relief agencies need to know. Humanitarian Practice Network.
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Lederach, J.P. (1995). Preparing for Peace. Syracuse University Press. Mac Ginty, R. (2006). No War, No Peace: The rejuvenation of stalled peace processes and peace accords. Palgrave. Mac Ginty, R., & Richmond, O.P. (2016). The Fallacy of Constructing Hybrid Political Orders. International Peacekeeping, 23(2), 219–39. OECD (2001). Helping Prevent Violent Conflict. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Development Assistance Committee. Paffenholz, T., & Reychler, L. (2007). Aid for Peace: A guide to planning and evaluation for conflict zones. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft. Schirch, L. (2004). Ritual and Symbol in Peacebuilding. Kumarian. Slim, H. (1997). International Humanitarianism’s Engagement with Civil War in the 1990s. Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, 33. Slim, H. (2015). Humanitarian Ethics. Hurst. Smilie, I. (1998). Relief and Development: The struggle for synergy. Occasional Paper No. 33, Watson Institute. Stewart, F. (2008). Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict. Palgrave. Uvin, P. (1998). Aiding Violence: The development enterprise in Rwanda. Kumarian. Uvin, P. (1999). The Influence of Aid in Situations of Violent Conflict. OECD DAC Informal Task Force on Conflict Peace and Development Cooperation.
Corporate social responsibility Introduction
In the wake of the debt crisis, firms were increasingly recognized as important development actors that could provide direct economic benefits and spillovers and voluntary governance solutions to complex cross-border regulatory problems and contribute to good development outcomes though corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR, in the most basic terms, is the idea that a business has ethical obligations to the broader community in which it operates. In other words, CSR refers to a normative (value-based) claim about the appropriate relationship between business and society, what business should do, even if not legally required. CSR is also understood to normally encompass corporate activities ‘beyond compliance’ (Vogel, 2005, p. 2) – that is to say, voluntary activities that occur only after the company has met its obligations to comply with laws and regulations, and which are additional to those obligations, not substitutes for them. CSR encompasses a wide range of activities that concern environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. Broadly speaking, such activities include the creation, promotion, and adoption of norms (codes of conduct, labelling schemes, principles for auditing and reporting on ESG impacts); organizational restructuring to ensure that ESG issues are considered in decision-making internal to the firm; processes to permit external stakeholder consultation with managers; and substantive support for development projects delivered by the firm or its civil society partners. CSR is not a new idea, as the issue of the relationship between business and its community has existed throughout the modern capitalist era. What is new, however, is the way that CSR has developed beyond ad hoc ethical or charitable commitments to emerge as a strategic consideration of multinational corporations that has been professionalized and incorporated into organizational practices and management decision-making; and which now includes the achievement of better developmental outcomes as a key corporate objective. However, the theorization and analysis of CSR has principally been of
interest to business scholars who are predisposed to see the firm as contributing value to society. In contrast, scholars of development studies have tended to be much more critical of CSR and the expanding role for private enterprise in development.
CSR and business studies
Within the business literature, the first approaches to CSR in the 1970s were normative in nature, that is to say, they sought to make an argument to company executives that firms should behave in an ethical manner (do what is right, avoid harm to others), and contribute to the community (Carroll, 1979). In a second stage (1980s–2000s), these moral arguments were supplemented by instrumental arguments that being a good corporate citizen was good for business. It was argued that modern CSR should be ‘strategic’, instead of philanthropic, and integrated into the core purpose, organizational structure, and decision-making of the firm because it had demonstrable benefits on corporate financial performance (Margolis & Walsh, 2003, pp. 274–7). Finally, in the 2010s, a new line of thinking known as political CSR emerged, showing that corporations could take on public roles and that these roles could be shaped by governmental policy and institutions (Fox et al., 2002; Scherer & Palazzo, 2011). Stakeholder theory The most important contribution to the development of contemporary thinking about CSR was stakeholder theory, developed by R.E. Freeman in the early 1980s. Stakeholder theory underlines that the firm is embedded in a web of relationships that affects its ability to make a profit, and therefore needs to manage those relationships. Stakeholders are usually defined, following Freeman, as ‘any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the firm’s objectives’ (Freeman, 2010, p. 25). This includes both ‘primary’ stakeholders that the firm must accommodate to function, such as customers, employees, suppliers, and governments, and ‘secondary stakeholders’ that affect the firm indirectly, such as community organizations, media, and environmentalists (Mitchell et al., 1997). Stakeholder theory legitimized an expanded set of business obligations to
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society, by providing an instrumental rationale for broader social engagement that was more compelling than ethical arguments alone. Although ethical motivations by owners or top executives remained important to CSR choices by firms, the business case suggested that CSR and stakeholder engagement was a good strategy to reduce or manage social risk – that is to say, limit the potentially harmful consequences of campaigns or boycotts by actors outside the firm on corporate reputation, profitability, and employee and consumer loyalty. It is important to recognize how progressive stakeholder theory was – insofar, as it was a direct challenge to then-dominant neo-classical interpretations of the firm, exemplified by Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman’s dictum: ‘the only responsibility of the firm is to its shareholders’ (Margolis & Walsh, 2003, p. 273). Stakeholder theory is also the intellectual foundation for contemporary business thinking about consultation processes, which is the cornerstone of many corporate CSR policies and practices, especially in high-impact industries like infrastructure, energy, and resource extraction. CSR and poverty The business literature has been almost entirely focused on CSR practices by firms operating in wealthy developed countries where high regulatory standards enforced by capable states already exist, and firms may be reasonably expected to exceed those requirements voluntarily. It has been much more difficult to make the case that CSR can contribute to alleviating poverty and promoting development in poor countries, in which getting firms to meet basic labour and environmental standards remains a pressing problem. Two classic texts provide a business perspective on the relevance of strategic CSR to development. C.K. Prahalad’s famous argument about the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ market suggested that there were four billion people with an income below $1,500 per year ($4/day), for whom better access to markets could contribute to alleviating poverty. Prahalad and his collaborator showed that the poor often paid more for lower-quality basic services (telephones, clean water, basic foodstuffs) than consumers in the rich countries. They argued that this constituted a busiPaul Alexander Haslam
ness opportunity for multinational enterprise (MNEs) which could sell better quality goods at smaller volumes and cheaper prices to this vast market of poor people, thus contributing to improved quality of life (Prahalad & Hammond, 2002). Michael Porter and Mark Kramer developed a similar idea to argue that business, facing a crisis of legitimacy, needs to re-orient productive activities towards creating ‘shared value’, which means the creation of ‘economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges’ (Porter & Kramer, 2011, p. 48). Thus, while pursuing profits creating products, serving markets, and organizing production, business should also make the solution of social problems and the creation of social benefits a core mandate.
CSR and development studies
In development studies and related disciplines like political science, geography, sociology, and anthropology, it is the weakness of the state that frames the discussion of CSR. Weak states that fail to regulate in the public interest are thought to reduce the likelihood that CSR contributes to society – since without enforcement of existing laws there are few incentives for firms to go beyond them. Yet, institutional weakness also creates demand for MNEs to substitute for the state’s inadequate provision of social services and environmental regulation. This paradox contributes to a cynical view of the role of CSR in development, which can never successfully substitute for the ideal of an effective state but is often called upon to do so. Scholars of development studies, who aim to privilege subaltern voices in their research, often invert the biases of the business literature to portray firms as powerful actors that seek to profit at the expense of poor communities. In this perspective, CSR is either discursive propaganda that obscures the exploitation of communities by firms, or monetary transfers used to divide and de-mobilize communities. While such critical approaches offer an important corrective to the biases of the business literature, they also fail to recognize that CSR constitutes a set of social practices that can have real and beneficial effects on economic and social governance, as well as the distribution of resources to stakeholders. Among the research in development studies and related disciplines that
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takes CSR seriously, there are three important tendencies: consideration of international codes of conduct; the interaction of human rights with CSR; and a focus on development projects. Scholars adopting these approaches have tended to reject the theorization that emerged within business studies, such as ‘stakeholder theory’, in favour of using theoretical approaches based on more fundamental sociological or political processes. Codes of conduct Political scientists, in particular, have been interested in how voluntary codes of conduct and certification schemes can contribute to regulating the behaviour of MNEs across borders when state-based regulation is ineffective. Important empirical contributions have been made in sectors as diverse as Fairtrade coffee, labour standards in textiles and footwear, forestry, mining, and other extractive industries. The emergence of codes of conduct has either been viewed as the result of normative change among companies and states (Dashwood, 2012); or as the result of private politics in which a code represents a kind of ‘settlement’ between social actors that buy peace with activists in exchange for a commitment to higher standards of social or environmental performance by firms (Baron, 2001). Whether normatively based or the result of social bargaining, the literature on codes of conduct and certification suggests that voluntary agreements and certification schemes can provide governance over corporate activities that changes company behaviour under certain conditions. Human rights A related literature has developed to consider how the CSR activities of firms intersect with human rights. Since the early 2010s, influenced by Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach, international organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have increasingly argued that underdevelopment and poverty are problems related to a lack of rights. But some have argued that excessive reliance on CSR as a development strategy, changes the meaning of development. Rather than seeing development as a lack of freedoms or substantive rights, as argued by Sen and others, CSR treats poverty only as a ‘lack of market opportu-
nities or capital’ (Idemudia, 2014, p. 429). Furthermore, empirical evidence from the developing world shows that companies frequently deny certain human rights related to labour, a clean environment, and indigenous consultation, while viewing corporate rights (over property) as non-negotiable (Blowfield, 2005, p. 520). Interest in how companies react to human rights claims increased with the adoption of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (GPs) by the United Nations in 2011. In this voluntary framework, principally authored by John Ruggie, states commit to protecting human rights and promoting them to third parties, including firms, while companies (who are not subjects of international human rights law) commit to respecting human rights and providing complaint processes that facilitate remedy for abuses (Ruggie, 2013). Ruggie’s work was based on extensive consultations with multinational corporations, but many activists and scholars remain dubious as to the potential of the GPs to address human rights abuses by firms. Development projects/partnerships CSR is also expressed in development projects that aim to reduce poverty or solve some other social problem. Such projects vary widely by sector (entrepreneurship, agriculture, education, health, culture, and infrastructure), as well as in terms of the decision-making processes that guide CSR practice (ad hoc charitable giving, consultative, participative, institutionalized). Companies often undertake development activities through ‘partnerships’ with other actors, particularly civil society organizations (CSOs), but also agencies of the state. Within a partnership, actors should have ‘a common purpose, pool core competencies, and share risks, responsibilities, resources, costs and benefits’ (Utting & Zammit, 2006). Such partnerships have increased in frequency for four main reasons: CSOs and states aimed to mobilize scarce resources by involving the private sector; the efficiency and technical capabilities of firms was expected to have a positive impact on development; many companies began to see development as integral to the success of their business activities; and for ideological reasons, some governments sought to promote an enhanced role for the private sector in development. There Paul Alexander Haslam
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are numerous examples of successful development partnerships. However, partnerships have also been criticized for rarely attaining the ideal of equal and complementary roles among partners – too often CSOs end up as corporate subcontractors in development (Jamali & Keshishian 2009, p. 278). In recent years, especially in the resource sector, companies have begun to negotiate community development agreements (CBAs) with local governments. CBAs constitute legally binding private contracts between companies and representatives of the communities where they are operating that outline the benefits that will flow to the community during the life of the project (financial resources, employment, cultural support) as well as processes for community participation in environmental management, information exchange, and dispute settlement (O’Faircheallaigh, 2015, p. 97). In some cases, revenue is collected in a fund for development projects and decision-making is delegated to a board of directors with majority community representation. In this regard, the identification of development projects and spending of funds can correspond with community priorities. Such CBAs are thought to be the most advanced practice by companies aiming to contribute to good developmental outcomes. Finally, a current of literature within development studies and related disciplines that is often described as ‘private politics’ is concerned with CSR as a localized practice with social determinants and consequences. This literature generally eschews the business vocabulary of ‘corporate social responsibility’ and ‘stakeholders’, and instead is interested in higher-order concepts such as distributional benefits, compensation, and bargaining. Amengual (2018) suggests that distributive practices by companies (narrow or broadly based benefits) depend on whether the local social structure is fragmented or cohesive. CSR practices by firms may affect individual incentives to mobilize against firms (Haslam, 2021); as well as shape the behaviour of local social organizations who respond to the opportunities and constraints they create (Gustafsson, 2018; Steinberg, 2019).
Paul Alexander Haslam
Conclusion
The literature on CSR and development is disciplinarily diverse. The business literature provided analytical frames for promoting and understanding new management practices in community relations that were not narrowly tied to the business objectives of the firm. While some management scholars have suggested that CSR practices can serve a developmental purpose by reducing poverty and solving social problems, researchers working in development studies and related disciplines have been more sceptical, seeing CSR as a highly imperfect substitute for effective state regulation. While there is a strong critical tradition that views CSR as little more than propaganda, more nuanced research has demonstrated that voluntary Codes of Conduct can contribute to filling cross-border regulatory gaps and improving respect for human rights under certain conditions. Moreover, locally grounded research has revealed the complex social determinants and consequences of CSR practices for development. Paul Alexander Haslam
References
Amengual, M. (2018). Buying Stability: The Distributive Outcomes of Private Politics in the Bolivian Mining Industry. World Development, 104, 31–45. Baron, D.P. (2001). Private Politics, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Integrated Strategy. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 10(1), 7–45. Blowfield, M. (2005). Corporate Social Responsibility: Reinventing the Meaning of Development? International Affairs, 81(3), 515–24. Dashwood, H.B. (2012). The Rise of Global Corporate Social Responsibility: Mining and the Spread of Global Norms. Cambridge University Press. Carroll, A.B. (1979). A Three-dimensional Conceptual Model of Corporate Performance. Academy of Management Review, 4(4), 497–505. Freeman, R.E. (2010). Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. Cambridge University Press. Fox, T., Ward, H., & Howard, B. (2002). Public Sector Roles in Strengthening Corporate Social Responsibility: A Baseline Study. The World Bank.
Corporate social responsibility 125 Gustafsson, M.-T. (2018). Private Politics and Peasant Mobilization: Mining in Peru. Palgrave Macmillan. Haslam, P.A. (2021). The Micro-politics of Corporate Responsibility: How Companies Shape Protest in Communities Affected by Mining. World Development, 139, 105322. Idemudia, U. (2014). Corporate Social Responsibility and Development in Africa: Issues and Possibilities. Geography Compass, 8(7), 421–35. Jamali, D., & Keshishian, T. (2009). Uneasy Alliances: Lessons Learned from Partnerships between Businesses and NGOs in the Context of CSR. Journal of Business Ethics, 84, 277–95. Margolis, J.D. & Walsh, J.P. (2003). Misery Loves Companies: Rethinking Social Initiatives by Business. Administrative Science Quarterly, 48(2), 268–305. Mitchell, R.K., Agle, B.R., & Wood, D.J. (1997). Toward a Theory of Stakeholder Identification and Salience: Defining the Principle of Who and What Really Counts. Academy of Management Review, 22(4), 853–86. O’Faircheallaigh, C. (2015). Social Equity and Large Mining Projects: Voluntary Industry Initiatives, Public Regulation and Community Development Agreements. Journal of Business Ethics, 132, 91–103.
Prahalad, C.K. & Hammond, A. (2002). Serving the World’s Poor, Profitably. Harvard Business Review, 80(9), 48–58. Porter, M.E., & Kramer, M.R. (2011). Creating Shared Value: How to Reinvent Capitalism and Unleash a Wave of Innovation and Growth. Harvard Business Review, 89(1–2), 62–77. Ruggie, J.G. (2013). Just Business: Multinational Corporations and Human Rights. W.W. Norton & Company. Scherer, A.G. & Palazzo, G. (2011). The New Political Role of Business in a Globalized World: A Review of a New Perspective on CSR and Its Implications for the Firm, Governance, and Democracy. Journal of Management Studies, 48(4), 899–931. Steinberg, J. (2019). Mining, Communities, and States: The Local Politics of Natural Resource Extraction in Africa. Cambridge University Press. Utting, P., & Zammit, A. (2006). Beyond Pragmatism: Appraising UN–Business Partnerships. UNRISD. Vogel, D. (2005). The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility. The Brookings Institution.
Paul Alexander Haslam
Corruption and development The year 1989 brought the victory of economic liberalism: at least this half of Francis Fukuyama’s (1989) ‘end of history’ announcement remains unchallenged. Capitalism became the only economic mantra, and even former communist states proceeded toward some economic liberalization. The roadmap of the first generation of ‘Washington Consensus’ macroeconomic and stabilization reforms, as pencilled by economist John Williamson, did not bring development to many countries, which underperformed compared to the ‘developmental states’ in East Asia (Rodrik, 2006). The need then surged for an alternative explanation for development (Mungiu-Pippidi & Hartmann, 2019). Evans and Rauch (1999) published evidence that the variation in the government effectiveness (‘quality of government’) of nation states, notably the presence of a Weberian-like bureaucracy, selected and promoted on merit alone, and largely autonomous towards private interest (non-corrupt, in lay terms) is indeed strongly associated with growth. Their work revived the use of Max Weber classic concepts as patrimonialism or bureaucracy and went on to being adopted by the World Bank as an alternative growth theory, disseminated via the influential World Development Report (WDR, 1997, 2017). The argument seemed to offer a good theory of change as well. Since most actors in international development are states or inter-governmental agencies who work directly with government from developing countries, assisting state modernization seemed a feasible agenda: if growth depends on the quality of its government, that will have to be fixed as preliminary step. Two decades of unprecedented investment in governance, institutions and anticorruption followed with the understanding that this new approach to state modernization would lay the profound foundations for economic modernization and development (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2020). WDR 1997 focused on the state, and WDR 2017 on rule of law, and from the first to the second the philosophy shifted to some extent, as it became clear that capacity cannot be raised just by technical means and the state must be seen as an expression of more complex soci-
etal equilibria. The most important of these is corruption, the lack of autonomy of the state from private interest, designated by different euphemisms along time. The original argument that Western European capitalism has been historically associated with some form of virtue belongs to German sociologist Max Weber (1968), who argued in his Economy and Society that the patrimonial and feudal struggle for power in several European states resulted in a new type of authority, the rational–legal one. Rationalization means an evolution from the brutal interest-driven behaviour as espoused, for instance, by the Spanish conquistadors who had spoiled the gold and silver of the New World to the more rationalistic, capitalistic channelling of the economic surplus, with an adjacent ideology highlighting personal austerity and achievement (Weber, 1968: pt. 2, ch. 11). The process entailed the gradual advent of market and capitalism as the main means of allocating resources, replacing the previous discretionary allocation by means of organized violence, by state or private actors. Various status groups in Western Europe found the promotion of government rationalization to suit their own best interest and promoted it: others opposed it and were eliminated (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2020). The process certainly helped development, as it brought increased government effectiveness, for instance an increased tax collection. The original European sequence, however, was from rationalization of society to the rationalization of the state (Fukuyama, 2014). The question for the development industry is if this is a universal path that other societies can follow. As Samuel Huntington (2017) aptly noted, when modernization was emulated or exported to the rest of the world, what resulted was more, not less, corruption. Several contemporary economic schools of thought deal with the explanation of systematic corruption in modern economies and societies. The ‘public choice’ school introduced the distinction between profit-seeking and rent-seeking, with the former based on merit (providing a product or service that consumers would be willing to pay more for than the opportunity cost of the resources used) and the latter based on coercion by preventing others from competing equally or by forcibly taking their wealth (Buchanan et al., 1980). Unlike profit-seeking by market means, rent-seeking by political means doesn’t create
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wealth; it merely transfers it from one party to another and wastes resources (the ones used to get the rents), because these are invested to produce an outcome in which nothing of value is created. Furthermore, acquiring rents through political power distorts the operation of the market process, impinging on interest rates and the prices of goods and services. So rent-seeking of this kind actually destroys wealth (Buchanan et al., 1980). Moreover, rent-seeking tends over time to create perverse incentives as more people feel encouraged to engage in it, trying to acquire political power to gain advantages over the less powerful (Mungiu-Pippidi & Hartmann, 2019). Therefore, it subverts rule of law, private property, and trust in government. An economy of privilege versus a free market would have high social costs, as firms would compete for privileges from the authorities (for instance, import licenses) rather than in a free market (Krueger, 1974). In the absence of state restrictions, entrepreneurs would seek to achieve windfall gains by adopting new technology, anticipating market shifts correctly; in other words, incentives would exist for merit as the main source of wealth. With full restrictions, regulations would be so all-pervasive that rent seeking would be the only route to gain, and therefore entrepreneurs would devote all their time and resources to capturing windfall rents (Krueger, 1974). In other words, the state is the main mean to control rents: and who ‘owns’ the state, ‘owns’ the rents, so state capture becomes a great temptation in countries where society is weak and cannot control rulers from spoiling public resources, and the ‘grabbing hand’ replaces the invisible hand (Shleifer & Vishny, 2002). Institutionalist theories of various kinds further advanced the discussion on the implications for development of rent-seeking. Mancur Olson (1996: 19) highlighted the importance of institutions in explaining long-term development patterns. Douglass North argued that ‘as human beings became increasingly interdependent, and more complex institutional structures were necessary to capture the potential gains from trade’, societies needed to ‘develop institutions that will permit anonymous, impersonal exchange across time and space’; however, their success in creating the right institutions varied due to ‘local experience’ (North, 1993:
4). Societies which do not manage to create open access and impersonal, merit-based relation to govern both the market and the state–citizen relation remain poor. Their economy remains one of privilege, and their state remains captured by particular interests. Even if competition exists both in politics and in the economy in such a society, the main stake of politics amounts to spoiling public resources to the benefit of particular groups (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2006). The economist Daron Acemoglu (1995) developed an equilibrium model of the allocation of talent between productive and unproductive activities (such as rent-seeking), arguing that allocations of past generations, as well as expectations of future allocations, influence current rewards and the society may get trapped in a ‘rent-seeking’ steady state equilibrium. Evidence exists for this model, as corruption negatively correlates with both innovation and brain drain, even with controls for human development (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2015). Finally, Acemoglu and Robinson (2012) in their bestseller Why Nations Fail, strongly promoted the argument that political reforms, with a passage from ‘extractive institutions’ to ‘inclusive’ ones, are indispensable to development. According to them, economic prosperity would thus require inclusive economic institutions (Figure 1). The post-1989 globalized neoliberal version of capitalism brought years of growth to some countries, notably China and India, but despite the investment in good governance and anticorruption, governance stayed flat (Figure 2). ‘Political capitalism’, a new name for the older and judgmental ‘crony capitalism’, where the state is strongly involved in directing rents to favourites came to be seen by some economists as an established type parallel to the ‘liberal meritocratic’ capitalism, rather than just a passing phase (Milanovic, 2019). But if notoriously corrupt China does so well, is corruption really the reason why development fails? While there is no dispute that the most developed countries are also the least corrupt, many were not so in their take-off years. Nineteenth-century United States, for instance, was famously corrupt and its early capitalists promoted anything but public integrity. An answer to the puzzle is offered by Y.Y. Ang (2020), who studied corruption in contemporary China. Ang argues that not all Alina Mungiu-Pippidi
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Source: Mungiu-Pippidi (2020).
Figure 1
Innovation and public integrity closely associated at national level
Source: Author, based on data from World Bank.
Figure 2
Evolution of growth compared with control of corruption
forms of corruption are equally detrimental to development. China found ‘a pathway out of this vicious cycle … allowing … street-level bureaucrats to extract some payments to top up their paltry formal salaries, while also aligning their financial incentives [fringe benefits and performance bonuses] with long-term economic development objectives’ (Ang, 2020: 86). This ‘profit-sharing’ encouraged officials to self-enrich through behaviour Alina Mungiu-Pippidi
that generates financial investment and thus favours development (Ang, 2020: 99–109). Corruption thus moved from a primitive stage of theft and embezzlement towards influence peddling and other forms less detrimental to growth. China’s transformation may not be over yet, and its ‘gilded age’ might then prove to be not so dissimilar to that of United States. South Korea and Singapore, the previous models for ‘developmental state’, thrived
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on state capitalism before the South East Asian currency crisis pushed them over the brink and brought the International Monetary Fund, which asked them to liberalize and give up cartels and favouritism. Their good quality of governance was thus reached at a later stage and triggered another cycle of development afterwards. It is very possible then that the virtuous circle of development is like a chain of several rings, where growth and corruption are entangled and follow one another in a more complex sequence. For sustainable development to emerge eventually, corruption needs, however, to allow increasing rewards to go towards merit. This is what China does, and this is why it is no exception to the rule. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi
References
Ang, Y.Y. (2020). China’s gilded age: The paradox of economic boom and vast corruption. Cambridge University Press. Acemoglu, D. (1995). Reward structures and the allocation of talent. European Economic Review, 39(1), 17–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/ 0014–2921(94)00014-Q. Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J.A. (2012). Why Nations Fail: The origins of power, prosperity and poverty (1st edn). Crown Publishers. Buchanan, J.M., Tollison, R.D., & Tullock, G. (1980). Toward a theory of the rent-seeking society. Texas A&M University. Evans, P., & Rauch, J.E. (1999). Bureaucracy and growth: A cross-national analysis of the effects of “Weberian” state structures on economic growth. American Sociological Review, 64(5), 748–65. Fukuyama, F. (1989). The end of history? The National Interest, 16(Summer 1989), 3–18. Fukuyama, F. (2014). Political order and political decay: From the industrial revolution to the globalization of democracy. Macmillan. Huntington, S.P. (2017). Modernization and corruption. In A.J. Heidenheimer & M. Johnston (eds), Political corruption: Concepts and contexts (3rd edn) (pp. 253–64). Routledge.
Krueger, A.O. (1974). The political economy of the rent-seeking society. The American Economic Review, 64(3), 291–303. Milanovic, B. (2019). Capitalism, Alone. Harvard University Press. Mungiu-Pippidi, A. (2006). Corruption: Diagnosis and treatment. Journal of Democracy, 17(3), 86–99. Mungiu-Pippidi, A. (2015). Corruption: Good governance powers innovation. Nature, 518(7539), 295–7. Mungiu-Pippidi, A. (2020). The quality of government and public administration. In W.R. Thompson (ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Oxford University Press. Mungiu-Pippidi, A., & Hartmann, T. (2019). Corruption and development: A reappraisal. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance. Oxford University Press. North, D.C. (1993). The new institutional economics and development. EconWPA. http:// econwpa.repec.org/eps/eh/papers/9309/ 9309002.pdf. Olson, M. (1996). Distinguished lecture on economics in government: Big bills left on the sidewalk: Why some nations are rich, and others poor. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 10(2), 3–24. Rodrik, D. (2006). Goodbye Washington consensus, hello Washington confusion? A review of the World Bank’s economic growth in the 1990s: Learning from a decade of reform. Journal of Economic Literature, 44(4), 973–87. Shleifer, A., & Vishny, R.W. (2002). The grabbing hand: Government pathologies and their cures. Harvard University Press. WDR [World Development Report] (1997). The State in a changing world. https:// openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/ 5980. WDR [World Development Report] (2017). Governance and the law. https://www .worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2017. Weber, M. (1968). Economy and Society (volumes 1–3). Bedminster.
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi
Culture and development Introduction
The relationship between culture and development is central to the development debate as well as that of development practice. This is so because conceptions of culture incorporate everything from ‘universal and timeless values’ to ‘manifestations of human activities’ and broadly the whole ‘way of life’ (Williams 1976). Additionally, Williams opines that development is equally slippery and contestable, for which he sounds a cautionary note on the uncritical use of the concept because he argues that ‘the unexamined idea of development can limit and confuse virtually any generalizing description of the current world economic order’ (ibid. 1976: 104). From this standpoint, culture is embedded in development whether one is talking about ideologies of development or modes of productive development. It is also noted that ‘culture is both the context for development as well as the missing factor in policies for development’ (Griffin 1997: i). This conundrum of seeing culture as essential to the development agenda yet not having a solid methodological basis for analysis and policymaking is a pervasive and long-standing problem (Rao and Walton 2004). The challenge of the culture and development literature relates in part to the problem of causality as well as the difficulties of defining the key terms given that they are value-laden, contested, and open to multiple interpretations. The culture and development discourses reflect the key debates in the social sciences such as agency versus structure or utilitarianism versus holism (Gordon 1993). Fukuyama (2001: 3134) also makes the point that the culture and economic development literature is polarized either in terms of ethnographic studies that are not generalizable or abstract modelling that universalizes. They are also having to grapple with the critiques of ethnocentrism (i.e. eurocentrism) and anthropocentrism (Marglin & Marglin 1990; Escobar 1995). So where does this leave us? The key point being made here is that conceptually it is important to interrogate the culture and development discourses at its roots because it not only frames development policy and practice but it also shapes the popular imag-
ination, for example, in terms of what is ‘the good life’ and thus the livelihoods, aspirations and choices of most people in modern societies/economies. From this standpoint the goals of this entry are to make sense of the culture and development discourses within the status quo and at the margins. Based on this objective, the entry first outlines the dominant perspectives in the culture and development agenda as a basis to frame the discussion. Thereafter, it explores contending perspectives that shifts the unit of analysis and contemporizes the culture and development discourses.
Cultural change and development
Often the key concern or query that is generated when scholars ask about the linkage between culture and development is to ascertain why some countries (the ‘now’ developed) were able to ‘make it’ and how others have been struggling to ‘catch up’. It is a question in search of a theory to explain the distinction between the success of ‘frontrunners’ and the failure of ‘laggards’ (Aseniero 1985). In short, it is a question about the history of modern economic development with a focus on the growth of European-centred global capitalism since the sixteenth century and the divergence with non-European areas of the world. A sizeable share of the literature starts with the notion, if not premise, that the Western European model of development is not only desirable but also attainable if only the developing countries would apply the right prescriptions. Development has essentially been about filling gaps such as the investment, savings and entrepreneurial gaps which are undergirded by a concern about the ‘culture gap’ whether it is stated explicitly or not. In short, the thesis is that non-Western societies had to be transformed from a ‘traditional’ state to one of ‘modernity’ (Addo 1996; Banuri 1990). This is the centrepiece of the work of modernization theorists like Weber, Rostow, Lewis, McClelland, Inkeles, Parsons and others. These theories have had an exceedingly powerful influence on modern thought. This is because ‘stage theories do not only enjoin latecomers to catch up with the leader, but they also imply that the leader knows what is best for everyone else’s own good’ (Aseniero 1985: 72). In essence, ‘catching up’ and the
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‘civilizing mission’ are two sides of the same coin: they are co-dependent. The works of these theorists have their epistemic roots in utilitarianism through the intellectual contribution of political and economic theorists like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Utilitarianism is ‘the first of all modern cultural theories’ which ‘almost certainly still represents the preferred paradigm of the vast majority of the members of the contemporary business and political elite’ ‘and, as such, exercises an enduring influence …’ (Milner 1991: 7). This approach to the cultural gap question has a long genus. As Fukuyama (2001) states in his essay on ‘Culture and Economic Development’, the ‘locus classicus’ of studies of culture and development is Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which was first published in 1904. Weber’s thesis focused on explaining the divergence between Protestant Europe and Catholic Europe in terms of work ethic, and the desire for commerce and worldly accumulation. In summary, Weber argued that Protestantism promoted the rise of modern capitalism by prioritizing a culture of accumulation characterized by hard work, thrift and business acumen. In a follow-up comparative study of East Asia titled Confucianism and Taoism, which was first published in 1915 and in English not until 1951, Weber argued that China had many of the key attributes for success (i.e. relatively low levels of conflict, internal trade and transport routes, demographic growth, land acquisition and freedom of movement); however, there were constraining factors stemming from religion as they related to technological change, private property, extended kinship groups and legal institutions. This work on the East Asian societies is less well known but has equal importance for this discussion given the tremendous growth and success first in Japan and then in the East Asian newly industrializing countries of South Korea and Taiwan, and later China. While the Weber thesis proved to be controversial at the time, subsequently there is no gainsaying how influential the Weber thesis has been in the social sciences and particularly the culture and development discourses (Bendix 1977). In so many respects it has
established the benchmark and the critical reference point for analysing global competitiveness of societies. So, while the thesis may be considered historically imprecise in its conceptualization of modernity or industrial capitalism or that its claims to the uniqueness of capitalism to Western societal cultures like Protestantism are overblown (Cotesta 2014), the key point is that the thesis has shaped at a fundamental level the discourses in the social sciences on the link between cultural change and capitalist development. It can be argued that David Landes has extended the Weberian thesis, first in Unbound Prometheus and later in the Wealth of Nations. Landes provides a detailed interpretation of how Western values promoted capitalist development, particularly starting with the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Here the issue of culture takes centre stage in explaining how and why Europe surpassed other regions to become the most materially wealthy society/civilization. Landes makes the point that ‘if we learn anything from the history of economic development, it is that culture makes all the difference’ (Landes 1998: 516). Again, it is a matter of culture that is used as the main explanatory variable. The journal Economic Development and Cultural Change, which started in 1952, played an influential role as the leading publication in this realm in shaping the culture and development discourses. The journal was the first to focus on ‘development’ and to bring the issue of ‘cultural change’ into sharp relief. Hoselitz, the founding editor, who served for over thirty years, played an important role in his own regard. Drawing heavily on the work of the modernization theorist, Talcott Parsons, Hoselitz generated several theses to explain the divergent experience between developed and underdeveloped countries. In summary, Hoselitz (1964: 141–2) argues that in underdeveloped countries the conditions for economic development are such that: (a)
The general structure of classes is based ultimately on a dichotomy between two principal groups: the elite and the mass. Middle classes are rare, small and of relatively little significance in these societies. (b) Non-industrial or generally underdeveloped societies are characterized by the principle of ascription – as against Keith Nurse
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that of achievement – as the major force assigning social, economic and occupational roles. (c) Non-industrial or pre-industrial societies are also characterized by little advanced division of labour which causes productive tasks to be less sharply distinguished than in economically more advanced societies. Huntington, who is famous for his Clash of Civilizations, has more recently co-edited with Harrison a hugely influential volume entitled Culture Matters which includes renowned authors like Landes, Michael Porter, Jeffrey Sachs, Francis Fukuyama, Orlando Patterson and others. Culture Matters examines the question of why some countries and ethnic groups are better off than others, and the role that cultural values play in driving political, economic and social development. In the foreword entitled ‘Culture Counts’, Huntington starts his argument by highlighting the divergence in economic performance between South Korea and Ghana. The often-quoted argument is that both countries had similar levels of GDP and foreign aid in the early 1960s but by the 1990s South Korea had surged far ahead to achieve GDP/ per capita levels as high as fifteen times that of Ghana. Huntington asks: ‘How could this extraordinary difference in development be explained?’ He then goes on to conclude that ‘Undoubtedly, many factors played a role, but it seemed to me that culture had to be a large part of the explanation. South Koreans valued thrift, investment, hard work, education, organization, and discipline. Ghanaians had different values. In short, cultures count’ (2001: xiii).
Culture change and beyond
The main proposition in the culture and national development discourse is that it is cultural traits that accounts for the difference in economic performance. This is a contested argument, of course. For example, Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang argues alternatively that the difference in performance between Korea and Ghana is attributable to economic policies and development strategy. Chang argues that the argument of countervailing factors, of which culture is often considered a key factor, isn’t backed Keith Nurse
up by solid empirical evidence. He notes, for example, that Culture (leading to high savings rate, strict work ethic, high-quality bureaucracy), the legacy of Japanese colonialism (leading to exceptionally high literacy and broad industrial base), and Cold War politics (leading to exceptionally high foreign aid and special access to the US market) are frequently cited candidates, but none of them even pass the minimum factual tests. (2009: 6)
On the other side of the equation, it can be argued that Ghana and other post-colonial societies suffered through the process of deculturalization through the proselytization of missionaries, religious conversion, the colonial education system, the role of the mass media, to name but a few of the institutions of cultural oppression and cultural imperialism. These are historical matters that are largely absent and elided in the culture and development discourses from a Eurocentric perspective and understandably so, as Said forcefully argues: What are striking in these discourses are the rhetorical figures one keeps encountering in their descriptions of ‘the mysterious East’ as well as the stereotypes about the African [or Indian or Irish or Jamaican or Chinese] mind, the notions about bringing civilization to primitive or barbaric peoples. (1993: xi)
The dominant culture and national development discourses are compromised by historiography. For example, Sen (2004: 48) makes the point very eloquently that ethnocentrism and eurocentrism, which are embedded in the modernization theories, were plagued by cultural determinism and lacked explanatory power. He states that ‘the grand cultural theories have a propensity to trail one step behind the world of practice, rather than serving as a grand predictive device’. He elaborates further: By the time Max Weber’s privileging of ‘protestant ethics’ (based on nineteenth-century experience) was getting widely recognised, many of the Catholic countries, including France and Italy, were beginning to grow faster than protestant Britain or Germany. The thesis had to be, then, altered, and the privileged culture was taken more generally to be
Culture and development 133 Christian and Western, rather than specifically Protestant. (2004: 48)
Sen takes the argument even further to critique the ways in which the industrializing economies in East Asia have been co-opted into the culture and national development discourses to further reinforce the thesis of cultural values being determining: By the time that Eurocentric view of the culture of development got established, Japan was growing much faster than the West. So Japan had to be included in the privileged category, and there was useful work on the role of Japanese ethos, Samurai culture, etc. But, by the time the specialness of Japan was well understood, the East Asian economies were growing very fast, and there was a need to broaden the theory of Japan’s specialness to include the wider coverage of ‘Confucian’ ethics and a wider and a more spacious regional tradition, fuzzily described as ‘Asian values.’ However, by the time that ‘Confucian’ theory had become well established, the fastest growing economy in the world was Thailand, which is a Buddhist country. Indeed, Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan too have much Buddhist influence in their culture. (2004: 48)
The key point being made by Sen is that the culture and development discourses by and large were focused on constructing a narrative that privileged the dominant. As such, the approach tends to be more prescriptive than predictive and explanatory. In effect, these perspectives are challenged to explain new and unfolding context such as the relative decline of the West and the rise of East Asia (Buck 1999).
Culture and institutions
Several critiques have been levelled against approaches that prioritize methodological nationalism and a focus on cultural traits and identities as explanatory factors. For example, it is argued that ‘what may appear to be cultural traits may, in fact, be behaviors shaped by economic incentives and thus amenable to change through changes in the underlying incentives’ (Lopez-Claros and Perotti 2014: 15). This is a useful segue into the literature on culture and institutions. One of the pioneering works is that of Douglass North (1990) that argues that institutional capabilities are
better predictors than cultural traits or values. Institutions create the incentives structure for the economy which in turn creates new path dependencies. The historical record suggests that institutions are vital to achieve economic development outcomes and to move up the value-chain. However, the experience of development institutions is variable across regions. For example, the Latin American experience with rent-seeking institutions and elites is often juxtaposed with that of the East Asian planning bureaucracies and developmentalist elite. The latter is considered to have engineered effective industrial and innovation policies whereas the former has led to premature deindustrialization. A more recent contribution in this vein is from Acemoglu et al. (2001) and in Acemoglu and Robinson’s (2012) book Why Nations Fail the authors argue that historical formations and critical junctures shape the path of countries and institutions rather than geographies and culture. They argue also that there is an important distinction between ‘inclusive institutions’ that create virtuous circles and development as opposed to ‘extractive institutions’ that create vicious circles of under-development. As such, they argue that the institutional deficiencies that we see in the developing world are embedded in colonial and post-colonial institutions. In his seminal book How Rich Countries Got Rich … and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor, Erik Reinert (2007), utilizing a neo-Schumpeterian perspective on technical change, argues that rich countries developed through a combination of government intervention, protectionism, and strategic investment which allowed for increasing returns activities that in turn led to virtuous circles of growth and economic diversity. Reinert suggests that these sets of policies in various combinations have driven successful development from Renaissance Italy to the modern Far East. The argument is that capitalist development is not determined by some innate cultural traits but rather that success stems from what can best be called a ‘process of innovation’ which generates increased ‘industrial sophistication’ and enhanced competitiveness. From this standpoint the alternative question to be asked is what are the framework conditions for embedding a successful innovation governance strategy. Keith Nurse
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Carlota Perez (2001), for instance, notes that ‘development is a moving target’ and as such the strategies that would have worked in one historical moment are not necessarily available at another moment because of shifts in the techno-economic paradigm. As such, what matters is a culture of innovation.
Geocultures and development
The cultural studies literature offers some insights that might be relevant to explain why the developing countries remain underdeveloped and have weak cultures of innovation. Much of the literature speaks about the externally driven factors such as the role of colonizers or multinational enterprises. The area of far less focus is the ways in which the colonized are complicit in their own under-development. Drawing on the Gramscian framework, it highlights the workings of hegemony, which is never a one-sided affair. Hegemony only works when the subordinate are co-opted into accepting their lot in life or to accept the existing division of labour and rewards as fixed, immutable or godly defined. Of course, the dominant groups have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and they are able to do so through modes of representation, stereotyping, labelling and so on which constructs the ‘other’ as lesser than and always wanting. According to Homi Bhabha (1994), the fundamental objective of the ‘colonizing discourse’ is for the subaltern groups to accept their underling position relative to that of the dominant group/s. Once such a regime is established the inequities of the system become self-perpetuating and a self-fulfilling prophecy. These self-fulfilling prophecies operate in two directions all at the same time. They embolden the powerful by putting their truths beyond question. The flipside is the ways in which the subordinate and disadvantaged internalize their oppression (for example, through stigmas and stereotypes and other forms of colonial discourses) (Bhabha 1994: Hall 1997). Mimetic development emerges from weak states and national cultures. Oliver Cox (1964) argues that peripheral cultures tend to have passive and reactive cultures and thus lack ‘cultural confidence’ when compared with those in the core economies that promote and invest in innovation. What the above discussion points to is the idiosyncratic theoretical approach of Fernand Keith Nurse
Braudel who talks about the dynamic relationship between structures (i.e. trading relations, demographics) and mentalities (i.e. ideas, cosmologies). For example, he asserts that Capitalism also benefits from all the support that culture provides for the solidity of the social edifice, for culture – though unequally distributed and shot through with contradictory currents – does in the end contribute the best of itself to propping up the existing order. And lastly capitalism can count on the dominant classes who, when they defend it, are defending themselves. (1981–84: 623)
There is much to unpack in the Braudelian approach which is beyond the scope of this entry. However, suffice it to say that the Braudelian focus on the culture of everyday life provides rich insight into how grand cultural narratives or geocultures are enacted, imbibed and operationalized in ‘development in practice’. Wallerstein taps into the Braudelian framework to argue that Culture has always been a weapon of the powerful … But culture has always cut both ways. If the powerful can legitimate their expropriations by transposing them into “custom,” the weak can appeal to the legitimacy of these same “customs” to resist new and different expropriations. This is an unequal battle to be sure, but not one that has had no effect. (1991: 193)
Geocultures are the ideational underside of the world-system. It is ‘the part that is more hidden from view and therefore more difficult to assess, but the part without which the rest would not be nourished’ (Wallerstein 1991: 11). The power of geocultures comes from the ways in which they reproduce the social configuration of power and world order, not through coercion but through contestation between ideologies and social movements. This is evident in the ideological tension between the doctrine of universalism, which asserts equality and meritocracy (e.g. all humans are equal; all nations are equal), and the anti-universalistic doctrine of racism-sexism, which institutionalizes oppression and discrimination based on ethnicity and gender (e.g. some humans and nations are more equal). This process is evident today in what are called the “Culture Wars” with the rise of
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illiberalism, resurgent nationalism and white supremacist ideologies on one side and social movements for gender (e.g. MeToo movement) and racial equality (e.g. Black Lives Matter) on the other side. There is a high correlation between a groups’ position in the geocultural divide and their status and income in the world-system (Wallerstein 1991: 175).
Cultural violence
Development as an ideology (i.e. developmentalism) is seen as a mechanism that facilitates epistemic violence, that is, cultural violence, which in turn legitimizes structural and direct violence. Galtung’s notion of cultural violence operates from the standpoint that the absence of somatic or direct violence does not equate with peace, and those forms of direct and structural violence are under-girded by epistemologies of violence and cultural power (Galtung 1996). What accounts for the durability of cultural violence? Galtung argues that cultural violence ‘preaches, teaches, admonishes, eggs on, and dulls us into seeing exploitation and/ or repression as normal and natural, or into not seeing them (particularly not exploitation) at all’ (1996: 200). Cultural violence also employs other devices such as ‘blaming the victim’, the ‘sanitation of language’, the co-optation of the agenda of resistance and counter-violence if all else fails. The classic example comes from the core of development economics as exemplified by well-established economic theories like that of free trade and the theory of comparative advantage. Galtung argues that such theories facilitate cultural violence: The principle of comparative advantages sentences countries to stay where the production-factor profile has landed them, for geographical or historical reasons. Of course, there is no law, legal or empirical, to the effect that countries cannot do something to improve their production profile … But to do so is not easy when there are immediate gains to be made by not changing the status quo, for those who own the raw materials/commodities. And thus it is that the ‘law’ of comparative advantages legitimizes a structurally intolerable status quo. In short, this ‘law’ is a piece of cultural violence in the very core of economics. (1996: 206)
The essence of the argument is that cultural violence persuades not through verifiable evidence but through cultural constructions of the ‘Chosen’ and the ‘Unchosen’, the categorisation of ‘Self’ and ‘Other’. Galtung gives some examples of the key cultural constructions that form the basis of modernity: … Men are stronger/more logical than women; certain nations are modern/carriers of civilization and the historical process more than others; whites are more intelligent/logical than non-whites; in modern ‘equal opportunity’ society the best are at the top and hence entitled to power and privilege. (1996: 203)
Developmentalism, as a totalizing philosophy, stifles debate. As Galtung puts it, ‘certain tenets of belief in modernisation, development, progress are seen as apodictic; not to believe in them reflects badly on the non-believer, not the belief’ (1996: 203).
Culture and sustainable development
The unfolding climate crisis and range of environmental challenges such as species extinction all highlight the limits and contradictions of developmentalism as well as the inherent challenges of anthropocentrism from a sustainable development perspective (Speed 2006). Indeed, there is ample scientific evidence that point to the various tipping points and cascading fragilities in contemporary global capitalist development such as climate change. There are calls for a proactive and sustained process of climate action with goals such as net-zero emissions or green growth as sustainable development alternatives. There are no shortage of prescriptions (e.g. campaigns to reduce plastic waste, replace fossil fuels, or substitute meat consumption) relate to the intersection and contestation among perspectives on sustainable production and consumption cultures (Geels et al. 2015). Achieving the called for targets would require the aggressive implementation of sustainable development practices. Indeed, it is argued even within corporate circles that, ‘[t]he prevailing notion of enlightened self-interest alone is unlikely to be sufficient to help achieve net zero, and the transition would challenge traditional orthodoxies and require unity, resolve, and ingenuity from Keith Nurse
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leaders’ (McKinsey Global 2022). This suggests that the dominant utilitarian paradigm which informs the hegemonic discourses on development needs to be thoroughly debunked and transcended to allow for the required social, economic and political innovation. However, for such to happen would require major cultural shifts in the development paradigm and in everyday life. From this standpoint it is increasingly accepted that culture needs to considered as the fourth and central pillar of sustainable development (Nurse 2016). The unfolding context suggests that there is a shift towards exploring the efficacy of multiple cultural routes to comparable modernities which allow for countries and regions to be more authentic in the implementation of development paradigms (Addo 1995). The concluding argument is that there are not some innate cultural traits but rather that modern “capitalist development” stems from what can best be called a ‘process of national innovation’ which generates increased ‘industrial sophistication’ and ‘enhanced competitiveness’ in the world economy. The evolving question for the culture and development discourse given the contemporary challenges is “what are the framework conditions for embedding a transformational global development framework that fulfils the requirements for a sustainable future?” Keith Nurse
References
Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S., & Robinson, J. A. (2001). The colonial origins of comparative development: An empirical investigation. American Economic Review, 91, 1369–401. Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J.A. (2012). Why nations fail: The origins of power, prosperity and poverty (1st edn). New York: Crown Publishers. Addo, H. (1995). The convulsive historical moment: Considerations from a neoradical third world perspective. Macalester International, 1: 115–48. Addo, H. (1996). Developmentalism: A Eurocentric hoax, delusion, chicanery, in S.C. Chew & R.A. Denemark (eds), The underdevelopment of development: Essays in honor of Andre Gunder Frank, 126–46. Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Aseniero, G. (1985). A reflection on developmentalism: From development to transformation. In H. Addo (ed.), Development as Social Transformation, 48–85. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
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Banuri, T. (1990). Modernization and its discontents: A cultural perspective on theories of development. In F.A. Marglin & S.A. Marglin (eds), Dominating Knowledge. Clarendon Press. Bendix, R. (1977). Max Weber: An intellectual portrait. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. London: Routledge. Braudel, F. (1981–84). Civilization and capitalism, 15th–18th century. London: Harper and Row. Buck, D.D. (1999). Was it pluck or luck that made the West grow rich? [Review of A.G.D.S. Frank, D.S. Landes, & R.B. Wong, ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age; The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are so Rich and Some so Poor; China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of the European Experience]. Journal of World History, 10(2), 413–30. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/20078786. Chang, H. (2009). Industrial policy: Can we go beyond an unproductive confrontation? A Plenary Paper for ABCDE (Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics) Seoul, South Korea, 22–24 June 2009. Cox, O. (1964). Capitalism as a system. New York: Monthly Review Press. Cotesta, V. (2014). Three critics of Weber’s thesis of the uniqueness of the West: Jack Goody, Kenneth Pomeranz, and S.N. Eisenstadt. Strengths and weaknesses. Max Weber Studies, 14(2), 147–67. Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering development: The making and unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Fukuyama, F. (2001). Culture and economic development: Cultural concerns, in N.J. Smelser & P.B. Baltes (eds), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 3130–3134. Amsterdam; New York: Elsevier. Galtung, J. (1996). Peace by peaceful means: Peace and conflict, development and civilization. Oslo and San Francisco, CA: International Peace Research Institute Oslo; Sage Publications. Geels, F.W., McMeekin, A., Mylan, J., & Southerton, D. (2015). A critical appraisal of sustainable consumption and production research: The reformist, revolutionary and reconfiguration positions. Global Environmental Change, 34: 1–12. Gordon, H.S. (1993). The history and philosophy of social science. London: Routledge. Griffin, K. (1997). Culture, human development and economic growth. UNRISD and UNESC. Hall, S. (ed.) (1997). The spectacle of the ‘other’. In Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices, 223–90. London: Sage.
Culture and development 137 Harrison, L.E., & Huntington, S. (2001). Culture matters: How values shape human progress. New York: Basic Books. Hoselitz, B. (1964). Social stratification and economic development. International Social Science Journal, 16(2), 237–51. Landes, D. (1998). The wealth and poverty of nations. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company. Lopez-Claros, A., & Perotti, V. (2014). Does culture matter for development? Policy Research Working Paper 7092, World Bank, Development Economics Global Indicators Group. Marglin, F., & Marglin, S. (eds) (1990). Dominating knowledge: Development, culture, and resistance. Oxford: Clarendon Press. McKinsey Global (2022). The net-zero transition: What it would cost, what it could bring. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/ sustainability/our-insights/the-net-zero-transition -what-it-would-cost-what-it-could-bring. Milner, A. (1991). Contemporary cultural theory: An introduction. Abingdon: Routledge. North, D.C. (1990). Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nurse, K. (2016). Culture as the fourth pillar of sustainable development. Small States Economic Review and Basic Statistics, 11: 32–48. Perez, C. (2001). Technological change and opportunities as a moving target. CEPAL Review, 75: 109–30. Rao, V., & Walton, M. (eds) (2004). Culture and public action: An introduction. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Reinert, E. (2007). How rich countries got rich … and why poor countries stay poor. London: Constable. Said, E. (1993). Culture and imperialism. New York: Vintage Books. Sen, A. (2004). How does culture matter? in V. Rao & M. Walton (eds), Culture and public action: An introduction, 37–58. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Speed, C. (2006). Anthropocentrism and sustainable development: Oxymoron or symbiosis? WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, 93: 323–32. Wallerstein, I. (1991). Geopolitics and geoculture: Essays on the changing world-system. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, R. (1976). Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society. London: Fontana Press.
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Customary law All countries around the world have social norms that regulate behaviour and structure the decisions of individuals. In many countries, these are sufficiently weighty as to fall into a category that we refer to as customary law. Customary law exists in places as diverse as Australia, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Melanesia and the Western Balkans. Customary law is a body of rules governing personal status, communal resources, and local organization. It can determine access to land and water, the pool of eligible marriage partners, and what a child or a spouse inherits. It is, therefore, socially and economically important. Customary law can be conceived of as a very strong social norm, and while it is possible to break that norm, the consequences, both social and economic, are so high as to prevent noncompliance. It is a normative order formed by rights and obligations controlling access to community and personal resources. Customary law is not exclusive and exists in hybridized forms, layering onto statute law in both rural and urban areas. It is complex, fluid, and resilient, differing across communities and reflecting social hierarchies and power. Customary law is typically unwritten, or incompletely systemized, enabling dynamism and adaptation in its application (Sage and Woolcock 2012). Much of what we know about customary law comes from the study of post-colonial societies. Customary law in colonial regimes was used as a tool of administering indigenous populations and was encouraged, transformed, and sometimes even constructed in ways to assist with domination and rule (Chanock 1991, 1998; Joireman 2011; Mamdani 1996). Colonial policies established communal land rights based on customary law, empowered a cadre of local leaders, and enabled customary dispute resolution institutions. After colonization, customary law often became embedded in the formal legal systems of independent states through explicit recognition, case law, or the use of assessors. The use of customary law in colonial and post-colonial settings is distinct from customary law in socialist settings in which customary norms were allowed to continue insofar as they did not interfere with public law. To be explicit, customary law thrived
and developed under colonization because it controlled access to important resources such as land, timber, water, and labour. The use of customary law under colonial regimes gave it a power that endured into the post-colonial era. Customary law in post-communist states is slightly different. Customary law survived the Soviet era and efforts to supplant its use in both family life and the control of resources (Edgar 2004; Joireman 2014; Upton 2009). In both post-colonial and post-communist settings, customary law clearly forms group identity and practices.
How is customary law different from statute law?
An important distinction between customary and statutory law is that customary law is embodied, existing in specific and active enactment by individuals rather than in a recorded, universally applied, written form (Joireman and Meitzner Yoder 2016). A feature of customary law in most places is its ability to shift to accommodate circumstances such as relative social position, wealth, family structure, and community harmony. Where customary law controls resources, there are traditional or customary authorities who interpret and apply it for the community. These authorities may be called chiefs, elders, clan heads, or carry ritual or localized titles. They typically have long residence in and memory of a particular area. Because the allocation and control of land brings economic and political power, those who manage it are assured an important place in the social and political hierarchy. In some countries there is a mixing of formal and informal roles among those responsible for allocating resources. For example, in Liberia, local chiefs are responsible for allocating land, and have traditionally held this responsibility. Currently, their role is more than customary, as they are also government employees. In parts of Timor-Leste, there is a clear distinction between authorities who hold ritual and political power regarding land and other resources. While only political authorities have formal governance roles and titles in state systems, both ritual and political authorities are involved in land allocation, permissions, and dispute resolution (Meitzner Yoder and Joireman 2019)
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Customary law and authority structures blend, overlap, and intertwine with formal law and authority. For this reason, thinking about law in a dualistic manner as customary/ statutory law can be conceptually deceptive. Formal institutions do not replace customary structures as much as they layer onto customary institutions creating different opportunities for negotiation and claims (Lund 2008). This poses important political challenges as changes in law and administration around vital resources create new arenas for the contestation of power and authority (Boone 2014, 2020; Sikor and Lund 2009). Attempts to write down or ascertain customary law have occurred in multiple contexts, but they have limited value. Any ascertainment or codification efforts capture customary law at a particular point in time through the interpretation of a specific group of community members. Scholars and lawyers highlight the gap between ‘official’ bodies of customary law created by ascertainment efforts and ‘living’ bodies of customary law that reflect current practices (Bolt and Tshenolo 2019; Cousins 2017; Ubink and van Rooij 2011; Woodman 2012).
How does customary law matter to development?
Customary law is important to development because it controls access to resources such as land and other assets. The property rights that exist under customary law may be different from those that exist in statute law. Lack of clear definition and overlapping property rights in customary systems, combined with the presence of a competing system of public law creates a fertile ground for conflict. Ambiguity in the definition or enforcement of property rights leads to an increase in transaction costs in the transfer of land as well as a residual uncertainty in informal land contract. The role of customary leaders in relation to resource allocation can be contentious. Kate Baldwin finds that unelected chiefs in democratic countries can serve important representational roles for their communities because of their long time horizons and interest in community development (Baldwin 2015). Yet, there is also evidence of customary leaders acting in ways to personally benefit from rising land values or external
demand for land, shifting from a model of guardianship of the community resources to personal ownership. We see this with large-scale land acquisitions (Cotula et al. 2009; Vermeulen and Cotula 2010) and in controversy around the negotiation of mining contracts (Ubink and Pickering 2020). Critical in these instances is whether traditional leaders are ‘downwardly accountable’ to their local constituencies or whether they take advantage of their position to create personal rents (Baldwin and Raffler 2019). Customary law can be autocratic or democratic in different contexts (Ubink and Duda 2021). Customary leaders control the allocation of customary land and the adjudication of disputes that pertain to customary resources. Rarely are they young or female. While customary leaders can play a useful role in resolving disputes or advocating for their communities in terms of bringing development projects or community resources, they are harmful to a community when they assert personal ownership over community resources. Being designated a customary leader can become a desirable political good resulting in conflicts over succession (Berry 2009). In the South African context, Barbara Oomen has noted that ‘the increased profitability of allocating land inspires all kinds of people to step forward with the assertion that they are traditional leaders or headmen. Now that traditional authority perks have become so lucrative, these conflicts seem not only to have been exacerbated, but also to have multiplied’ (Oomen 2000: 66). Recent controversy in South Africa over The Traditional Khoi-San Leadership Act 3 of 2019 highlights the contested role of traditional councils in negotiating lucrative mining contracts and the perception by some that traditional leadership erodes the citizenship and property rights of those in their communities (Ubink and Pickering 2020).
Legal pluralism
One of the noted advantages of customary law is its ability to adapt to changing circumstances. Indeed, this is viewed to be a benefit in any legal system, as societies transform in response to technological development, environmental change, and population growth. Customary law is not unique in its adaptive and dynamic qualities. Evolution in response Sandra F. Joireman
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to changing needs is a positive quality in a legal system. Unpredictability is not. A lack of consistent and predictable application of legal rules, be they customary or public, impedes the functioning of a vibrant economic system and negatively impacts the ability of people to plan for the future. The issue of predictability touches on the debate over whether legal pluralism is a problem to be solved or simply a reality that needs to be accommodated. One school of thought argues that customary law and legal pluralism are so pervasive that they are impossible to eliminate (Berman 2012). Therefore, the challenge is to develop mechanisms of accommodation. But accommodating customary law may mean acknowledging a set of rules different from statute law, which can undermine efforts at equity and predictability in the allocation of resources and treatment of citizens. Sandra F. Joireman
References
Baldwin, K. (2015) The Paradox of Traditional Chiefs in Democratic Africa. Cambridge University Press, New York. Baldwin, K., and Raffler, P. (2019) ‘Traditional Leaders, Service Delivery, and Electoral Accountability’. In J.A. Rodden and E. Wibbels (eds), Decentralized Governance and Accountability: Academic Research and the Future of Donor Programming, 61–90. Cambridge University Press, New York. Berman, P.S. (2012) ‘Global Legal Pluralism: A Jurisprudence of Law Beyond Borders’. https://scholarship.law.gwu.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article =1022&context=faculty_publications. Berry, S. (2009) ‘Property, Authority and Citizenship: Land Claims, Politics and the Dynamics of Social Division in West Africa’. Development and Change 40(1), 23–45. Bolt, M., and Tshenolo, M. (2019) ‘Recognising the Family House: A Problem of Urban Custom in South Africa’. South African Journal on Human Rights 35(2), 147–68. Boone, C. (2014) Property Rights and Political Order in Africa: Land Rights and the Structure of Politics. Cambridge University Press, New York. Boone, C. (2020) ‘Push, Pull, and Push-back to Land Certification: Regional Dynamics in Pilot Certification Projects in Côte d’Ivoire’. Working Paper Series 2020. Department of International Development. London School of Economics, London.
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Chanock, M. (1991) ‘A Peculiar Sharpness: An Essay on Property in the History of Customary Law in Colonial Africa’. The Journal of African History 32, 65–88. Chanock, M. (1998) Law, Custom, and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia. Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH. Cotula, L., Vermeulen, S., Leonard, R., and Keeley, J. (2009) Land Grab or Development Opportunity? Agricultural Investment and International Land Deals in Africa. FAO, IIED and IFAD, London/Rome. Cousins, B. (2017) ‘The “Living Customary Law of Land” in Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal’. In D. Hornby, R. Kingwill, L. Royston, and B. Cousins (eds), Untitled: Securing Land Tenure in Urban and Rural South Africa, 132–65. University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, Durban. Edgar, A.L. (2004) Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Joireman, S.F. (2011) Where There is No Government: Enforcing Property Rights in Common Law Africa. Oxford University Press, New York. Joireman, S.F. (2014) ‘Aiming for Certainty: The Kanun, Blood Feuds and the Ascertainment of Customary Law’. The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 46(2). https://doi .org/10.1080/07329113.2014.916090. Joireman, S.F., and Meitzner Yoder, L.S. (2016) ‘A Long Time Gone: Post-conflict Rural Property Restitution under Customary Law’. Development and Change 47(3), 563–85. Lund, C. (2008) Local Politics and the Dynamics of Property in Africa. Cambridge University Press, New York. Mamdani, M. (1996) Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Meitzner Yoder, L.S., and Joireman, S.F. (2019) ‘Possession and Precedence: Juxtaposing Customary and Legal Events to Establish Land Authority’. Land 8(8), 126–43. Oomen, B. (2000) Tradition on the Move: Chiefs, Democracy and Change in Rural South Africa. Netherlands Institute for Southern Africa, Amsterdam. Sage, C., and Woolcock, M. (2012) ‘Introduction’. In B.Z. Tamanaha, C. Sage, and M. Woolcock (eds), Legal Pluralism and Development: Scholars and Practitioners in Dialogue, 1–17. New York, Cambridge University Press. Sikor, T., and Lund, C. (2009) ‘Access and Property: A Question of Power and Authority’. Development & Change 40(1), 1–22. Ubink, J., and Duda, T. (2021) ‘Traditional Authority in South Africa: Reconstruction and Resistance in the Eastern Cape’. Journal of Southern African Studies 47(2), 191–208.
Customary law 141 Ubink, J., and Pickering, J. (2020) ‘Shaping Legal and Institutional Pluralism: Land Rights, Access to Justice and Citizenship in South Africa’. South African Journal on Human Rights, 36(2–3), 178–99. Ubink, J., and van Rooij, B. (2011) ‘Towards Customary Legal Empowerment: An Introduction’. In J. Ubink (ed.), Customary Justice: Perspectives on Legal Empowerment, 7–27. International Development Law Organization (IDLO), Van Vollenhoven Institute, Rome.
Upton, C. (2009) ‘“Custom” and Contestation: Land Reform in Post-Socialist Mongolia’. World Development 37(8), 1400–1410. Vermeulen, S., and Cotula, L. (2010) ‘Over the Heads of Local People: Consultation, Consent, and Recompense in Large-Scale Land Deals for Biofuels Projects in Africa’. The Journal of Peasant Studies 37(4), 899–916. Woodman, G. (2012) ‘The Development “Problem” of Legal Pluralism’. In B.Z. Tamanaha, C. Sage, and M. Woolcock (eds), Legal Pluralism and Development, 129–44. Cambridge University Press, New York.
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D
Data justice As the twenty-first century has progressed there has been a rapid datafication of international development: a growing role and impact of digital data in the processes of development and the lives of those in the global South (World Bank, 2021). Like all proposed silver bullets for development, this has been accompanied by much hype about the claimed benefits of datafication and then, a little more quietly, there have emerged two more cautionary perspectives. The first identifies the many constraints that exist to datafication of development, which we can understand in terms of the barriers to making the full information value chain operate (Figure 1). These include limited availability of digital datasets, the intensive work required to make datasets usable, the relative lack of data-related skills necessary to turn data into information, the relative resistance to use of new data by decision-makers, and so on (Heeks et al., 2021; Joubert et al., 2021).
The second perspective identifies the harms that are associated with datafication of development. One critical strand of thinking within this second domain has coalesced around the term ‘data justice’ and is driven by the presence of what are seen as data injustices. Data injustices may relate to exclusion. Inequalities increase when some groups are unable to access the benefits of a new data system. This is the perennial digital divide problem that still persists, with hundreds of millions in the global South still living without digital access (Broadband Commission, 2020). Exclusion will also be an issue when groups are unrepresented or under-represented within digital datasets used for decision-making. As an example, there has been growing interest in the use of smartphone and social media data to guide development decisions. But low-income groups, women, and older people are among those significantly under-represented as smartphone and social media users in the global South (Hilbert, 2016; UN ESCAP, 2019). Decisions using such skewed data will themselves then be skewed.
Note: The core of the information value chain (solid lines) is the processes by which data is processed into usable information which is then used to feed decision making and action, which leads to development results. Those results in turn feedback to create new data and new knowledge. The dashed lines indicate the supervisory role of knowledge: guiding and shaping the capture of data, its processing into information, decision-making and action. Information may sometimes not be immediately used in decisions but, instead and via learning, create new knowledge. Source: Heeks (2018).
Figure 1
The information value chain
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Data injustices may relate to inclusion of users in data systems. Hacking from data systems breaches data rights, with one example being use of Pegasus malware to obtain smartphone contents of political activists, journalists, and opposition leaders in a number of countries in the global South (Kirchgaessner et al., 2021). Citizens may also be adversely incorporated into state surveillance systems: compelled to register but their data then used to increase the inequality of power between the state and citizens (Heeks, 2021). Data injustices, finally, may relate to the combination of inclusion and exclusion: that individuals – or at least their data – are included in datasets but they are excluded from the benefits of that data. This is true of the majority of big data systems in use in the global South: they vacuum up the data of ordinary citizens but then use that data to the benefit of already-powerful actors. Increasingly these are non-state, perhaps profit-oriented actors who are not accountable to ordinary citizens (Taylor & Broeders, 2015). To combat these data injustices, then, data justice is required, and this can be defined as ‘the specification and pursuit of ethical standards for data-related resources, processes
and structures’ (Heeks, 2017). Based on the nature of data injustices and an understanding that their causes lies not merely within data systems but in the broader context, we can produce a model of data justice (Figure 2) and define the five dimensions of data justice: • Procedural: fairness in the way in which data is handled. • Instrumental: fairness in the results of data being used. • Rights-based: adherence to basic data rights such as representation, privacy, access and ownership. • Structural: the degree to which the interests and power in wider society support fair outcomes in other forms of data justice. • Distributive: an overarching dimension relating to the (in)equality of data-related outcomes that can be applied to each of the other dimensions of data justice. (Heeks & Shekhar, 2019)
What, then, might data justice for development look like in practice? One example could be the digital recording of data about land, property, infrastructure, businesses, and so on, in low-income or other marginalized communities. Under various terminologies – community mapping, counter-mapping, public participatory geo-
Source: Heeks and Shekhar (2019).
Figure 2
Conceptual model of data justice
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graphic information systems and more – this may seek to involve community members in the capture of the data, and in some cases to then feed information from that data back into the community; ideally to enable better decision-making by community members (Kidd, 2019; Weyer et al., 2019). While such initiatives have positive aspects, they tend at most to deliver some form of procedural and/or instrumental data justice. They often fail to deliver wider development benefits because of contextual constraints: resource inequalities, the tramlines of existing power structures, absence of wider data rights, and so forth (Donovan, 2012; Heeks et al., 2020; Mulder, 2020). Delivering data justice more broadly will therefore require contextual interventions. It will, for example, require that data rights are enshrined into law. Not merely the data privacy that is the focus for ‘liberal anxieties in the global North’ but priorities of the marginalized in the global South: the right to be fairly represented in datasets, the right to be able to access and correct data about oneself, and some right of ownership over that data and the benefits accruing from it (Heeks & Shekhar, 2019; Aragon, 2021). It will also require new data-just structures, such as living labs, data trusts and data cooperatives (Micheli et al., 2020). Some of these contextual interventions – new policies, new institutions, new ideas, new organizational forms – are at little more than an experimental and formative stage, particularly in the global South. But this makes for an exciting future agenda in pursuit of data justice for development; part of a ‘Data-Justice-for-Development Manifesto’: 1. Demand just and legal uses of development data. 2. Demand data consent of citizens that is truly informed. 3. Build upstream and downstream data-related capabilities among those who lack them in developing countries. 4. Promote rights of data access, data privacy, data ownership and data representation. 5. Promote data system outcomes that address international development goals and priorities; including the goals and priorities of data subjects.
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6. Support ‘small data’ uses by individuals and communities in developing countries. 7. Advocate sustainable use of data and data systems. 8. Create a social movement for the ‘data subalterns’ of the global South. 9. Stimulate an alternative discourse around data-intensive development that places issues of justice at its heart. 10. Develop new organisational forms such as data-intensive development cooperatives. 11. Lobby for new data justice-based laws and policies in developing countries (including action on data monopolies). 12. Open up, challenge and provide alternatives to the data-related technical structures (code, algorithms, standards, etc.) that increasingly control international development. (Heeks, 2017)
Richard Heeks
References
Aragon, D.C. (2021). On not being visible to the state: the case of Peru. In S. Milan, E. Trere & S. Masiero (eds), Covid-19 from the Margins (pp. 120–25). Institute of Network Cultures. Broadband Commission (2020). The State of Broadband 2020: Tackling Digital Inequalities, International Telecommunication Union. Donovan, K. (2012). Seeing like a slum: towards open, deliberative development. Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Winter/Spring, 97–104. Heeks, R. (2017). A Structural Model and Manifesto for Data Justice for International Development, GDI Development Informatics Working Paper no. 69. University of Manchester. Heeks, R. (2018). Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D), Routledge. Heeks, R. (2021). From digital divide to digital justice in the global South: conceptualising adverse digital incorporation. Paper presented at IFIP WG9.4 International Conference on Resilient ICT4D, 26–28 May. Heeks, R., & Shekhar, S. (2019). Datafication, development and marginalised urban communities: an applied data justice framework. Information, Communication & Society, 22(7), 992–1011. Heeks, R., Evans, J.Z., Graham, M., & Taylor, L. (eds) (2020). The Urban Data Justice Case Study Collection, GDI Digital Development Working Paper no. 88, University of Manchester.
Data justice 145 Heeks, R., Rakesh, V., Sengupta, R., Chattapadhyay, S., & Foster, C. (2021). Datafication, value and power in developing countries: big data in two Indian public service organisations. Development Policy Review, 39(1), 82–102. Hilbert, M. (2016). Big data for development: a review of promises and challenges. Development Policy Review, 34(1), 135–74. Joubert, A., Murawski, M., & Bick, M. (2021). Measuring the big data readiness of developing countries – index development and its application to Africa. Information Systems Frontiers, 25(6), 1–24. Kidd, D. (2019). Extra-activism: counter-mapping and data justice. Information, Communication & Society, 22(7), 954–70. Kirchgaessner, S., Lewis, P., Pegg, D., Cutler, S., Lakhani, N., & Safi, M. (2021). Revealed: leak uncovers global abuse of cyber-surveillance weapon. The Guardian. https://www .theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/18/revealed -leak-uncovers-global-abuse-of-cyber -surveillance-weapon-nso-group-pegasus.
Micheli, M., Ponti, M., Craglia, M., & Berti Suman, A. (2020). Emerging models of data governance in the age of datafication. Big Data & Society, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/ 2053951720948087. Mulder, F. (2020). Humanitarian data justice: a structural data justice lens on civic technologies in post-earthquake Nepal. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 28(4), 432–45. Taylor, L., & Broeders, D. (2015). In the name of development: power, profit and the datafication of the global South. Geoforum, 64, 229–37. UN ESCAP (2019). Who is Connected? Social Media and the Digital Divide. UN ESCAP. Weyer, D., Bezerra, J.C., & De Vos, A. (2019). Participatory mapping in a developing country context: lessons from South Africa. Land, 8(9), 134. World Bank (2021). Data for Better Lives: World Development Report 2021. World Bank.
Richard Heeks
Debt Introduction
This entry introduces a series of analytical issues related to the economics of sovereign debt with a focus on developing countries. The first part will cover theoretical approaches that deal with the issue of external indebtedness. The second part will cover theoretical approaches to the study of debt repayment difficulties and debt crises. The rise and fall of different understanding and interpretations to the study of debt through time leaves vast material that is however heterogeneous. While the issue of sovereign debt is amply covered by historians, political scientists and legal scholars, this entry is concerned with contributions made in economics and political economy.
Radical political economy
One of the oldest genres of explanations around foreign borrowing is linked to the growth of empire and is associated with the classic Marxist theories of imperialism and the period prior to the First World War. This was characterized by a great expansion in capital exports from certain regions to others, where companies from colonial powers reliant on home-country finance arranged production around an extractive economy reliant on primary commodities, plantation economies and a colonial system of enslavement. The general idea about foreign borrowing was that the internal market in industrialized economies was not sufficient to absorb the growth of commodity production and that to continue, capitalism needed to rely on primitive accumulation and the appropriation of non-capitalist means of production. The economy of developing countries became dependent on colonial powers, in a number of ways, including financially, as their financial system becomes reliant on the flows from the colonial powers. Key authors in this vein include Hobson (1902), Federici (2004) and Luxemburg (2015). This overarching approach stimulated a more recent theoretical perspective developed within the structuralist school of UN Economic Commission on Latin American Countries (ECLAC) and Dependency Theory, which placed external indebtedness within the context of development. The work
of the centre–periphery relationship understood on the basis of divides around production and trade was extended to the sphere of finance. Despite the process of decolonization, external indebtedness remains as part of a relationship of dependence between global North and South as developed by Prebisch, Singer, Amin, and more recently Kvangraven et al. (2021). Their dependence on commodity exports, and the instability of the cost of international borrowing, not least due to the volatility of their currency, dominates the debt dynamics of developing countries, and constrains their development prospects. There are also theories that pinpoint to the practice of Loan Pushing – the idea that large financial actors in the global North ‘push’ loans onto developing countries. This is understood as the practice of banks supplying more credit that would otherwise be taken on board at the prevailing interest rate, and has often been linked to promoting loans to purchase home country exports (the growth of export banks and the issues around imperialism) (Darity, 1985).
Debt cum growth and two gap models
In the post-war period, a number of models were developed that provided an analytical framework for understanding international borrowing also within the framework of economic development. Largely pioneered by international organizations like the World Bank, long-run Keynesian growth models by Harrod and Domar were adapted to relate to development theories and the open economy. The general idea was that external finance is needed for growth and development, which was constrained because of significant gaps that hindered the attainment of growth goals. The two-gap model such as Chenery and Strout (1966) identified that growth in developing countries is constrained by both a savings gap and a foreign exchange gap. This relied on the idea that domestic savings are insufficient to finance investment needs, and foreign exchange inflows are too little to purchase the needed capital imports and achieve given rates of growth. These models helped calculate needed capital inflow to achieve specific target rates of growth, providing a rationale for aid under specific terms (concessional or non-concessional)
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international financial flows (Nissanke and Ferrarini, 2004). Neoclassical International debt flows are a subset of all international capital flows, and are largely driven by interest rate differentials with the idea that capital flows will eventually even out differential interest rates. International borrowing can also be seen as part of a neoclassical growth model that foresees convergence to common steady states of capital accumulation given ex ante differences in the capital stock. Financing of development in a context of lower capital stocks and lower saving rates, results in higher real interest rates. Importing capital from richer countries, financed at lower interest rates, provides a means for developing countries borrow from abroad to finance domestic investment, which will in turn provide the necessary resources to service their debt in the future. As growth theory itself developed during the 1960s and 1970s, international borrowing was analysed in an optimizing framework in which, to meet the solvency requirement, the discounted value of future trade surpluses must be equal to the current foreign debt, and under a socially optimal borrowing strategy a country can borrow until the marginal product of capital would equal to the world interest rate (Cooper & Sachs, 1984). International borrowing was seen as part of an effort for consumption smoothing, where the balance of payments is determined by forward-looking investment and saving decisions (Obstfeld & Rogoff, 1994). The implications of these theories were that if developing countries borrow from abroad, they are either financing investment exploiting the lower cost of foreign capital, or they are trying to smooth consumption in anticipation of higher future incomes, for example, due to a permanent productivity shock. This analytical framework for international borrowing was harmonized into the public finance view of debt dynamics with specific views about solvency and debt sustainability. The instability of the international monetary system Global inequalities in international debt have been explored through the uneven and unstable structure of the international monetary
system. When viewed from this perspective, as posited by Keynes, and subsequently by many post-Keynesian scholars, liquidity preference reveals a hierarchy in financial assets that becomes most evident in the international economy during conditions of uncertainty and instability. Analysis of global hierarchies in the monetary and financial sphere was developed by Keynes, in which he analysed the varied return of assets and portfolio reallocations and, as part of the work for Bretton Woods, devised a plan to eliminate structural tendencies in the global economy. Integration into the global economy has been uneven and characterized by the historical relations of dependence. The need for foreign exchange, highlighted by the structuralist school, in an international monetary system that cannot provide stable, condition-free, flows of finance leaves few options for developing countries. In the context of these asymmetries, developing countries face specific constraints on their use of exchange and demand management policies, given their position at the lower end of the currency hierarchy. A key implication for foreign borrowing is the inability to borrow internationally in one’s own currency and reliance on borrowing in foreign currency, mostly US dollars, a condition known as ‘original sin’ in the literature (Eichengreen et al., 2003). As a result, developing countries are often in need of foreign capital inflows. Developing countries are therefore exposed to the instability and cyclicality of global debt flows. While several views identify how developing countries’ debt has a cyclical dynamic, their underlying explanation for them is varied: ranging from Marxist understanding of the cyclical waves of capital accumulation, to Keynesian views that link cycles to the activities of international investors and the entrepreneurial activities of firms, like Minsky and Kindleberger. Cycles are linked to policy issues like the monetary policy of core country central banks, and also to the hegemonic cycles that characterize world systems (Suter, 1992). In recent years, these flows have become particularly unstable and large. Scholars have highlighted the growing importance of financial investors, which implies that capital inflows (and by implication international borrowing for developing countries) are dominated by search for yields, subject to high Bruno Bonizzi and Christina Laskaridis
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volatility and exposing countries to external vulnerability and subordination to leading reserve currencies. Unequal integration into the global economy leaves countries building foreign exchange reserves for precautionary reasons and also developing their local currency bond market, which has however led to growth of foreign-owned local currency bond exposing countries to exchange rate volatilities and speculative activities.
Debt crisis: why does debt often become unmanageable?
The history of debt across developing countries has been one of recurrent crises. Since the international debt crises of the 1980s, economic scholarship and policy analysis have sought to explain these in various ways. Domestic factors and market imperfections A first and popular set of explanations focuses on domestic problems in developing countries leading to excessive accumulation of debt. These can include inadequate policies or an inability of governments to commit to them. The 1980s crises, for example, are often linked to the over-optimistic growth expectations that lead policymakers to take advantage of international credit. Political instability and corruption are also blamed for the excessive accumulation of debt for unproductive reasons. In other words, according to this line of thought, the causes of debt crises are to be found in the inadequate decisions of the borrower (i.e. in the wrong macroeconomic and policy ‘fundamentals’). Eventually, when fiscal deficits and debt levels are deemed excessive, countries lose the ability of rolling over their existing debts, as international confidence in their creditworthiness is undermined. Alternatively, the persistence of fiscal deficits becomes increasingly incompatible with other policy objectives, such as the maintenance of a fixed exchange rate. This is the process described in the first-generation currency crisis model, where excessive fiscal deficits force a country to engage in domestic monetary financing, which eventually lead to an abandonment of a fixed exchange rate and a currency collapse (Krugman, 1979). Domestic market imperfections in credit markets can also lead to accumulation of risky forms of debt. For example, poor regBruno Bonizzi and Christina Laskaridis
ulations and governance can lead to excess risk-taking by corporations and banks borrowing, especially if in foreign currency. This can be compounded by problems of moral hazard, where governments are expected to intervene to bail out these institutions (McKinnon & Pill, 1998). This can quickly precipitate in speculative attacks and ‘sudden stops’ of capital flows, as foreign lenders question the capability of governments to sustain their own debt. Again, this has been linked to currency crises, especially in Asian countries in the late 1990s. The implication for developing countries is that strengthening of domestic regulations and institutions, and a monitoring of fiscal positions, is important to prevent debt crises. This implies, however, contractionary fiscal programmes that are socially and economically damaging. Trade and the balance of payments Another important determinant of debt dynamics and debt crises for developing countries is the balance of payments, and the role of trade within it. Developing countries’ debt crises have largely been external debt crises (i.e. due to debt defaults on foreign debt and the involvement of international lenders), and their debt servicing is exposed to trade shocks. Declines in export revenue, for example, can be a significant source of strain on debt repayments, as foreign exchange revenues become insufficient to service external debt. A rise in imports, due, for example, to price increases or a currency depreciation, can generate similar issues, as foreign exchange competes between debt servicing and necessary imports such as food or capital goods. Sustained and large current account deficits are therefore often taken as a sign of potential debt problems. This observation has been at the core of structuralist understandings of debt. The balance-of-payments-constrained growth model is based on the notion that the growth of an economy is ultimately constrained by the need to maintain a sustainable balance in external payments (Thirlwall & Hussain, 1982). The challenge for many developing countries is that their trade structure still largely relies on exports, such as basic commodities, whose prices are volatile and have been shown to decline in the long term relative to manufacturing goods (the so-called
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Prebisch–Singer hypothesis). Therefore, they remain particularly vulnerable to trade-induced debt crises. The implication for developing countries is trade policy is often important not only as part of industrial policy and the pursuit of economic growth objectives, but also for external borrowing. Growing and diversifying exports becomes, in this way, an even more important developmental goal, insofar as it reduces an economy’s vulnerability to debt crises. Global finance A third key area of focus has been on international financial markets dynamics as determinant of debt problems in developing countries. This originates in the observation that debt in developing countries – much like debt in general – seem to follow a cyclical dynamic: a surge in global borrowing with generally favourable conditions and optimistic expectations is generally followed by a slowdown and a relatively sudden crisis. These dynamics seem to be synchronized across several countries and even regions with a variety of national economic and institutional settings, suggesting that debt crises are at least partly driven by common global factors, rather than country-specific problems. With the growth of the financial sector globally and cross-border transactions, including from/to developing countries, global financial markets become important to understand debt crises. More broadly, this shifts the focus of attention away from the borrower to the lenders and the context in which they operate. Global investors and lenders are profoundly affected by monetary and financial conditions in their home countries in their financial decisions. US monetary policy is key in determining the phases of so-called ‘global liquidity’ (Shin, 2013) (i.e. the availability of credit internationally): expansionary monetary policy, through low interest rates and liquidity provision, stimulates global liquidity and induces greater lending to and investment in developing countries; conversely, a monetary contraction reduces the availability of credit, increasing interest rates on risky debt, such as developing countries’ debt, and therefore makes debt burdens and refinancing harder. In this way, developing countries’ debt crises
can be nurtured by cycles of global liquidity, irrespective of their domestic conditions. It is generally accepted, for example, that the 1980s financial crisis was at least precipitated, if not directly caused, by the Volcker shock (i.e. the sudden and sharp contraction in US monetary policy in 1980). Additionally, the growth of new actors in global financial markets has made the debt dynamics in developing countries dependent on a more varied mix of lenders and investors. Official lenders continue to be important, but their weight in developing countries’ debt has declined, and China has emerged as a major lender to low-income countries. Non-bank financial institutions and their asset managers have also become more important as developing countries issue international bonds and open their growing domestic bond markets. In this scenario, debt problems can originate from new sources (e.g. Chinese macroeconomic conditions or the inclusion/exclusion from a traded index of a particular country). Additionally, insufficient sources of stable liquidity are not available for developing countries, and persistent under-attainment of Official Development Assistance commitments has led developing countries to over-rely on debt finance. This has led to a growing net negative resource transfer from global South to global North, linking debt and debt crises to the unequal structure of the international monetary system. The implication for developing countries here is that their debt dynamics are – increasingly – contingent on what occurs in global financial markets. This means that debt policy needs to be assessed in conjunction with adequate global financial safety net, and financial stability policies to ensure its sustainability. Ultimately, however, this points to the global nature of debt dynamics, whose reform can only be done through international policy initiatives and coordination. Bruno Bonizzi and Christina Laskaridis
References
Chenery, H.B., & Strout, A. (1966). Foreign Assistance and Economic Development. American Economic Review, 56(4), 679–733. Cooper, R.N. & Sachs, J. (1984). Borrowing Abroad: The Debtor’s Perspective. National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper, No. 1427.
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150 Elgar encyclopedia of development Darity, W. Jr. (1985). Loan Pushing: Doctrine and Theory. Federal Reserve International Finance Discussion Papers, No. 253. Eichengreen, B., Hausmann, R., & Panizza, U. (2003). Currency Mismatches, Debt Intolerance and Original Sin: Why They Are Not the Same and Why It Matters. National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 10036. Federici, S. (2004). Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Illustrated edition. Autonomedia. Hobson, J.A. (1902). Imperialism: A Study. James Pott & Co. Krugman, P. (1979). A Model of Balance-of-Payments Crises. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 11(3), 311–25. Kvangraven, I.H., Styve, M.D., & Kufakurinani, U. (2021). Samir Amin and Beyond: The Enduring Relevance of Amin’s Approach to Political Economy. Review of African Political Economy, 48(167), 1–7. Luxemburg, R. (2015). The Accumulation of Capital. Martino Fine Books. McKinnon, R.I. & Pill, H. (1998). International Overborrowing: A Decomposition of Credit and Currency Risks. World Development, 26(7), 1267–82.
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Nissanke, M., & Ferrarini, B. (2004). Debt Dynamics and Contingency Financing: Theoretical Reappraisal of the HIPC Initiative. In T. Addison, H. Hansen, & F. Tarp (eds), Debt Relief for Poor Countries (pp. 24–58). Palgrave Macmillan. Obstfeld, M., & Rogoff, K. (1994). The Intertemporal Approach to the Current Account. National Bureau of Economic Research, No. w4893. Shin, H.S. (2013). The Second Phase of Global Liquidity and Its Impact on Emerging Economies. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Keynote Address, Asia Economic Policy Conference. Suter, C. (1992). Debt Cycles in the World-Economy: Foreign Loans, Financial Crises, and Debt Settlements, 1820–1990. Westview Press. Thirlwall, A.P., & Hussain, M.N. (1982). The Balance of Payments Constraint, Capital Flows and Growth Rate Differences between Developing Countries. Oxford Economic Papers, 34(3), 498–510.
Decent work Introduction
Internationally, improving labour conditions is underpinned by the concept of decent work, which was launched in 1999 by the International Labour Office (ILO). Since then, it has gained traction and a prominent place on the global platform, so much so that various constituencies across the state, employers and labour, actors that make the tripartite, all advocate it. However, what does the concept mean for those labouring? Does it have meaning in the everyday work context? In this short outline of decent work, I will start by overviewing the conceptual definitions tagged onto it, which we can use as a basis for looking at some empirical evidence to assess its fruition in the working life of people. The evidence overviewed in this contribution largely borrows from the global garment sector, although research on the extent to which decent work has meaning and purchase is not limited to this sector. Global garment is used to illustrate the generic points that may also have resonance in other labouring sectors, including the informal economy. To start with, however, how have understandings of decent work come to be? Have they evolved over time?
that would encompass decent work and also tried to encompass decent work in the informal economy (Ghai 2003). An ambitious task that may have necessitated it to keep evaluating and expanding the concept of DW, as the global economy brought out about changes in employment, including a rapidly expanding precariat, the 1999 definition of DW appeared no longer adequate. Hence, ILO’s DW agenda has evolved, and it is worthwhile to orient our attention to more recent iterations of the concept. For our purposes, I pick out two snapshot moments at distinct time periods: Work is central to people’s well-being. In addition to providing income, work can pave the way for broader social and economic advancement, strengthening individuals, their families and communities. Such progress, however, hinges on work that is decent. Decent work sums up the aspirations of people in their working lives. (ILO Decent Work Agenda 2013, cited in AFW/CCC 2014) Decent work sums up the aspirations of people in their working lives. It involves opportunities for work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for families, better prospects for personal development and social integration, freedom for people to express their concerns, organize and participate in the decisions that affect their lives and equality of opportunity and treatment for all women and men. (ILO 2021)
The concept
The beginnings of the concept of decent work (DW) are attributed to the Report of Director General of the ILO and his statement to 87th International Labour Conference in 1999. In one of the initial evaluations provided by Dharam Ghai (2003), the initial definition of decent work is as follows: The primary goal of the ILO is to promote opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equality, security and human dignity. (ILO 1999: 3 cited in Ghai 2003: 113)
The concept of decent work appears simple enough for member states of the ILO to give it purchase and application. To implement decent work, the same report advocated instituting other pillars of the ILO: conventions on employment, social protection, workers’ rights and social dialogue. At the inception, the ILO even attempted to develop indices
The evolving elaborations of the concept of DW may be an implicit acknowledgement and recognition that the pithy statements provided in 1999 were no longer passable or representative of the challenges working people were facing. The 2013 definition explicitly recognizes the centrality of work to people’s lives and make clear connections to the welfare of working people; and broadens out of an income-based focus of work to also encapsulate how work has to offer a possible basis for social and economic advancement. In that broadened out delineation is a recognition that all types of work may not adequately ensure the socio-economic security of working-class communities. The ILO is emphasizing that income generated through work has to ensure that families and communities of workers can comfortably live on the incomes earned. It implicitly recognizes
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that living wages may be illusory for most labouring communities. A decade later, the definition provided by the ILO on decent work is even more expansive and comes against a backdrop of a global pandemic. COVID-19 has laid bare the fractures and fault lines of an inequitable global socio-economic setting; with the unevenness of global capitalism and development epitomized both between nations and within countries in plain sight. This new declaration is hence more emphatic about equity, fairness and security; and draws out much more clearly about the relationship between workplace security as extending beyond work. The changed intonations of the ILO statements and its most recent pitch then elaborates on the necessary attributes within the workplace setting, including the need for security within it but also offers an expansive definition to incorporate life beyond the workplace. DW, thus defined, is an attempt to underline that work without security and equity will lay bare the fragile and inequitable edifice propping up global capitalism – where even renditions within the Sustainable Development Goals may be inadequate (Rai, Brown and Ruwanpura 2019). This latest conceptualization by the ILO, however, has a critical impetus. It is a coded recognition that work inequities for most working people is what led to socio-economic fissures to become apparent with the global COVID-19 pandemic. The most recent version of DW is thus an attempt at making explicit the crucial linkages between workplace conditions and the world that we inhabit. Since our world has come asunder at alarming speed with the pandemic, partly as a consequence of pre-existing inequalities; work, along with the security/insecurity it engenders, offers a conduit through which it becomes possible to argue for a more equitable global landscape. Hence, ensuring security within work settings covers a continuum, including health and safety within workplaces, but also moves beyond it. By drawing in the external world into work settings, the ILO’s latest version of DW also then is a more emphatic recognition that work alone is insufficient to engender the welfare of people. The ability of workers to earn living wages that allows them and their families to flourish is as important as it is for them to work within a context of social security and social protection. To establish Kanchana N. Ruwanpura
why this emphasis is necessary, the next section summarizes recent evidence from the global garment industry – and how and where workers were caught out in multiple ways.
Recent evidence
The global pandemic is often presented as unanticipated, with the effects of COVID-19 not foreseen. However, if one skims through the emerging studies on one sector – the global garment industry – workers in the sector were feeling the sting from early on. This is partly due to the ripple effects of the global supply chain caused by supply chain bottlenecks, which affected the sector earlier than the formal declaration of a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) (ILO 2020). Specifically, regional closures in China meant other supplier countries reliant on deliveries of fabric, buttons, thread; namely, supplies and inventories essential for manufacturing the finished garment, were caught out, without which those labouring did not have any work. The same ILO study delineates the second channel for job insecurity to stem from the collapse in consumer confidence, where the sudden decline was ‘driven by losses in purchasing power’ due to stringent lockdown measures (ILO 2020: 3). However, the effects of the first source were already having an impact on workers, with less work or suppliers unable to fulfil global orders. I now offer some perfunctory remarks on the changing fortunes of diverse countries. The first bearing on garment workers were felt in China, South East Asia and the Pacific – as the latter regions in particular are heavily reliant on inputs from China. Supply scarcities lead to work shortages, factory closures, erratic work and non-payment or delayed payments of wages; in other words, a further erosion of worker rights (Brydges and Hanlon 2020; Hoskins 2020a, 2020b). This was the initial impact, mostly felt, according to an ILO research briefing, in South East Asia, which is more reliant on external sourcing, especially from China (ILO 2020). For countries in South Asia during this time, there is tentative indication that momentarily their fortunes changed for the better. It meant orders from retailers getting redirected to countries in the region, with their own backward supply chains and/or supply inventories to other countries in the region (ILO 2020). In this ILO research briefing,
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Sri Lanka, in particular, gets signalled out as gaining at the inception – as orders meant for China were forwarded on to Sri Lanka. While there is no gathered evidence of worker experiences during this phase, it is at least likely that their wage packet was greater – although whether it came at the expense of intense overtime is difficult to determine. However, events that unfolded since those early days suggest a case of changing and dwindling providence rather than an upward trajectory. Actions taken by various governments diverged in the timing of lockdowns and their handling of the pandemic, and this too affected worker experiences. In India, for instance, the decision to enforce a lockdown was made suddenly, and migrant working-class communities had less than 24 hours to find their way back to their villages and towns. Images of millions of migrant workers, endlessly walking thousands of miles – as public transport was suddenly halted – shocked viewers with the endless screen dumps with the haunted look of migrant workers and their families. The walking classes, rather than the working classes, as Arundhati Roy (2020) framed it, ensured that we could not plead ignorance about how hard the global economy and development processes have been on the working poor – the trickling down, nowhere in plain sight. How did those labouring for the garment sector of India experience it? Carswell, De Neve and Yuvraj (2020) were fortuitous to have been conducting research prior to the onset of the pandemic and had research ongoing with a local research collaborator. They were hence able to document the experiences of garment sector workers in South India, in Tirupur in particular. For diverse sets of workers, from those labouring in power looms to textile factories and workshops, Carswell et al. (2020) note how factory or power loom closures overnight meant that work simply stopped for all types of workers. Along with it, those doing related work, including in the informal economy, lost their livelihoods. They outline how this work stoppage overnight ‘paralysed rural life across the social spectrum, albeit with diverse outcomes shaped by pre-existing socio-economic positions’ (ibid.: n.p.). Notwithstanding the severity and evident impact on working classes, news media were reporting how various states and employers in India were
calling for a relaxing of labour laws in the country – a position that made the ILO issue a statement highlighting how India is a signatory to related ILO conventions (Gaur 2020; Scroll In 2020). The fact that employers and a few states were willing to make such calls, despite evident and widespread misery of the working classes, indicates the tenuous grounds upon which DW stands. These or similar tales abound news media for countries, such as Myanmar, Cambodia and Bangladesh, where the announcement of the global pandemic meant a reason for abrupt closure of worksites and a meltdown of livelihoods. Their experiences are similar to workers in India, where overnight factory closures meant not getting their wages or receiving delayed payment – and an abrupt halting of work with no provisions made for wage payments during factory closures (Hoskins 2020a, 2020b; Kelly 2020a, 2020b). Most of the news reportage focused on workers within garment factories and the challenges they faced. On this basis, it would be safe to assume that workers labouring for ancillary nodes on the local garment supply chains, including informal workshops, are likely to have found themselves facing further precarity. From the viewpoint of labourers, the chances are that the DW definition in 2013 that emphasized the centrality of and income as important for people’s well-being are likely to be far removed, as policy decisions related to COVID-19 started to disrupt their ability to work – often with no alternative support in place. Seemingly differently, Sri Lankan apparels initially came across as an outlier, with labour unions in the country advocating for a tripartite agreement – and the equivalent of a furlough scheme being brought into place (ILO 2020; CCC 2021). In this tripartite settlement, workers were to be guaranteed a minimum wage amounting to Rs14,500 or 50 per cent of average wage packet, whichever was higher (CCC 2021; IndustriALL 2020). This income protection at minimum wages was a commendable feat, given that in neighbouring South Asia workers in the sector did not have this protection. In many ways the income threshold is an illustration of a minimum commitment to decent work. However, like in other countries, variable experiences are noted on the part of workers – who either did not have their wages Kanchana N. Ruwanpura
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paid regularly or were paid far less than the minimum threshold (CCC 2021); while the industrial body representing apparel sector workers dispute this (JAAF 2021). The less contentious issue is that Sri Lankan apparels commendably shifted production from fashionwear to PPE fairly quickly (ILO 2020; MAS 2020; The Hindu 2020). However, the industry also quickly became the focal point for COVID-19 clusters and the eventual community transmission, which is exacerbated by global vaccine inequality (Ruwanpura 2021; Ruwanpura, Gunawardana and Padmasiri 2021). Here, while Sri Lankan apparels were able to continue with work for most workers, their inability to guarantee safe work conditions meant that the centrality of ensuring the well-being of labourers was compromised – and the 2013 DW emphasis on ‘work [that] can pave the way for broader social and economic advancement’ appeared to fall flat even in countries that were attempting to do differently. Is this the reason for a more elaborate definition in the 2021 version of DW?
Concluding comments
The cursory evidence presented from one sector, global garments, to understand the stated aims of DW – and the gaps exacerbated in the past eighteen months suggest that decent work remains a far-fetched aspiration for most working-class communities. In recognition of this mounting gap, the ILO’s latest effort at giving purchase to the conceptualizing decent work is elaborate and detailed; to remind readers again, it is as follows: Decent work sums up the aspirations of people in their working lives. It involves opportunities for work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for families, better prospects for personal development and social integration, freedom for people to express their concerns, organize and participate in the decisions that affect their lives and equality of opportunity and treatment for all women and men. (ILO 2021)
This latest definition amplifies many of the ILO’s fundamental conventions, including around unionization, equal remuneration and discrimination. The current version of DW is one of the most detailed and particularized. In ILO’s itemising, a thorough DW definition Kanchana N. Ruwanpura
is also an implicit acknowledgement that the world of work has failed working classes in this globalized world – with the COVID-19 pandemic exposing pre-existing fault lines and aggravating inequalities in stark and troubling ways. The 2021 definition of the ILO’s Decent Work Agenda is then a call for constant effort to recognize the structural inequalities that pervade our globalized world; and an appeal to ensure that protecting those labouring and working to upkeep global capitalism ought to be at the heart of development – because otherwise, the quest for development itself is at peril. Kanchana N. Ruwanpura
Acknowledgments
With thanks to Adlerbertska Foundation from the School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
References
AFW/CCC [Asia Floor Wages and Clean Clothes Campaign] (2014). Living Wages in Asia Report. AWFA and CCC. https://asia.floorwage .org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/LW-in-Asia -AFWA-CCC.pdf [accessed 21 April 2023]. Brydges, Taylor and Mary Hanlon (2020). Garment worker rights and fashion industry response to COVID-19, Dialogues in Human Geography 10(2): 195–8. Carswell, Grace, Geert De Neve and S. Yuvaraj (2020). Fifty days of lockdown in India: a view from two villages in Tamil Nadu, Economic & Political Weekly 55(25): 1–9. CCC [Clean Clothes Campaign] (2021). Un(der) paid in the pandemic: how the garment industry failed to pay its workers, Clean Clothes Campaign. https://cleanclothes-ea.org/content/ ko [accessed 21 April 2023]. Gaur, Vatsala (2020). Uttar Pradesh brings ordinance to suspend most labour laws for Three Years, India Times, 7 May. https://economictimes .indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/uttar -pradesh-brings-ordinance-to-suspend-most -labour-laws-for-3-years/articleshow/75609934 .cms [accessed 10 May 2020]. Ghai, Dharam (2003). Decent work: concepts and indicators, International Labour Review 142(2): 113–45. Hoskins, Tansy (2020a). Thrown to the wolves: how COVID-19 laws are being used to silence garment workers, The Guardian, 26 October. https://www .theguardian.com/global-development/2020/oct/ 26/thrown-to-the-wolves-how-covid-19-laws -are-being-used-to-silence-garment-workers [accessed 30 October 2020].
Decent work 155 Hoskins, Tansy (2020b). Fast fashion hasn’t stopped putting profits over people: the coronavirus fall-out, The Huck Magazine, 30 March. https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/ style/covid-19-poses-an-existential-threat-to -fast-fashion-industry/ [accessed 30 October 2020]. ILO (2020). The supply chain ripple effect: how COVID-19 is affecting garment workers and factories in Asia and the Pacific, ILO Research Brief, October. ILO (2021). Decent work. https:// www .ilo .org/ global/topics/decent-work/lang--en/index.htm [accessed 8 December 2021]. IndustriALL (2020). Sri Lankan unions prowww tects workers amidst COVID-19. http:// .industriall-union.org/sri-lankan-union-protects -workers-amid-covid-19 [accessed 5 April 2020]. JAAF (2021). Response to Clean Clothes Campaign Report, ‘Still Un(der) Paid’, from Sri Lanka Joint Apparel Association Forum, via ADFACTOR PR Firm, 4 August 2021. https://media.business -humanrights.org/media/documents/Sri_Lanka _Joint_Apparel_Association_Forum_Right _of_Reply_to_Clean_Clothes_Campaign.pdf [accessed 21 April 2023]. Kelly, Annie (2020a). Garment workers face destitution as COVID-19 closes factories. The Guardian, 19 March. https://theguardian.com/ global-development/2020/mar/19/garment -workers-face-destitution-as-covid-19-closes -factories [accessed 19 March 2020]. Kelly, Annie (2020b). Primark and Matalan among retailers allegedly cancelling £2.4b orders in ‘catastrophic’ move for Bangladesh, The theguardian .com/ Guardian, 2 April. https:// global-development/2020/apr/02/fashion-brands -cancellations-of-24bn-orders-catastrophic-for -bangladesh [accessed 2 April 2020].
MAS (2020). COVID-19: doing the right thing during a pandemic, MAS Holdings. https:// youtube.com/watch?v=zrHYOujdrCQ&feature =youtu.be [accessed 21 April 2023]. Rai, Shirin, Benjamin Brown and Kanchana N. Ruwanpura (2019). SDG 8: decent work and economic growth – a gendered analysis, World Development 113: 368–80. Roy, Arundhati (2020). The pandemic is a portal, Financial Times, 3 April. https:// www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe -fcd274e920ca [accessed 21 April 2023]. Ruwanpura, Kanchana N. (2021). COVID-19, ethical trade and women apparel workers, groundviews Groundviews, 16 March. https:// .org/2021/03/16/covid-19-ethical-trade-and -women-apparel-workers/ [accessed 23 June 2021]. Ruwanpura, Kanchana N., Samanthi Gunawardana and Buddhima Padmasiri (2021). Vaccine inequality and the cost to garment sector workers, groundviews Groundviews, 22 May. https:// .org/2021/05/22/vaccine-inequality-and-the -cost-to-garment-sector-workers/ [accessed 23 June 2021]. Scroll In (2020). Covid-19: India should amend labour laws only after consulting workers and employers, says ILO, Scroll In, 14 May. https:// scroll.in/latest/961977/covid-19-india-should -amend-labour-laws-only-after-consulting -workers-and-employers-says-ilo [accessed 10 May 2020]. The Hindu (2020). Brandix launches production of personal protective equipment, 13 April. https://www.thehindu.com/news/ national/andhra-pradesh/brandix-launches -production-of-personal-protective-equipment/ article31334486.ece [accessed 21 April 2023].
Kanchana N. Ruwanpura
Degrowth Defining degrowth
Generally, degrowth challenges the hegemony of economic growth and calls for a democratically led redistributive downscaling of production and consumption in industrialized countries as a means to achieve environmental sustainability, social justice and well-being (Demaria et al., 2013). Degrowth is usually associated with the idea that smaller can be beautiful. However, the emphasis should not only be on less, but also on different. In a degrowth society everything will be different: activities, forms and uses of energy, relations, gender roles, allocations of time between paid and non-paid work, and relations with the non-human world. The point of degrowth is to escape from a society that is absorbed by the fetishism of growth. Such a rupture is therefore related to both words and things, the symbolic as well as material practices. It implies the decolonization of the imaginary and the implementation of other possible worlds. The degrowth project does not aim for another growth, nor for another kind of development (sustainable, social, fair, etc.), but rather for the construction of another society, a society of frugal abundance (Latouche), a post-growth society (Paech), eco-feminist degrowth (Perez-Orozco), or one of prosperity without growth (Jackson). In other words, it is not an economic project from the outset, not even of another economy, but a societal project that implies escaping from the economy as a reality and as imperialist discourse. ‘Sharing’, ‘simplicity’, ‘conviviality’, ‘care’ and the ‘commons’ are primary significations of what this society might look like (D’Alisa et al., 2015). Although integrating bio-economics and ecological macroeconomics, degrowth is a non-economic concept. On one side, degrowth certainly implies the reduction of the social metabolism (the energy and material throughput of the economy), needed in order to face the existing biophysical constraints (in terms of natural resources and ecosystem’s assimilative capacity). On the other side, degrowth is an attempt to challenge the omnipresence of market-based relations in society and the growth-based roots of the social imaginary replacing them by the
idea of frugal abundance. It is also a call for deeper democracy, applied to issues which lie outside the mainstream democratic domain, like technology. Finally, degrowth implies an equitable redistribution of wealth within and across the global North and South, as well as between present and future generations. Since the early 2000s, the face of the triumph of a single-thought ideology of growth has been no other than the seemingly consensual ‘sustainable development’ slogan, a nice oxymoron. Its aim was to try to save the religion of economic growth in the ecological crisis and which seemed to be well accepted by the anti-globalization movement. It became urgent to oppose the capitalism of a globalized market with another civilizational project or, more specifically, to give visibility to a plan that had been in formation for a long time, but progressed underground. The rupture with developmentalism, a form of productivism for the use of so-called developing countries, was thus the foundation of this alternative project. The term degrowth was proposed by political ecologist André Gorz in 1972 and was used to entitle a book with the French translation of Nicholas Georgescu Roegen’s essays in 1979. Degrowth was then launched by French environmental activists in 2001 as a provocative slogan to repoliticize environmentalism. The motto of degrowth was almost accidentally launched by a pressing need to break with the doublespeak, often meaninglessness, of sustainable development that was felt by whole streams of political ecology and development critics. Thus, the phrase is not originally a concept (at least not symmetrically to economic growth) but rather a defiant political slogan with the main objective of reminding us of the meaning of limits; more specifically, degrowth is neither recession nor negative growth. The word should not be interpreted literally: degrowing to degrow would be as absurd as growing to grow. A degrowth transition is not a sustained trajectory of descent, but a transition to convivial societies who live simply, in common and with less. There are several ideas about the practices and institutions that can facilitate such a transition and the processes that can bring them together and allow them to flourish. The attractiveness of degrowth emerges from its power to draw from and articulate different sources or streams of
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thought (including justice, democracy, and ecology) and to formulate strategies at different levels (including oppositional activism, grassroots alternatives, and institutional politics). It brings together a heterogeneous group of actors who focus on different issues, from agroecology to climate justice. Degrowth could complement and reinforce these topic areas, functioning as a connecting thread (i.e. a platform for a network of networks) beyond one-issue politics. In fact, Degrowth is not the alternative, but rather a matrix of alternatives that reopens the human adventure to a plurality of destinies and the space of creativity, by lifting the lead blanket of economic totalitarianism. This is about exiting the paradigm of Homo oeconomicus or Marcuse’s one-dimensional man, the main source of planetary homogenization and the murder of cultures. Consequently, the degrowth society will not be established the same way in Europe, in sub-Saharan Africa or in Latin America, in Texas and in Chiapas, in Senegal and in Portugal. It is crucial to favour or rediscover diversity and pluralism. It is therefore not possible to formulate ‘turnkey’ solutions for degrowth, but only the outline of the fundamentals of any non-productivist sustainable society and concrete examples of transitional programmes. The design can take the form of a ‘virtuous circle’ of sobriety in the form of 8 ‘R’s: re-evaluate, reconceptualize, restructure, relocate, redistribute, reduce, reuse, and recycle (Latouche, 2009). These eight interdependent objectives constitute a revolutionary rupture, which can trigger a dynamic towards an autonomous society of sustainable and convivial sobriety. The politics of this historical dynamic – the actors, alliances, institutions, and social processes creating degrowth transitions – remains the subject of lively debate in Europe and beyond. For instance, in September 2018, over 200 scientists wrote an open letter to major European institutions titled ‘Europe, it is time to end the growth dependency’; it was then signed by almost 100,000 citizens. The degrowth network includes over 100 organizations with 3,000 active members, mostly located in Europe but also in South and North America, the Philippines, India, Tunisia, and Turkey.
Why is economic growth incompatible with environmental sustainability?
‘Growth for the sake of growth’ remains the credo of all governments and international institutions, including the European Commission. Economic growth is presented as the panacea that can solve any of the world problems: poverty, inequality, sustainability, and so on. You name it. Left-wing and right-wing policies only differ on how to achieve it. However, there is an uncomfortable scientific truth that has to be faced: economic growth is environmentally unsustainable. Moreover, beyond a certain threshold already surpassed by EU countries, socially it is not necessary. The central question then becomes: how can we manage an economy without growth? Economist Kenneth Boulding famously said that: ‘Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.’ Ecological economists argue that the economy is physical, while mainstream economists seem to believe it is metaphysical. Social metabolism is the study of material and energy flows within the economy. On the input side of the economy, key material resources are limited, and many are peaking including oil and phosphorus. On the output side, humanity is trespassing planetary boundaries. Climate change is the evidence of the limited assimilative capacity of ecosystems. It is the planet saying: ‘Enough is enough!’. Mainstream economists, finally convinced by the existence of biophysical limits, started to argue that economic growth can be decoupled from the consumption of energy and materials (or from environmental impacts, that is the same thing). Historical data series (like Material Flow Accounting from EUROSTAT) demonstrates that this, up to now, has not happened. At most, there is relative decoupling (a decrease in resource use per unit of GDP). But, there is no absolute decoupling, that is what matters for sustainability: an absolute decrease of environmental resources consumption. The only periods of absolute dematerialization coincide with economic recession. Trade should also be taken into account, to avoid externalization of pol-
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lution intensive activities outside the EU (i.e. pollution heaven hypothesis). The current economy cannot be circular. The main reason being that energy cannot be recycled, and materials only up to a certain extent. The global economy recycles less than 10 per cent of materials; about 50 per cent of processed materials are used to provide energy and are thus not available for recycling (it is basically fossil fuels). It is simple: economic growth is not compatible with environmental sustainability. The list of nice oxymorons is long (from sustainable development to its reincarnations like green economy or green growth), but wishful thinking does not solve real problems. Increase in GDP leads to increase in material and energy use, and therefore to environmental unsustainability. Technology and market-based solutions are not magic bullets. Faith in technology has become religious: scientific evidence shows that, based on past trends in technological improvement, these are coming way too slowly to avoid irreversible climate change. For instance, efficiency improvements lead to rebound effects, in the context of economic growth (the more efficient you are, the more you consume, e.g. cars and consumption of gasoline). Renewable energy produces less net energy, because it has a lower EROI (energy return on investment) than fossil fuels. For this, and other reasons, it cannot satisfy current levels of energy consumptions, which therefore needs to be reduced. Most of the world’s fossil fuel reserves must be left in the ground, unburned, to keep global temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees Celsius. In fact, fossil fuels should be called unburnable fuels. Science sometimes brings bad news. An article recently published in Nature Sustainability argues that: ‘No country in the world meets the basic needs of its citizens at a globally sustainable level of resource use’ (O’Neill et al., 2018). The question then is: how can the conditions for a good life for all within planetary boundaries be generated? The uncomfortable truth to be faced by policymakers is the following: ● Economic growth is ecologically unsustainable. The total consumption of materials and energy needs to be reduced, starting from developed countries. Federico Demaria
● Economic growth might also not be socially desirable. Inequalities are on the rise, poverty has not been eliminated and life satisfaction is stagnant. ● Economic growth is fuelled by debt (e.g. quantitative easing), which corresponds to a colonization of the future. This debt cannot be paid, and the financial system is prone to instability (despite Basilea III, an international framework that sets standards for bank capital adequacy, stress testing, and liquidity requirements). For instance, scientifically it is not clear how the EU will achieve a low-carbon economy in a context of economic growth, since it implies a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050. In fact, climatologists Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows (2011) have argued convincingly that: ‘for a reasonable probability of avoiding the 2 degrees Celsius characterization of dangerous climate change, the wealthier (Annex 1) nations need, temporarily, to adopt a de-growth strategy’. The transition from a growth society to a degrowth (or post-growth) one poses several challenges. However, the emerging field of ecological macroeconomics is starting to address them convincingly. Happiness and economics literature shows that GDP growth is not needed for well-being, because there are other important determinants. (See Easterlin paradox, stating that at a point in time happiness varies directly with income both among and within nations, but over time happiness does not trend upward as income continues to grow. While people on higher incomes are typically happier than their lower-income counterparts at a given point in time, higher incomes don’t produce greater happiness over time.) High life expectancy is compatible with low carbon emissions, but high incomes are not. Moreover, lack of growth may increase inequalities unless there is redistribution. In any case, the issue is not whether we shall abandon economic growth. The question is how. Scientific debates around it are on the rise, but I am afraid policymaking is behind. There are good signs: critiques of GDP as an indicator of well-being are common; there are policy proposals and degrowth is entering into the parliaments. This is not new. For example, in 1972 Sicco Mansholt, a Dutch social-democrat who was then EU
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Commissioner for agriculture, wrote a letter to the president of EU Commission Franco Maria Malfatti, urging him to seriously take into account limits to growth in the EU economic policy. Mansholt himself became president of the European Commission after only two months, but for too short a term to push a zero (or below) growth agenda. The time is ripe not only for a scientific degrowth research agenda, but also for a political one. As ecological economists Tim Jackson and Peter Victor argued in The New York Times: ‘Imagining a world without growth is among the most vital and urgent tasks for society to engage in.’
Recent evolution of the term: from an activist slogan to an academic concept
In 2023, we celebrate the 15th anniversary of the first international degrowth conference in Paris. This event introduced the originally French activist slogan décroissance into the English-speaking world and international academia as degrowth. I want to take stock of this decade and a half in terms of conferences, publications, training and, more recently, policymaking. I focus only on the academic achievements in English, leaving aside both activism and intellectual debates in other languages – these are huge, especially in French, Spanish, Italian, and German. International conferences The academic collective Research & Degrowth (R&D) aims at the facilitation of networking and the flow of ideas between various actors working on degrowth, especially in academia. For this reason – as well as in order to increase the visibility of the degrowth ideas and proposals in the public space – R&D has organized the 1st (Paris, 2008) and 2nd (Barcelona, 2010) conferences, and called with a Support Group for the 3rd (Venice and Montreal, 2012), 4th (Leipzig, 2014), 5th (Budapest), 6th (Malmo, Mexico City, and European Parliament 2018), 7th (Manchester, 2020), 8th (The Hague, 2021), 9th (Pontevedra, 2023) ones. Apart from demonstrating the latest research in the field, the conferences aim at promoting cooperative research and work in the formulation and development of research and political proposals.
Academic publications In 2008 there were only a couple of published papers in English on degrowth. I have lost count, but today there are probably over 400 published papers, 15 special issues and 20 books (for a review, see Kallis et al., 2018). The Media Library at https://degrowth.info/ aims to collect them all. Lately, there have been also articles on degrowth in journals like Nature Sustainability (O’Neill et al., 2018), and Nature Energy (Hickel et al., 2022). We might be assisting in the emergence of a new scientific paradigm, in the sense of ‘universally recognised scientific achievements that, for a time, provide model problems and solutions for a community of researchers’ (Kuhn, 1962: x). I think the 15 special issues have played an important role in proving the legitimacy of the research questions raised by degrowth as an academic concept. There has been a first wave of generalist special issues. More recently, we have entered into a second wave on specific themes (i.e. technology, tourism, environmental justice, blue degrowth, planning, and urbanization), or that introduce degrowth to a new discipline (i.e. anthropology, geography, organization studies, and urban studies). The book Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era (Routledge, 2014) has been translated into more than ten languages. Others have recently been published. For instance, The Case for Degrowth (Kallis et al., 2020) argues that we can live well with less, by living differently, prioritizing well-being, equity, and sustainability. Drawing on emerging initiatives and enduring traditions around the world, authors advance a radical degrowth vision and outline policies to shape work and care, income, and investment that avoid exploitative and unsustainable practices. Degrowth, they argue, can be achieved through transformative strategies that allow societies to slow down by design, not disaster. Training The youth participating in the degrowth conferences presented a need for training opportunities. The summer school in Barcelona on degrowth and environmental justice has arrived at its eighth edition (https:// summerschool.degrowth.org/). A more activism-oriented one is regularly organized at climate camps in Germany. In 2021, Federico Demaria
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I organized an online summer crash course on Ecological and Feminist Macroeconomics at the University of Barcelona with over 300 students. Degrowth is taught in many university courses, and at the Autonomous University of Barcelona we launched a Master’s degree in ‘Political Ecology, Degrowth and Environmental Justice’ in 2018, and another online master ‘Degrowth: Ecology, Economics and Policy’ in 2021 (see https://master.degrowth.org/). Our Degrowth Reading Group in Barcelona has been running for over 10 years, and many more exist around the world. Policymaking I have argued elsewhere that degrowth is entering into the parliaments (The Ecologist, 16 January 2017). Some political parties have started to adopt degrowth-oriented or degrowth-compatible proposals in their political programmes. In the House of Commons in London there is an ‘All-Party Parliamentary Group on limits to growth’. In 2018, a seminar was hosted at the European Commission titled ‘Well being beyond GDP growth?’, and a post-growth conference at the European parliament to challenge the economic thinking of EU institutions with influential EU policymakers. The emerging field of ecological macroeconomics is shedding some light on policy related challenges. Many questions remain open: can degrowth enter into the Parliaments? How large would its constituency be? What policy proposals shall be put forward? How could a synergy be built between grassroots social movements and institutional politics? For how long will we keep sacrificing everything in the name of growth? How far will the mainstream be able to support growth’s mirage? And how – and who – is going to challenge the discontent emerging out of slow growth in growth’s societies? Can we give this frustration a new meaning and direction, other than that of closure and phobia? Welcome to the new era of post-growth politics.
The future: a blank canvas
The future is a blank canvas. We need to think of aims, strategies, and priorities. Let me mention one that I think is fundamental. There is a need to strengthen the relationships Federico Demaria
with close research and activist communities like the ones of feminism, environmental justice, political ecology, ecological economics, post-extractivism, anti-racism, commons, decoloniality, and post-development. An interesting precedent is the project Degrowth in Movement(s) that explores the relationships with over 30 different perspectives. There is also the FaDA: Feminisms and Degrowth Alliance. Inspired by our book Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary (Kothari et al., 2019) and along the lines of the Indian experience Vikalp Sangam (Hindi for ‘Confluence of Alternatives’), scholars and activists launched the Global Tapestry of Alternatives that seeks to build bridges between networks of transformative alternatives around the globe and promote the creation of new processes of confluence. Degrowth is in fact just one among many other alternatives. The ‘how’ needs to be thought through (e.g. a joint visioning process) – but the ‘why’ is clear. The alliances among these networks, and networks of networks, are fundamental to weave the alternatives and foster a deeply radical socio-ecological transformation. We could imagine it as a rhizome of resistance and regeneration. Federico Demaria
References
Anderson, K., & Bows, A. (2011). Beyond ‘dangerous’ climate change: emission scenarios for a new world. Philosophical Transitions of the Royal Society, 369, 2–44. D’Alisa, G., Demaria, F., & Kallis, G. (2015). Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. Routledge. Demaria, F. (2017, January 16). When degrowth enters the parliament. The Ecologist. Available at: https://theecologist.org/2017/jan/16/when -degrowth-enters-parliament. Demaria, F., Schneider, F., Sekulova, F., & Martinez-Alier, J. (2013). What is degrowth? From an activist slogan to a social movement. Environmental Values, 22, 191–215. Hickel, J., Kallis, G., Jackson, T., O’Neill, D.W., Schor, J.B., Steinberger, J.K., Victor, P.A., & Ürge-Vorsatz, D. (2022) Degrowth that can work – here’s how science can help. Nature, 612, 400–403. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586 -022-04412-x. Jackson, T., & Victor, P. (2015, December 14). A world without growth. The New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/ 12/14/opinion/a-world-without-growth.html.
Degrowth 161 Kallis, G., Kostakis, V., Lange, S., Muraca, B., Paulson, S., & Schmelzer, M. (2018). Research on degrowth. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 43, 291–316. Kothari, A., Salleh, A., Escobar, A., Demaria, F., & Alberto, A. (eds) (2019). Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. Columbia University Press.
Kuhn, T. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Third Edition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Latouche, S. (2009). Farewell to Growth. Polity. O’Neill, D.W., Fanning, A.L., Lamb, W.F., & Steinberger, J.K. (2018). A good life for all within planetary boundaries. Nature Sustainability, 1, 88–95. https://doi.org/10 .1038/s41893-018-0021-4.
Federico Demaria
Dependency theory Origins and intellectual inspiration
Dependency theory is an approach to development that became popular in the 1960s mainly as a result of the work of a group of social scientists working in or on Latin America. The theory challenged the dominant Western understandings of development, which were assuming that the lack of development in the countries of the global South was a consequence of the persistence of traditional structures and institutions in these countries. According to the so-called modernization approach, the global South would develop if countries adopted ‘modern’ institutions, outlooks and values and followed the example of the industrialized, ‘developed’ West. Dependency theorists criticized the modernization approach because they felt that its explanation of development in the industrialized world and the lack of development in the South did not recognize how the relationships between different parts of the world – most notably through colonization – had been a crucial determinant of the ‘underdevelopment’ of the countries in the South. The key to the understanding of the condition of the latter countries was found in their dependence, famously defined by Theotonio Dos Santos (1970, p. 231) as ‘a situation in which the economy of certain countries is conditioned by the development and expansion of another economy to which the former is subjected’. Dependency theory interpreted the relationships that came into being during the colonial era and persisted in later periods through different forms of imperialism, as reflecting an underlying global structure that created wealth in some parts of the world at the detriment of other parts. This idea was captured in the famous phrase coined by Andre Gunder Frank (1969a, p. 9), that ‘[e]conomic development and underdevelopment are not just relative and quantitative, in that one represents more economic development than the other; economic development and underdevelopment are relational and qualitative, in that each is structurally different from, yet caused by its relation with, the other.’
Dependency theory originated against the background of the structuralist work of development economists such as Raúl Prebisch and Hans W. Singer. Working in different positions in the UN system after the Second World War, Prebisch (at the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America) and Singer (at the economic affairs department of the UN Secretariat) were responsible for the so-called Prebisch–Singer thesis. This theorem explained the economic difficulties of many developing countries, which had been heavily dependent on the export of raw materials and agricultural produce, from the declining terms of trade of primary commodities versus industrial goods. The Prebisch– Singer thesis was markedly structuralist, as it addressed the underlying structure of international trade instead of the relationships between specific countries. Next to these structuralist notions derived from development economics, many dependency theorists drew on equally structuralist Marxist and neo-Marxist notions of imperialism. Classical Marxist approaches, developed by, among others, Rudolf Hilferding, Rosa Luxemburg, and Nikolai Bukharin and Vladimir Ilich Lenin, stressed the exploitative nature of the international capitalist system. Neo-Marxists, such as Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy and Arghiri Emmanuel, contributed ideas about crisis, external domination, monopoly capital and unequal exchange that proved useful in the development of dependency theory. Regional and scholarly diversity As noted above, dependency theory has clear roots in Latin America. Several factors seem to have contributed to the growth of dependency theory in this part of the world. The academic environment, with a good number of public universities, led to a growth in the number of graduates across Latin American countries. Fuelled by the US dominance in the region, the academic analysis of international economic and political relations turned to critical frames of domination and resistance. Well-known dependency scholars working in and on Latin America include Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Theotonio dos Santos, Enzo Faletto, Andre Gunder Frank, Celso Furtado, Ruy Mauro Marini and Osvaldo Sunkel.
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The application of dependency theory has by no means remained limited to Latin America. Inspired by the structuralist analysis of development problems and the critique of neo-imperialism in Latin America, scholars started to use the notion of dependency to analyse processes in other parts of the world. Sub-Saharan Africa, where countries gained political independence from the second half of the 1950s onwards, proved to be fertile ground for the further application of dependency analyses. Samir Amin was undoubtedly the best-known of African dependency scholars, but several academics from outside the continent, such as Immanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi and Walter Rodney, also became known for their analysis of Africa’s dependency relations. The uptake of dependency theory in other parts of the global South appears more limited, although Walden Bello’s and Norman Girvan’s focus on, respectively, Asia and the Caribbean, is illustrative for the global spread of the approach. Next to being diverse geographically, dependency theory is also quite diverse in its scholarly and ideological orientation. As Kay (2011, p. 126) noted in his seminal overview of dependency theory, ‘[t]heoretically and politically, dependency analysis appealed to a broad church, as its formulations tend to be general and at times vague, allowing writers and students from different perspectives to espouse it.’ Kay (2011, pp. 126–9) made a broad-brush distinction between reformist and Marxist approaches to dependency. Reformists, such as Cardoso, Faletto, Furtado and Sunkel, focused on the structural economic impact of the insertion of developing countries into the international division of labour and argued that nationally oriented reforms could improve their position in global capitalism. Marxist dependency theorists, including Frank, Dos Santos, Marini and Amin, rejected the possibility of development within the global capitalist system and propagated revolution to abolish capitalism. Immediate strategies to improve the plight of the developing world, until revolutionary change would have broken the chains of dependence, include ‘delinking’ or ‘dissociation’, involving a withdrawal from existing exploitative relations and enabling the implementation of measures aimed at capital accumulation for national development.
Reformist dependency theory: Cardoso and Faletto A landmark of dependency scholarship is Cardoso and Faletto’s (1979) study on dependency and development in Latin America. The importance of their analysis is underscored by the observation that its publication in English was heralded as ‘a “happening”, an “event”’ (Packenham, 1982, p. 131). Cardoso and Faletto’s reformist analysis was based on the assumption that social structures include both ‘the mechanisms of self-perpetuation and the possibilities for change’ (Cardoso & Faletto, 1979, p. xi). They emphasized that analyses of dependency have to make explicit not only structural constraints that reinforce the reiterative aspects of the reproduction of society, but have also to delineate chances for change, rooted in the very social interest and ideologies created by the development of a given structure. In this process, subordinated social groups and classes, as well as dominated countries, try to counter-attack dominant interests that sustain structures of domination. (Cardoso & Faletto, 1979, xi)
According to Cardoso and Faletto, dependency should not be identified only as external to developing countries but need to be understood in the context of internal class relations. They argue that it is key to pay attention to ‘the social practices of local groups and classes which try to enforce foreign interests, not precisely because they are foreign, but because they may coincide with values and interests that these groups pretend are their own’ (Cardoso & Faletto, 1979, p. xvi). Cardoso (1973) coined the term ‘associated-dependent development’ in an analysis of Brazil to refer to a form of development in dependent countries in the global South that is driven by the alliance between the local bourgeoisie and international capital. In Cardoso’s view, this form of development created a ‘new structural “duality”’ with the emergence of industrial sectors next to important ‘backward economic and social sectors … [which] play the role of “internal colonies”’ (Cardoso, 1972, p. 90).
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Marxist dependency theory on Latin America: Andre Gunder Frank Andre Gunder Frank was one of the most prolific authors in the Marxist tradition of dependency theory, although much of his later work is categorized better as a contribution to world-systems theory (e.g. Frank & Gills, 1993). Frank himself has been reluctant to classify his work as Marxist (Frank, 1984, p. 258), but his work has clear Marxist overtones. Starting from the assumption that relations of capitalist production are inherently exploitative, Frank argued that the so-called metropolis of the international capitalist system – constituted by the industrialized countries in the global North – imposed unequal conditions on the periphery in the global South. As indicated in the quote presented above, Frank saw development in the North and underdevelopment in the South as two sides of the same coin. In his view, underdevelopment is qualitatively different from a lack of development: ‘The now developed countries were never underdeveloped, though they may have been undeveloped’ (Frank, 1969b, p. 4). For this reason, Frank (1969b, p. 24) took issue with the analysis of conventional development sociology and economics that posited that countries in the global South were characterized by traditional social relations. In his work, Frank distinguished several phases in the history of world capitalism, which together constitute a ‘single historical process of capitalist development’ (Frank, 1969b, p. 5) and, together, represent ‘continuity in change’ (Frank, 1969a, p. 12). Throughout history, ‘uneven development is expressed through long cycles of accelerated and retarded growth and recurrent world economic crises’ (Frank, 1983, p. 2). Capitalism went through the phases of mercantilism (1500–1770), industrial capitalism (1770–1870), imperialism (1870–1930) and neoimperialism and neodependence (Frank, 1972, p. 92; 1979, p. xi). According to Frank, the dynamics of global capitalism is due to the recurrence of crises of capital accumulation. Major periods of crisis resulted in ‘the “rise” from the periphery and … “decline” at the center [and] the development of intermediate, semiperipheral economies and powers’ (Frank, 1981, p. 3). Wil Hout
Marxist dependency theory on Africa: Samir Amin Another important representative of the Marxist approach to dependency theory was Egytian economist Samir Amin, whose work shows important parallels to that of Andre Gunder Frank. Amin was an outright Marxist scholar, whose work was rooted in a historical materialist analysis of social and political dynamics. His analysis of unequal development is built on the understanding of transformations in the mode of production. The current, capitalist mode of production, which has come to embrace the whole world, is ‘characterized by the exclusive appropriation by one class of means of production that are themselves the product of social labor’ (Amin, 1976, p. 59). The spread of capitalism as a global system has led, in Amin’s (1974) interpretation, to ‘accumulation on a world scale’. The global accumulation of value has caused the underdevelopment of African countries, which were at the core of his analyses. Amin argued that The speeding up of colonial exploitation after the Second World War … transformed the area from the stage of being a primitive ‘reserve’, virtually outside the world market, into that of a true underdeveloped economy: dominated by and integrated into the world market, and with a ‘dualistic’ appearance; characterized by an increasing inequality in the distribution of growth between the various sectors and of the per capita product. The outward-directed character became more marked and there was an increasing dependence on the centre, which stimulated and maintained this growth from outside. (Amin, 1973, p. xiv)
The process of underdevelopment, according to Amin (1982), has led to ‘disarticulation’, understood as a lack of linkages among different economic sectors in developing countries. While the main linkages in the so-called ‘autocentric’ countries of the capitalist core are between the production of mass consumption good and the production of capital goods, those in the ‘disarticulated’ economies of the developing world are between the export sector and the consumption of luxury goods (Amin, 1972, p. 704). More than other dependency theorists, Amin has focused on the options for development in the periphery of the global cap-
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italist economy. His ideas revolve around the principle ‘of “delinking” the criteria of rationality of internal economic choices from those governing the world system’ (Amin, 1990, p. 18). Delinking, which is connected with a transition to socialism (Amin, 1990, p. 55), would need a radical change of economic principles. The change would require that rural and urban populations share the proceeds of production in proportion to their size in the labour force and that production is oriented to satisfying the basic needs of the whole population rather than the demands of the elite (Amin, 1987, pp. 437–40). The contemporary relevance of dependency theory The discussion in previous sections showed that the heydays of dependency theory lasted from the 1960s until the end of the twentieth century. Over the years, various scholars have argued that the understandings produced by dependency theorists still hold value for contemporary debates about development and the position of the countries in the global South. A recent assessment of dependency theory as a research programme argues that ‘important empirical patterns associated with dependency theory such as technological lagging, declining terms of trade, and the uneven nature of capitalist development, have remained relevant despite the changing global economy’ (Kvangraven, 2021, p. 100). Notions of dependency and unequal exchange have proven useful analytical instruments for a variety of authors to interpret the dynamics across new dimensions of the North–South divide. In an early article, Castells and Laserna (1989) pointed at ‘new dependency’ driving technological change and socio-economic restructuring in Latin America. Similar analyses of how the ‘digital divide’ reflects new forms of dependency were provided later by Wade (2002) and Guillén and Suárez (2005). A recent special issue of Review of African Political Economy on the legacy of Samir Amin’s work (Kvangraven et al., 2021) contains dependency-inspired analyses of such diverse topics as financialization, monetary colonialism and China’s insertion into the global economy. The value of dependency analysis is shown, as well, in studies of relations between China and developing countries in different parts
of the world. Taylor (2016), Mason (2017) and Hout and Salih (2019, pp. 116–29) point at the impacts of China’s engagement with Africa, in particular its desire to get access to natural resources, which seem to spur new patterns of unequal exchange. Jenkins (2012) and Castañeda (2017) analyse the asymmetrical trade, investment and lending patterns that have been emerging between China and countries in Latin America, although both conclude that these have not amounted to full-blown dependency. Sum’s (2019, p. 544) analysis of so-called ‘loan-debt contractuality’ focuses on the inequalizing implications of infrastructure-oriented loans given by China to various Asian countries as part of the Belt and Road Initiative. Wil Hout
References
Amin, S. (1972). Le modèle théorique d’accumulation et de développement dans le monde contemporain: La problématique de transition. Revue Tiers-Monde, 13(52), 703–26. Amin, S. (1973). Neo-Colonialism in West Africa, transl. [1971]. Monthly Review Press. Amin, S. (1974). Accumulation on a World Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment, 2 vols, transl. [1970]. Monthly Review Press. Amin, S. (1976). Unequal Development: An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral Capitalism, transl. [1973]. Monthly Review Press. Amin, S. (1982). The Disarticulation of Economy Within “Developing Societies”. In H. Alavi & T. Shanin (eds), Introduction to the Sociology of ‘Developing Societies’ (pp. 205–9). Macmillan. Amin, S. (1987). A Note on the Concept of Delinking. Review: A Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center, 10(3), 435–44. Amin, S. (1990). Delinking: Towards a Polycentric World. Zed Books. Cardoso, F.H. (1972). Dependency and Development in Latin America. New Left Review, I/74, 83–95. Cardoso, F.H. (1973). Associated-Dependent Development: Theoretical and Practical Implications. In A. Stepan (ed.), Authoritarian Brazil: Origins, Policy, and Future (pp. 149–72). Yale University Press. Cardoso, F.H., & Faletto, E. (1979). Dependency and Development in Latin America, transl. [1971]. University of California Press. Castañeda, N. (2017). New Dependency? Economic Links between China and Latin America. Issues & Studies: A Social Science Quarterly on China, Taiwan and East Asian Affairs, 53(1), 174001.
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166 Elgar encyclopedia of development Castells, M., & Laserna, R. (1989). The New Dependency: Technological Change and Socioeconomic Restructuring in Latin America. Sociological Forum, 4(4), 535–60. Dos Santos, T. (1970). The Structure of Dependence. American Economic Review, 60(2), 231–6. Frank, A.G. (1969a). Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil. Monthly Review Press. Frank, A.G. (1969b). Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution. Essays on the Development of Underdevelopment and the Immediate Enemy. Monthly Review Press. Frank, A.G. (1972). Lumpenbourgeoisie: Lumpendevelopment. Dependence, Class and Politics in Larin America, transl. [1970]. Monthly Review Press. Frank, A.G. (1979). Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment. Monthly Review Press. Frank, A.G. (1981). Crisis: In the Third World. Heinemann. Frank, A.G. (1983). The Unequal and Uneven Historical Development of the World Economy. Research Memorandum 8327. University of Amsterdam. Frank, A.G. (1984). Critique and Anti-critique: Essays on Dependence and Reformism. Macmillan. Frank, A.G., & Gills, B.K. (1993). The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? Routledge. Guillén, M.F., & Suárez, S.L. (2005). Explaining the Global Digital Divide: Economic, Political and Sociological Drivers of Cross-National Internet Use. Social Forces, 84(2), 681–708.
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Hout, W., & Salih, M.A.M. (2019). A Political Economy of African Regionalisms: An Overview of Asymmetrical Development. Edward Elgar. Jenkins, R. (2012). Latin America and China – A New Dependency? Third World Quarterly, 33(7), 1337–58. Kay, C. (2011 [1989]). Latin American Theories of Development and Underdevelopment. Routledge. Kvangraven, I.H. (2021). Beyond the Stereotype: Restating the Relevance of the Dependency Research Programme. Development and Change, 52(1), 76–112. Kvangraven, I.H., Styve, M.D., & Kufakurinani, U. (2021). Samir Amin and Beyond: Radical Political Economy, Dependence and Delinking Today. Special Issue, Review of African Political Economy, 48(167), 1–152. Mason, R. (2017). China’s Impact on the Landscape of African International Relations: Implications for Dependency Theory. Third World Quarterly, 38(1), 84–96. Packenham, R.A. (1982). Plus ça change …: The English Edition of Cardoso and Faletto’s Dependencia y Desarrollo en América Latina. Latin American Research Review, 17(1), 131–51. Sum, N.L. (2019). The Intertwined Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of Hopes/Fears: China’s Triple Economic Bubbles and the “One Belt One Road” Imaginary. Territory, Politics, Governance, 7(4), 528–52. Taylor, I. (2016). Dependency Redux: Why Africa Is Not Rising. Review of African Political Economy, 43(147), 8–25. Wade, R.H. (2002). Bridging the Digital Divide: New Route to Development or New Form of Dependency? Global Governance, 8(4), 443–66.
Developing countries The world division in ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries has become ubiquitous at least since the 1960s. Nonetheless, there is no settled definition over what elements are necessary to make a country be considered ‘developing’, nor which countries should or could fall under this designation. The term is typically used as a reference to countries with certain common socio-economic characteristics, such as: high poverty levels, high birth rates, low life-expectancy, low GDP per capita, and so on. And while not carrying an identical meaning, the label has been frequently used as a synonym to designate countries considered ‘poor’, ‘non-industrialized’, ‘South’, and so on (see Farias 2019: 670). The use of the ‘developing’ label has always been contentious, which is not surprising. Binary categorizations – especially when describing social phenomena – are inherently controversial. The parsimony dichotomies yield is concomitantly its main strength and weakness. Dividing any group into only two categories implies a reasonable degree of (1) similarity within each sub-group, and (2) difference between each subgroup. There is rarely an expectation that dichotomies are perfect representations of the real world. Yet, over time many can become reified (i.e. treated as if they were real, undistorted reflections of how things are). And even if the binary division is created to represent two main groupings within a continuum, given enough time and usage, the parsimonious division can become perceived as a concrete split. At least two elements contribute to the complexity of using the ‘developing/developed’ country binary. First, different variables can be used to assess a country’s ‘development’ status. Thus, a country can be considered ‘developing’ using one set of variables but ‘developed’ based on a different selection of what should be measured. Second, countries can – and have – improve significantly in some variables while lagging in others. These elements help to explain why over time it has become increasingly difficult to judge which countries should be called ‘developing’ or not. Between the end of the Second World War and the mid-1970s, the division of the world in countries with strong or weak socio-economic indicators was quite
stark. For instance, in 1975, G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and US) accounted for a whopping two-thirds of the global economy. In the same year, within the group 20 countries with highest GDP there was a clear clustering of countries with (relatively) very low fertility rates and very high life expectancy. These ‘developed’ countries had an average fertility rate of less than two births/woman and live expectancy of 73 years. On the flip side, the ‘developing’ countries in this group of 20 richest nations had fertility rates two to three times higher than the ‘developed’ average, and their citizens lived 10–20 years less (Farias 2019: 671–2). While a handful of countries (like Argentina and Spain) were on the grey zones of these groups, it was not absurd to portray the world as roughly divided between countries with high GDP (total and per capita), industrialized economies, and good quality-of-life indicators versus those with poor indicators on essentially all fronts. But the immense growth in GDP per capita in oil-rich nations in the late-1970s brought in a wave of substantial discussions over this category’s adequacy: in 1980, these made up four of the five countries with the highest GDP per capita in the world.1 Did this fact make Qatar or Kuwait no longer a ‘developing’ country? Similar questions were asked a decade later, with the rise of the so-called Asian Tigers: did the high levels of industrialization and technological exports make Singapore or South Korea ‘developed’ countries? In the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the USSR and the fragmentation of Yugoslavia, the classification of Eastern and Central European countries was unclear: should Belarus, Romania or Bosnia – to name a few – be considered ‘developing’ or ‘developed’? In all of these cases, the answers have varied since they were first proposed. The latest iteration of these same questions relates to ‘emerging countries’, particularly China, with India and Brazil to a lesser degree. Depending on the method of calculation, China is #1 (purchasing power parity/PPP method) or #2 (Atlas method) in the global GDP ranking, raising an obvious question: can the richest country in the world, which is also the largest exporter, with a diversified and technologically advanced industrial base, be considered a ‘developing’ country?
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The decision to categorize a country as ‘developing’ or not matters for many reasons. The most important ones refer to legal aspects and political implications. The explosion in numbers of international organizations and multilateral treaties has been greatly accompanied by the embrace of differentiation towards ‘developing’ countries. This means different legal treatment – applicable rules, timeline expectations, financial contributions, etc. – for countries if they are considered ‘developing’. Differentiation is a particularly contentious matter in the trade and environmental regimes. Debates over how international trade law should be applied to countries in different economic stages were present in the negotiations over the (never implemented) International Trade Organization (ITO) in the late 1940s. They were also addressed in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in the mid-1960s and discussed in the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the early 1990s. The so-called ‘Special and Differential Treatment’ (SDT) for ‘developing’ countries has been a growing point of contention, for example: should the WTO rules grant more or less SDTs, and which countries should be entitled to SDTs? This has been amplified by the way in which countries are categorized ‘developing’ in the GATT/WTO context since 1964. It was then that GATT participants decided it should be through self-declaration, which at the time raised little controversy. In early 2019, the US delegation put forth President Trump’s call for modifying the way in which countries are classified in the WTO, which was strongly criticized for the dramatic changes it would introduce (see Kwa & Lunenborg 2019). Similar debates have also been present in the environmental regime. As per its name, the principle of ‘Common but Differentiated Responsibilities’ (CBDR), established in the Rio Earth Summit of 1992, affirms that environmental concerns (especially regarding climate change) are common to all countries, but responsibilities are different: developed countries have more responsibility than developing ones. A direct consequence is that developing countries do not have financial and legally binding commitments in the context of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), although they are expected to (voluntarily) Deborah Barros Leal Farias
contribute according to their respective capabilities. The legal implications of categorizing countries as ‘developing’ are inexorably intertwined with its political facet. In fact, the latter precedes the former: the concept of ‘developing’ country as an identity was essential for establishing legal differentiations. In the post-Second World War context, some countries – particularly in Latin America – were already vocal about common structural hurdles holding back their economies’ development (see Helleiner 2014). At the time, countries that saw themselves as having ‘less developed’ or ‘undeveloped’ economies increasingly sough to act as a group in order to leverage their power. After the Second World War, an interesting shift in language began to take root, starting slowly in the late 1940s and picking up strongly by the mid-1960s. The use of ‘development’ began to move away from a narrow and explicit focus only on a country’s economic profile, to a broader and more diffuse use to label countries in their entirety. Thus, the change was from ‘countries with less developed [or “underdeveloped”] economies’ to simply ‘less developed’, ‘underdeveloped’ or ‘developing’ countries. This change emerged from internal and external factors. On the one hand, a growing number of countries began to self-identify as ‘developing’, seeking collective empowerment in the international system, especially the recently decolonized. This includes the 1946–48 negotiations over the ITO, where an ‘undeveloped-nations bloc’ already at work (Wilcox 1946), to its consolidation in the lexicon of global governance with the creation of the G77 in 1964. On the other, use of the adjective ‘developing’ increased due to the mounting rejection of the world division between (so-called) ‘civilized’ and ‘backwards’ peoples/countries. Such nomenclature had been used by powerful countries since the nineteenth century and could still be easily found in UN documents in the 1950s. Here, the label ‘developing’ served as a relatively simple way to adapt, keeping the general idea of ‘backwardness’ by using a palatable language. Awareness of these dual streams helps to explain why the term’s use has been so controversial over the years. As a foreign policy identity, ‘developing’ is used to empower, promoting a collective desire to change
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power dynamics in the international system, and highlighting the detrimental structural economic legacies of colonialism and imperialism. As a replacement for ‘backwardness’, ‘developing’ exudes a condescending tone (an inferior status), a preemptive and negative judgment of the country’s people, and an underlying sense that the lack of development comes from an inherent incapability of certain groups to ‘do the right thing’. Therefore, a proper understanding of the term ‘developing country’, even if from a ‘neutral’ economic-focused stance, calls for reflections regarding who is using it and why. Finally, as long as countries self-identify as ‘developing’ (and accept others’ self-identification as such), this term will continue to be used regardless of what any combination of socio-economic indicators say otherwise. Deborah Barros Leal Farias
Note 1.
World Bank data, in current US$.
References
Farias, Déborah B.L. (2019). Outlook for the ‘developing country’ category: a paradox of demise and continuity, Third World Quarterly 40:4, 668–87. Helleiner, Eric (2014). Forgotten foundations of Bretton Woods: International development and the making of the postwar order. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kwa, Aileen and Peter Lunenborg (2019). Why the US proposals on development will affect all developing countries and undermine WTO. South Centre Policy Brief, No. 58. Geneva: South Centre. Wilcox, Clair (1946). Confidential report to the US Secretary of State from the chairman of the United States delegation to the first meeting of the preparatory committee for an International Conference on Trade and Employment. Washington, DC: Office of the Historian.
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Development and racial hierarchy The study and practice of development is a racialized endeavour. I start with this statement to guard against treating ‘race’ as a distinct concept that has a discrete relationship to development. Such an idea may lead us to think about ‘race’ as one of many variables – like gender, age or dis/ability – that can help us to understand experiences of poverty and inequality, and thus be incorporated into toolkits for development planning. Racialization refers to social and political processes that ascribe a value to people and places building upon the idea of a hierarchy of ‘race’, where people racialized as white are on top and highly valued, and people racialized as Black are at the bottom and are least valued. In the practice of development and in its institutionalization as an industry (with a group of competing development actors within systems of funding with their own rules) this racialized hierarchy maps onto geographic terrain, establishing a racialized field for development practice. This entry traces the racial hierarchy of development.
Eugenics and a hierarchy of ‘race’
The notion of a racial hierarchy was cemented by a now discredited field of study – eugenics – as part of a modern project of social control and order. The term eugenics means ‘good creation’ and was adopted by British intellectual Francis Galton in his 1883 book Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development. Inspired by his cousin Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species, which examined natural selection and survival amongst animals, Galton made the case for hereditary human inferiority and the need for government intervention to facilitate good breeding amongst desirable people and disrupt breeding amongst the ‘feeble-minded’, poor, disabled and anyone who was not white (Jackson & Weidman, 2005). Pivotal to eugenics is scientific racism, a pseudoscience that follows an inductive approach to identify empirical evidence that supports and proves a racial hierarchy and places observable human difference (e.g. the texture and colour of hair, eye colour, skin colour and cranial
measurements) in terms of racial superiority and inferiority. While European colonialism and the transatlantic trade in enslaved African people pre-dates Galton, his work built upon an established colonial foundation of racial difference, morally imbued ideas of European superiority and the de-humanization of African, Asian and Indigenous people. Galton’s work supplies a scientific structure upon which to hang existing racist ideas and practices. Gathering currency in the scientific racism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was the belief that great civilizations (the Romans, Greeks, British Empire – ignoring completely the world outside classical antiquity) was the work of race and superior intelligence. Colonial expansion propped up this idea of racial hierarchy and the superiority of white European (including European-American) stock. Scientific racism thus established race as a sound basis for global political order (Jackson & Weidman, 2005). Critical scholars of eugenics and scientific racism note there is no single social and political project represented by eugenicists (Campbell, 2013, p. 12). Rather, they identify two broad directions of eugenics thinking in Europe and its sphere of influence in the early twentieth century – the violent elimination of deviant populations (fuelling the rise of Nazism and its justification for mass murder) and social reform. Galton’s ideas galvanized a movement of social reformers at this time who lean on Galton and eugenics to further diminish people who are poor, disabled, Black and Brown as different ‘types’ of people altogether (vis-à-vis their own white middle-class likeness) (Jackson & Weidman, 2005; Campbell, 2013). As Pauline Mazumdar explains, the British eugenics movement is embedded
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In the deeply class-divided society of early 20th-century Britain, [where the] problem of the urban poor was one that profoundly interested the serious and highly educated people who were concerned about change and who were working for social reforms … The [British eugenicist] social activists of the educated upper middle class formed a group broadly dedicated of getting rid of another entire class, the class they called the Residuum [an underclass]. Such celebrated stylised social reformers include eugenicist Marie Stopes, who cam-
Development and racial hierarchy 171 paigned for birth control for poor women to address the growth in numbers of the urban poor and as a method to tackle extreme poverty. To British eugenicist social reformers, poverty was an inherited human defect and the agential cure lay in controlling deviate populations and their reproduction. (1980, p. 204, 215)
Racial hierarchy in the colonies
In Britain’s colonies – which now serve as the field for racialized development practice – eugenics thinking took on a colonial character that foregrounded race and intelligence to justify European presence as direct colonial rulers and as European settlers in colonies (Campbell, 2013). The particulars of eugenics thinking travelled and mutated in different imperial contexts. In the case of Kenya, Chloe Campbell’s (2013) study of the Kenyan eugenics movement notes eugenicist British settlers in the country were less preoccupied with questions of class and the hereditary of poverty (irrespective of the links between them being increasingly debunked in Britain from the 1930s onwards), and more concerned with race, racial difference, intelligence and the pathology of the African other. The programme of eugenics work in Kenya focused on scientific racism and identifying biological and physical difference between Africans and Europeans and locating hereditary traits to explain cultural difference. It was an agenda of racism in search of a rationale. To Campbell, this exploration was underpinned not by a post-Victorian social reform agenda but by racial anxiety. She writes: the idea [of] being a powerful, imperial nation led to additional pressures on the British population to maintain its racial standard … It was feared that racial degeneration would lead to a loss of this imperial status and dominance. (2013, p. 19)
Subsequent eugenics-inspired thinking engendered racial segregation between Africans, Indians and Europeans in African settler colonies to guard against any undermining of European supremacy. This was further fuelled by a racial anxiety that the presence of African men in urban areas (spaces associated with governance, power, culture and modern pursuits, spaces imaged to be disorientating and alien to the paro-
chial, indolent, tribal, and rural homelands of Africans) posed an immediate and hostile threat to European women and so the ‘purity’ of European stock. Thus, as an act of patriarchal benevolence, European settler men set out to protect European women. Underlying all this is sexual conjecture and desire to maintain the superiority of the European race in a settler society. Into this mix, Campbell (2013) reminds us that the imperial project in Kenya and elsewhere was as much about extraction as it was about settlement, and so the presence of African labour in urban areas was necessary to support economic goals. The ‘objective’ ‘scientific’ pursuit to establish African feeble-mindedness and inferior intellect produced two pathways for Kenyan eugenicists and their sympathizers: One side regards the native without hope as inherently deficient; the other is prepared to raise him by ‘education’ to our level and a share in government, in a ‘generation or two’. (Excerpt from a letter written by a prominent European doctor and eugenicist, Gordon, to the British Eugenics Society, 5 October 1930, in Campbell, 2013, p. 119)
Three years later: [The] scientific position is this – that science is interested in the African only in order to discover what the causes of African backwardness are, and if it is possible to discover better means of raising the African out of that backwardness than we now employ. (Excerpt from The Study of Race Improvement 1933, p. 46, in Campbell, 2013, p. 123)
A growing sense of social responsibility and liberal inclination towards ‘Native improvement’ chimed with other settler and colonial groups in Kenya and elsewhere, including European Christian missionaries and the academic scholarship of anthropologists and their study of the Native other and their capacity. Racial anxiety, a ‘scientific’ explanation of African, Asian and Indigenous deficiency and its causes, a culturally pervasive set of ideas around engineering improvement in colonized societies based on a likeness of an idealized self-reflection of European advancement, and a physical infrastructure of segregation and material disinvestment form Kamna Patel
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the colonial architecture from which development as a normative pursuit arises.
(Rearticulating) racial hierarchy and development
In a discussion of race and the ethics of development, Denise Silva suggests that development as a normative pursuit is in continual need of establishing two inter-related conditions: (a) moral deficiency – the target of the project (the ‘Third World’) emerges as inherently unable to achieve the objective to develop, to move forward, by themselves as they have a moral deficiency (registered in a lack of scientific knowledge and technological advances); and (b) an ethical imperative – both moments of the development project, intervention and investigation, assume that the movement is unidirectional; that is, that the difference between developed white/European and underdeveloped Third World (Asia/African/Latin American) ‘others’ is a difference of capacity, hence the former has the obligation to employ its superior capacity in order to help the latter. (2014, p. 40)
Eugenics-inspired thinking is observable within both conditions, which forge the cornerstone of a global development industry. Over the past 70–80 years, since a global development industry has been established, racial hierarchy underwritten as a social order has been continually rearticulated for different times – mobilizing an ethical imperative and moral deficiency to keep pace with the latest meta-narratives of development and global politics (e.g. the Euro-American obligation to Modernise the world, played out in and throughout the Cold War). Such rearticulations can be traced in the everyday discourse of First and Third World, developed and developing, and global North and global South; terms that only make sense as discrete and particular designations within unidirectional imaginations of the other – a person or place profoundly different from us and ours. As Robbie Shilliam (2014, p. 41) reminds us, ‘racial hierarchies remain as master-frameworks within contemporary development thought and practice. However, unlike the past, these hierarchies are no longer directly formulated in the language of race.’ Culture and cultural difference, instead, serve as the ontological framework for imagining Kamna Patel
and pathologizing difference. Shilliam refers to this as the ‘new racism’ because it mirrors many of the naturalistic assumptions of scientific racism yet replaces racial phenotypes with cultural/ethnic markers. However, it is still almost impossible to think of these markers without imagining some kind of racial attributes. (2014, p. 41)
Thus, current and powerful drivers of development intervention (at least since the 1990s): failed states and state-building, corruption and good governance, and a deep commitment to saving women and girls from dangers never fully articulated, work as interventionist tropes because of their effective reliance on rearticulating a long-established deficiency in the capabilities of Black and Brown development subjects, and reanimating the steely confidence of development interventionists, whose backpack of solutions now include the soft prods of workshops and training packages.
Dismantling racial hierarchy and development
The work of establishing a racial hierarchy has been centuries in the making and is in the bloodstream of the development industry. So much so, that racial hierarchy expressed through policy and programmatic interventions to address a lack of income, standards or rights amongst African, Asian, Latin and Indigenous people against a Eurocentric norm, coupled with a unidirectional moral obligation to help, provide technical assistance and know-how, is the industry. From this premise, two important questions arise: (1) how can this racial hierarchy be dismantled? And, (2) would the development industry be in any way recognizable should this act of necessary destruction take place? The oft-quoted Audre Lorde (1984, p. 107) said, ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.’ Lorde’s words carry a deep resonance for guiding actions to dismantle a racial hierarchy that works in and through projects of patriarchy and cis-hetero-normativity. Just before the quote on the master’s tools, Lorde encourages us to find ways ‘to make common cause with those
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others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. […] learning how to take our differences and make them strengths’ (1984, p. 107). As an ethical principle to overturn the status quo and seek racial justice, we must invest in solidary, ally-ship and common cause underpinned by the plurality of thriving, through new tools that dis-locate and re-locate knowledge and inherited systems of value. Whether what we subsequently build bears any resemblance to the development industry should be irrelevant. Kamna Patel
References
Campbell, C. (2013). Race and empire: Eugenics in colonial Kenya. Manchester University Press. Jackson, J.P., & Weidman, N.M. (2005). The Origins of Scientific Racism. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Winter 2005/06(50), 66–79. Lorde, A. (1984). The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (pp. 106–9). The Crossing Press. Mazumdar, P.M.H. (1980). The Eugenists and The Residuum: The Problem of the Urban Poor. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 54(2), 204–15. Silva, D. (2014). Race and Development. In V. Desai & R. Potter (eds), Companion to Development Studies (pp. 39–42). Routledge. Shilliam, R. (2014). Race and Development. In H. Weber (ed.), The Politics of Development: A Survey (pp. 31–48). Routledge.
Kamna Patel
Development ethics Contemporary development ethics has been shaped by two powerful tendencies since the 1970s. (1) Calls to action against global poverty and inequality have also called for ethical arguments and justifications. The first of these were Peter Singer’s consequentialist arguments responding to the East Bengal famine of the early 1970s (Singer, 1972). Aiken and LaFollette (1977) followed with an influential anthology of ethical essays on world hunger. Onora O’Neill added Kantian arguments condemning the coercive nature of global hunger and other inequalities (O’Neill, 1977, 1986). (2) At the same time, inter-governmental policies and programmes to promote economic growth and modernization in low-income countries – almost all newly independent countries since 1948 – were drawing substantive criticism. Though economies were growing, the people were often worse off, benefits were captured by elites, and change was too often imposed upon people, rather than arising from individual, family, and community initiative (Seers, 1969). Most of the people contributing to these two streams of discussion did not consider themselves to be contributing to development ethics. Rather, they were like Molière’s bourgeois gentilhomme who was astonished to learn he had been speaking prose all his life (Molière, 1671, Act II, Scene 4). It was a smaller group, well versed in ethical concepts, adept at ethical argument, and aware of other newborn fields of applied ethics (notably business ethics, medical ethics, environmental ethics) that provided recognition of these two tendencies as discussions of development ethics. This smaller group has provided guidance and self-awareness for development ethics as an ongoing stream of conversation (see International Development Ethics Association, n.d.; Palmer, n.d.).
Meaning of ‘development ethics’
Let us assume that the purview of ethics is what is right and wrong – not right and wrong for this or that purpose but in an unqualified way. If this is what ethics is about, then ‘development ethics’ has three basic meanings.
(1) Insofar as it calls for action to address problems such as poverty, insecurity, and inequality, development ethics pertains to what is wrong with the state of the world, which ‘development’ should make right. (2) However, such attempts to ‘make right’ can also go wrong in various ways, and so development ethics must also be critical of what is wrong in development projects, programmes, or institutions. For example, this could include development officers demanding bribes or sexually exploiting local people. It would include corporations or government agencies violating indigenous people’s rights or destroying ecosystems. Or development strategies that amplify unjust inequalities. (3) In a third sense, ‘development ethics’ refers to streams of discussion about the first two topics. Some of these discussions are explicitly recognized as being ethical, while others are not. Thus ‘development ethics’ sometimes refers to the activities of academics and practitioners who specialize in the foregoing discussions explicitly (Gasper, 2012). On the other hand, as noted above, most people who participate in streams of discussion about these two topics are not specialists and would not identify themselves as ethicists; in these cases the ethical nature of the discussion is implicit rather than explicit (Camacho, 2019). In an attempt to cover all of these meanings, ‘development ethics’ is sometimes defined as ‘ethical reflection on the ends and means of local, national and global development’ (International Development Ethics Association, n.d.) or, more broadly still, ethical reflection on the ends and means of socioeconomic change (Crocker, 1998).
Main discussions and debates
Generally, this ‘reflection on ends and means’ focuses on diverging conceptions of what development is, what it could be, and what it ought to be. These debates have been central to public discussion of development, sometimes disguising discussion of what development ought to be as discussion of ‘What is development?’ The modernization and economic growth that can pass for ‘development’ under a narrow economic
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definition can accelerate inequality and provide little improvement for the poor, and as is often noted, there is a sense in which it seems wrong to call this ‘development’ at all. This other sense, contrasting with a narrow definition of development (e.g. as economic growth), is a sense of what development could and should be, a conception of worthwhile development, of the kind of development that would be a valuable social or global goal. Denis Goulet took a pivotal step for development ethics in 1960 when he argued that this distinction between the undesirable ‘development’ we lament and the worthwhile ‘development’ that we demand is an ethical distinction, based on values (Goulet, 2006). Goulet’s pivotal step brought two further questions into view. First, what are the values that we can justifiably demand of worthwhile development? And, second, what does it mean specifically to realize those values in development, and how can we know – or possibly measure – how well or badly they are being realized in particular societies? One school of thought cuts this discussion short by contending there is no such thing as worthwhile development. According to the ‘anti-development’ or ‘post-development’ thinking initiated by Arturo Escobar, all development thinking begins from conceptions of poverty that are prejudicial and demeaning to the poor, implicitly denying the worth of their own goals and aspirations. Therefore, the theory and practice of ‘development’ is inherently an imposition upon these people’s communities, a form of domination (Sachs, 1992; Escobar, 1995; Sengupta, 2019). The far more prevalent approach is not to abandon the concept of development in this way but to reconceive it in ways that put forward the aspirations and agency of those people, currently disempowered and disadvantaged, who should be empowered and advantaged through development that is worthwhile. In this discussion ten values have emerged to distinguish development that is worthwhile from that which is undesirable.
Main values and principles Well-being The dominant measures of development for governments and development institutions
have been money measures such as economic growth of gross domestic product (GDP) or gross national income (GNI) per capita. However, these measures are based on aggregates (GDP or GNI) that may not reflect changes in the well-being of the population. For instance, increased military spending can increase GDP or GNI without improving people’s well-being (Gasper, 2004, p. 40). In response, it has become a principle of development ethics that worthwhile development must improve well-being. Acceptance of this principle as axiomatic for development ethics has shifted debate to questions about how well-being is best conceived and measured. One early approach focused on basic needs (Doyal & Gough, 1991). While this approach does well to capture extreme hardship, it is less helpful in tracking improvements in well-being for segments of the population whose basic needs are secure, for example improvements in health, education, or livelihoods. Moreover, a focus on resources needed to meet basic needs may overlook the fact that different people have different needs (e.g. due to disability). Alternatively, well-being can also be conceived in terms of the satisfaction that people feel with their lives. Here the measures are provided by psychological surveys asking how satisfied people are with how their lives are going. However, these results can be skewed by adaptive preference: if people are inured to low income, poor health, and lack of opportunity, they may still report that their lives are going well (if things are at least stable and not getting worse, for example), when in terms of health, education, and income their lives may not be going very well at all, compared with other social groups (see Khader, 2019). The Capability Approach, introduced initially by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, attempts to steer a middle course between the misrepresentations of well-being by needs and resources on one hand, and subjective satisfaction on the other. This approach identifies types of human functioning that people have reason to value as aspects of living well, for example, being healthy and well nourished, learning, or being valued in social relationships. Indicators of how well people can actually manage to function in these ways are measures of their valuable capabilities (Sen, Jay Drydyk
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1993). In worthwhile development, people’s capabilities are expanded (Sen, 1999). While Nussbaum has proposed a list that organizes these valuable capabilities in ten generic kinds (Nussbaum, 2000, pp. 78–80), the majority of capability researchers now identify valuable capabilities contextually, starting by polling local people about which capabilities they have reason to value in their particular social contexts (Robeyns, 2017; Garza-Vázquez & Deneulin, 2019). The Multidimensional Poverty Index exemplifies a hybrid approach to well-being that balances references to capabilities, resources, and subjective satisfaction (see Global Multidimensional Poverty Index, n.d.). Equity Similarly, it is axiomatic for development ethics that worthwhile development is equitable, which shifts debate in these discussions to the meaning and measure of social and global justice. Globally, this includes debates between the cosmopolitan view that the important inequalities are between individuals, worldwide, and nationalist views holding that the important relations of global justice are between countries (Culp, 2019). Within societies, the prevailing conception of equitable development calls for reduction of widespread social inequalities (e.g. along lines of gender, race, and ethnicity).
erful agents and institutions – in this case agents and institutions of development. The call for epistemic justice is a call for development theory and practice that includes both the aspirations of the poor (who are supposed to benefit from development), their values, and their knowledge of their conditions and environments (Malavisi, 2019). Empowerment Empowerment is another cardinal value of worthwhile development. This means an expansion of people’s choices, in particular choices enabling them to shape their own lives for the better, and to overcome being subjected to disadvantage by individuals, social groups, and institutions (Drydyk, 2013). Stressing the importance of agency and choice-expansion within the capability approach, David Crocker has argued not only for strengthening political democracy but for also democratizing development decision-making by enhancing stakeholder participation, through mechanisms such as participatory allocation of government development budgets (Crocker, 2008, pp. 297–374).
Cultural freedom The Capability Approach broadens these to include people’s freedom to be who they are and who they want to be, with social respect. This broad formula calls upon development to promote not only cultural freedom for ethnic groups (Kosko, 2019), but also freedom of sex identity and recognition for LGBTQ+ persons (Joshi, 2019). Other theoretical approaches to development ethics find other ways to support similar conclusions, with varying success: for example, Rawlsian justice as fairness treats the ‘social means of self-respect’ not as basic liberties but as primary goods, in which inequalities are allowed as long as they benefit the worst off.
Realization of human rights Human rights are essential to worthwhile development, both intrinsically and instrumentally. Intrinsically: the meaning of worthwhile development includes realizing not only civil and political rights like free speech, political participation, and freedom from discrimination, but also social, economic, and cultural rights such as health, education, employment, economic security, and cultural participation. Conversely, the values of worthwhile development are also embedded in human rights documents such as the Declaration on the Right to Development and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Marks, 2019). Instrumentally, Amartya Sen has argued decisively on empirical grounds against claims by human rights critics such as Lee Kuan Yew that human rights are impediments to development (Sen, 1999, p. 148ff.).
Epistemic justice Epistemic justice means that the knowledge of less powerful people in a society is not undervalued (or disregarded) by more pow-
Environmental sustainability It was the Brundtland Commission who first argued that worthwhile development must be sustainable, by which they meant that
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poverty must be addressed so that the needs of present generations are met, yet this must be done in ways that do not jeopardize the needs of future generations. In development ethics this anthropocentric approach has been tempered, or in some cases, rejected in favour of approaches that accord greater value to non-humans and to ecosystems. Efforts have also been made to learn from the ethical perspectives of indigenous peoples who accord greater value to non-humans and eco-systems, notably the Andean teachings of Buen Vivir and the rights of nature (Waldmüller & Rodríguez, 2019). Development ethicists have also promoted conceptions of development that build in respect for planetary boundaries (Crabtree, 2019; UNDP, 2020), so that economic growth which endangers those boundaries is not regarded as worthwhile development. Decolonization Decolonization calls for all of the foregoing values to be realized within the collective self-determination of peoples. The fundamental value here is the right of peoples to self-determination. Colonization is a process which shatters this collective self-determination with negative consequences on well-being, equity, epistemic justice, empowerment, cultural freedom, human rights, and environmental sustainability for individuals as well. In the context of development ethics, decolonization implies restoring and rebuilding that collective self-determination in order to realize the other values of worthwhile development. Decolonization in this sense has been articulated by indigenous peoples and entrenched in the UNDRIP (Watene & Merino, 2019). In addition, there is a strong decolonization stream in Latin American discussion of development ethics (Solís, 2019). Integrity Integrity implies that agents of development do not engage in dishonesty, theft, coercion, bribery, exploitation, or other violations of common moral norms. Since corruption usually involves these kinds of wrongdoing, the term ‘integrity’ is sometimes used as the contrary of corruption. However, that usage can be quite misleading. ‘Corruption’ refers to many things, from the simple taking of bribes to transforming entire govern-
ments into narco-states beholden to criminal gangs. In these cases, the wrongdoing is far greater than malfeasance by individuals. Understanding the meaning and nature of corruption – much less how to overcome it – remains an unsolved problem for development ethics (Hellsten, 2019). Accountability Accountability is another unsolved problem. For Official Development Assistance, a series of intergovernmental discussions concluded unsurprisingly that development agents and projects are accountable first and foremost to the sources of funding. In a second phase of that discussion, the scope of accountability was expanded to include democratic accountability to the people of countries in which those projects are implemented. In a third phase, non-governmental organization and civil society organization representatives argued for broader conceptions of social accountability: accountability to the people and communities meant to benefit from development projects. How such accountability is best implemented has been under discussion for decades: in 1998 the World Commission on Dams proposed an elaborate system of ‘gateways’ that would integrate social accountability into each phase of a large dam project – especially to communities displaced by such projects – but governments and development institutions have so far shown little interest (Drydyk, 2019).
Theory and practice
Like other fields of applied ethics, development ethics is subject to application of moral theories, theories of justice, and other general normative perspectives. While consequentialism has been prominent in calls to action like those of Peter Singer, it has been less influential in uncovering how development can go wrong, and hence it has had little impact on the emerging values and principles of development ethics. The Kantian approach developed by Onora O’Neill vividly underscored the imperative to address global poverty, and beyond this it has drawn some attention to the subjection of poor people and low-income countries to the rich and powerful. More recently David Ingram (2018) has drawn interesting implications from discourse ethics and theories of mutual Jay Drydyk
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recognition development ethics. However, the principal liberal theory of justice, that of John Rawls, has been ineffective in development ethics, largely because its conception of global justice is modelled on a fair social contract among sovereign states. Meanwhile, proponents of the capability approach have been careful to say that it is an approach, not a theory. Consequently, discussion of the values and limits of worthwhile development has tended to be pluralistic, not dominated by theories. The only framework (if there is one) is a non-Rawlsian framework of public reason, which insists that the right choices in development practice are those supported by the greatest weight of evidence and normative argument (Drydyk, 2021). Some development organizations have attempted to address what they perceive as the ethical problems confronting them by articulating codes of conduct (InterAction, 2018; Cooperation Canada, 2020). Newly emerging issues concern the way in which poverty and development are presented in advertising (Cameron & Kwiecien, 2021). Apart from this, discussion of development ethics within development organizations has been highly under-resourced, providing little time (much less funding) for learning and discussion (Schwenke, 2019). Academic discussion of development ethics, including a few practitioners, has been organized since the 1980s by the International Development Ethics Association (Palmer, n.d.). In 2008 an ‘Ethics Thematic Group’ was created as an internal organ of the Human Development and Capability Association (http://www.hd-ca.org) to promote the discussion of development ethics within that group. Partly resulting from the influence of these organizations, the network of academic researchers contributing to development has become sufficiently strong to support a major collective publication, The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics (Drydyk & Keleher, 2019). Jay Drydyk
References
Aiken, W., & LaFollette, H. (eds) (1977). World Hunger and Moral Obligation. Prentice-Hall. Camacho, L. (2019). Development Ethics. Encyclopedia.Com. https://www.encyclopedia .com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs -transcripts-and-maps/development-ethics.
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Cameron, J.D., & Kwiecien, O. (2021). Navigating the Tensions between Ethics and Effectiveness in Development Communications and Marketing. Development in Practice, June, 1–10. Cooperation Canada (2020). Code of Ethics & Operational Standards. Cooperation Canada. https://cooperation.ca/wp-content/uploads/ 2020/10/Code-of-Ethics-English.pdf. Crabtree, A. (2019). Sustainability and Climate Change: Human Development and Human Responsibilities. In J. Drydyk & L. Keleher (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics (pp. 209–25). Routledge. Crocker, D.A. (1998). Development Ethics. In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Routledge. https://www.rep.routledge.com/. Crocker, D.A. (2008). Ethics of Global Development; Agency, Capability, and Deliberative Democracy. Cambridge University Press. Culp, J. (2019). Social and Global Justice. In J. Drydyk & L. Keleher (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics (pp. 103–15). Routledge. Doyal, L., & Gough, I. (1991). A Theory of Human Need. Palgrave Macmillan. Drydyk, J. (2013). Empowerment, Agency, and Power. Journal of Global Ethics, 9(3), 249–62. Drydyk, J. (2019). Accountability in Development: From Aid Effectiveness to Development Ethics. Journal of Global Ethics, 15(2), 138–54. Drydyk, J. (2021). Capabilities, Public Reason, and Democratic Deliberation. In E. Chiappero-Martinetti, S. Osmani, & M. Qizilbash (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of the Capability Approach (pp. 660–76). Cambridge University Press. Drydyk, J., & Keleher, L. (eds) (2019). The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics. Routledge. Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton University Press. Garza-Vázquez, O., & S. Deneulin (2019). The Capability Approach. In J. Drydyk & L. Keleher (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics (pp. 68–83). Routledge. Gasper, D. (2004). Ethics of Development: From Economism to Human Development. Edinburgh University Press. Gasper, D. (2012). Development Ethics – Why? What? How? A Formulation of the Field. Journal of Global Ethics, 8(1), 117–35. Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (n.d.). OPHI (Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative). https://ophi.org.uk/ multidimensional-poverty-index/. Goulet, D. (2006). Needed – A Development Ethics for Our Time. In Development Ethics at Work; Explorations – 1960–2002, pp. 3–18. Routledge. (Translation of ‘Pour une éthique moderne du développement’ Développement
Development ethics 179 et Civilisations, No. 3, September 1960, http:// www.lebret-irfed.org/spip.php?article786.) Hellsten, S.K. (2019). Corruption: Concepts, Costs, Causes and Challenges. In J. Drydyk & L. Keleher (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics (pp. 353–66). Routledge. Ingram, D. (2018). World Crisis and Underdevelopment: A Critical Theory of Poverty, Agency, and Coercion. Cambridge University Press. InterAction, A United Voice for Global Change (2018). InterAction NGO Standards: Accountability, Transparence, Effectiveness. InterAction. International Development Ethics Association [IDEA] (n.d.). What Is Development Ethics? https://developmentethics.org/#:~:text=IDEA %20promotes%20ethical%20discussion%20of ,in%20the%20practice%20of%20development. Joshi, Y. (2019). LGBTI People; ‘Being LGBTI’ in International Development. In J. Drydyk & L. Keleher (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics (pp. 310–19). Routledge. Khader, S. (2019). Adaptive Preferences; Accounting for Deflated Expectations. In J. Drydyk & L. Keleher (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics (pp. 93–100). Routledge. Kosko, S. (2019). Cultural Freedom: Worthwhile Development for a Diverse World. In J. Drydyk & L. Keleher (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics (pp. 299–309). Routledge. Malavisi, A. (2019). Epistemology: Epistemic Injustice and Distortion in Development Theory and Practice. In J. Drydyk & L. Keleher (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics (pp. 41–51). Routledge. Marks, S.P. (2019). The Right to Development: Ethical Development as a Human Right. In J. Drydyk & L. Keleher (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics (pp. 266–80). Routledge. Moliere, J.-B.P. (1671). Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Nussbaum, M.C. (2000). Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge University Press. O’Neill, O. (1977). Ending World Hunger. In W. Aiken & H. LaFollette (eds), World Hunger and Moral Obligation (pp. 85–112). Prentice-Hall.
O’Neill, O. (1986). Faces of Hunger: An Essay on Poverty, Justice, and Development. Vol. 3 in Studies in Applied Philosophy. Allen and Unwin. Palmer, E. (n.d.). History of IDEA. International Development Ethics Association (IDEA). https://developmentethics.org/about-2/. Robeyns, I. (2017). Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice: The Capability Approach Re-Examined. Open Book Publishers. Sachs, W. (1992). The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. Zed Books. Schwenke, C. (2019). Development Practitioners: Absent in the Deliberative Discourse on Development Ethics. In J. Drydyk & L. Keleher (eds), Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics (pp. 346–52). Routledge. Seers, D. (1969). The Meaning of Development. International Development Review, 11(4), 2–6. Sen, A. (1993). Capabilities and Well-Being. In M.C. Nussbaum & A. Sen (eds), The Quality of Life (pp. 30–53). Oxford University Press. Sen, A. (1999). Development as Freedom. Oxford University Press. Sengupta, M. (2019). Post-Development: No Development Is Good Development. In J. Drydyk & L. Keleher (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics (pp. 35–40). Routledge. Singer, P. (1972). Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1(3), 229–43. Solís, M. (2019). Latin America: Inequality Provoking Critical Thought. In J. Drydyk & L. Keleher (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics (pp. 369–75). Routledge. UNDP [United Nations Development Programme] (2020). Human Development Report 2020. The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene. UNDP Human Development Reports. http://hdr.undp.org/en/2020-report. Waldmüller, J., & Rodríguez, L. (2019). Buen Vivir and the Rights of Nature: Alternative Visions of Development. In J. Drydyk & L. Keleher (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics (pp. 234–47). Routledge. Watene, K., & Merino, R. (2019). Indigenous Peoples: Self-Determination, Decolonization, and Indigenous Philosophies. In J. Drydyk & L. Keleher (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics (pp. 134–47). Routledge.
Jay Drydyk
Developmental state The developmental state in the research on East Asia
The developmental state is one of the most influential ideas that have been put forth to explain the post-Second World War rapid economic transformations of Japan and, later, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and other newly industrializing economies (NIEs). Johnson’s (1982) pioneering research on Japan identified the developmental state as one that gives priority to economic growth, productivity, and technological competitiveness. It is led by a small, elite bureaucracy recruited from the best managerial talents and, within the bureaucracy, a pilot agency that coordinates the formulation and implementation of policies. Such industrial policies do not displace the market, but gear to market rationality in the long term. Finally, it is facilitated by a political system that gives sufficient room for the bureaucracy to take initiatives. Over time, the concept has been enriched empirically and theoretically, while subjected to critical evaluation. In general, researchers have identified four main characteristics of the developmental state: policies, ideational foundation, the institutions that generate state capacity, and the domestic and international socio-political contexts that allow for the emergence of state autonomy. Policies Authors have in part identified the developmental state with the policies pursued. The strategic use of credit allocation, fiscal incentives, and trade policies to help create modern industries and upgrade the industrial mix (Johnson 1982; Wade 1990; Woo 1991); manipulation of the price system to enhance competitiveness (Amsden 1989); suppression of labour (Deyo 1987); and the provision of collective consumption as a means to reduce labour cost and enhance productivity (Castells 1992) have all been examined. Although special attention has been given to the control of investment finance, most scholars have recognized the diverse and changing policy mixes adopted by different countries at different times. Addressing the policy objectives, Evans (1995) identified four types of state involve-
ment: custodian, demiurge, midwifery, and husbandry. In turn, Johnson (1995) pointed to their efficacy in altering incentives, reducing risk, offering entrepreneurial visions, and managing conflicts, which together help the corporations to capture higher value-added. However, researchers were mindful of the state actors’ reverence to market competition despite their provision of policy supports. Indeed, they characterized the forward-looking yet ultimately market-rational quality of the policies as ‘market conforming’ (Johnson 1999, 38–9), ‘market-leading’ (Wade 1990), or ‘getting the price wrong’ (Amsden 1989). Ideational foundation Woo-Cumings (1999, 6–9) spoke of the ideational foundation of the developmental state as the country’s ‘priority’, and in relation to Japan and South Korea, suggested that economic development was chosen as a means to combat the acute and genuine threats posed by Western imperialism on national survival. In a similar way, Johnson described it as ‘economic nationalism’ and pointed out that the Japanese ‘pursue economic activities primarily in order to achieve independence from and leverage over potential adversaries’ (Johnson 1995, 105–6). The ideational foundation is supposed to work in two ways. First, Johnson (1995) suggested that, together with wartime social mobilization, economic nationalism underlay the goal culture of Japan and defined the world view of policymakers at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). The same could be said of the planners working in South Korea’s Economic Planning Board. Second, economic nationalism also served to incite and mobilize the general public with ‘developmental determination’. In Woo-Cumings’ view, this is the ‘binding agent’ or ‘will to develop’ as articulated by Albert O. Hirschman. It provided the source of legitimacy for these elite and rendered superfluous (at least for a time) the concern with whether a developmental state is democratic or otherwise. Rational bureaucracy and pilot agency A third feature of the developmental state pertains to the state institutions that generate the state capacity for policy formulation and implementation. Inspired by Weber’s theory,
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most researchers consider a rational bureaucracy and, in some cases, a pilot agency, as the source of state capacity. Referring to the case of Japan, Johnson (1982, 314–20) drew attention to the ‘existence of a small, inexpensive, but elite state bureaucracy staffed by the best managerial talent available in the system … the duty of [which] is to identify and choose the industries to be developed’. Writing in another context, he noted that the elite bureaucrats were recruited from the top ranks of the best law schools in Japan and appointment was made on the basis of national examinations. They possessed the credentials to make the necessary policies and lead the private sector (Woo-Cumings 1999, 14). Presenting a more general argument, Evans (1995) contended that a genuine bureaucracy organizes on the principle of rational–legal authority, relies on formal rules to guide the practices of its functionaries, emphasizes merit in recruitment and promotion, and nurtures a sense of esprit de corps. The bureaucracy’s being a corporately coherent entity presents a situation ‘in which individuals see pursuing corporate goals as the best way to maximize their individual self-interests’ and is therefore in a position to ‘support markets and capitalist accumulation’ (Evans 1995, 30). This contrasts with a predatory state, which relies on personal ties as the only source of cohesion and uses the state machinery to extract at the expense of the society. In other words, Evans believed that a rational bureaucracy is not only capable of, but is also inclined to, facilitate economic development. On top of the civil service, Johnson highlighted the presence of a pilot organization like Japan’s MITI, which combined ‘at least planning, energy, domestic production, international trade, and a share of finance (particularly capital supply and tax policy)’ (Johnson 1982, 314–20). The concentration of various government functions enhances coordination and renders it possible for state actors to make and implement plans effectively. Chibber (2003, 20) made a similar point when he criticized Evans’ preoccupation with formal bureaucratic rationality and suggested that ‘economic agencies within the state … can often be saddled with responsibilities that are in conflict with one another’. They will necessarily come into conflict by merely adhering to the rules. Interagency competi-
tion for resources only makes things worse. To attain what he called ‘strategic rationality’, interagency coordination generated with the creation of what he called ‘nodal agencies’ is imperative. Indeed, scholars have followed Johnson’s example and analysed Singapore’s Economic Development Board, South Korea’s Economic Planning Board, and Taiwan’s Council for Economic Planning and Development as pilot agencies comparable to Japan’s MITI (Gold 1986; Amsden 1989; Low 2001). Sociopolitical contexts: state autonomy and social embeddedness In drawing attention to the civil bureaucracy (and pilot agency), researchers also examined sociopolitical factors and put forth two arguments on how they ‘allowed’ the said institutions to exert their impacts. The first centres on the sociopolitical contexts that elevated the position of the civil bureaucracy, rendering it impervious to restraints exerted by the legislature and related political processes. Elaborating on the case of Japan, Johnson (1995, 132–3) explained how circumstantial factors had facilitated the emergence of a ‘political system in which the bureaucracy was given sufficient scope to take initiative and operate effectively’. The occupation reformers, especially the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, destroyed rivals of the economic bureaucracy and strengthened Japan’s ‘plan rationality’, rationalized the zaibatsu and thus created a hospitable political environment for the bureaucracy’s activities, and made economic recovery rather than democratization the main goal. Furthermore, corruption that plagued strong state systems was confined in the case of Japan to the ruling party, which in Johnson’s (1995, 68) words, reigned rather than ruled. In turn, Cumings (1987), Gold (1986) and other scholars analysed class relations in their studies of South Korea and Taiwan. Land reform, which signalled the first effort of developmental state intervention on Taiwan, was attributed to the absence of social ties between the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) and the landed elite on the island republic. Only then could the KMT appropriate and redistribute land in ways it failed to achieve on the mainland during the Republican era. Likewise, Park Chung-hee’s social backYin-wah Chu
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ground and his coup allowed him to nationalize most commercial banks and threaten to punish the capitalists for their illicit wealth accumulation. More generally, Castells (1992, 65) suggested that the East Asian developmental states had the political capacity to impose their logic on the civil society because measures were introduced to destroy, disorganize, or render the dominant classes totally subordinate to the state and, furthermore, to repress and in the long run integrate the working and subordinate classes. Other observers argued in addition that the struggles for national independence paved the way for the emergence of authoritarian regimes that, in turn, put into place constitutional arrangements that privileged the executive branch at the expense of the legislature (Gold 1986; Wade 1990). Instead of focusing on what might be called the exercise of ‘despotic power’, a second type of arguments underline ‘infrastructural power’ or, in the context of this discussion, the formal and informal ties that facilitate state–business coordination. Weiss and Hobson (1995, 164) suggested that the ability to exercise despotic power was important only at the early stage and in granting some autonomy to the civil bureaucracy. This bureaucratic autonomy has to be combined with embeddedness to generate ‘institutional capacity’ or the capacity to exercise ‘infrastructural power’. The latter is the ‘state’s capacity to mobilize elite collaboration in pursuit of developmental goals’, which may be achieved through various state–industry linkages, such as state-sponsored industrial associations, export cartels, and policy consultation bodies (Weiss and Hobson 1995, 162). Insofar that elite collaboration does not entail an equal partnership but domination or at least ‘leadership’ on the part of the state, those state–industry linkages are also expected to ‘enable relevant state elites to engineer compliance of key business groups with larger non-negotiable goals of the state’ (Weiss and Hobson 1995, 170–78). This is what they call ‘governed interdependence’. Relying in part on a reinterpretation of Johnson’s work, Evans (1995, 5) also argued for the strategic importance of linkages between the bureaucratic elite and the business sector. He coined the term ‘embedded autonomy’ to characterize the state–society relationship that allows the bureaucrats to intervene or selectively stimulate, compleYin-wah Chu
ment, and reinforce entrepreneurship. Just as esprit de corps facilitates bureaucratic autonomy, embeddedness in the form of the bureaucrats’ ties to societal actors provides ‘institutionalized channels for the input of intelligence and continual negotiations of goals and policies’ (Evans 1995, 12). In Japan and South Korea, state actors worked closely with the business enterprises and managers of major private corporations graduated from the same elite universities, and it was also commonplace for retired bureaucrats to work for such corporations.
The ‘death’ of the developmental state
The concept of the developmental state has replaced the modernization and dependency perspectives to gain widespread acceptance and application in many developing South East Asian societies during the 1980s and 1990s. However, empirical developments in the late 1990s have led to propositions concerning the ‘death’ of the concept (Stubbs 2009). Significantly, Asian NIEs that had grown rapidly under state-led programmes were condemned to a protracted period of economic downturn by the 1997–98 financial crisis, leading observers to consider the developmental state rigid and unadaptable. Second, whether because of the rise of the knowledge economy or the increase in production costs among the Asian NIEs, observers contended for the critical importance of innovation, which they also considered difficult to be nurtured by the bureaucratic developmental state (Ó Riain 2004; Wong 2011). Third, researchers also pointed to the intensification of globalization. Just as national corporations found it necessary to decouple from the developmental state and integrate into the global production networks, the latter were also beyond the control of a national state (Yeung 2016).
Developmental state: reconfigured and reconceptualized
Despite predictions about the ‘death’ of the developmental state, the concept has been re-examined and reformulated for application to an increasing number of cases, including both developing and developed economies outside of Asia. Without pretending to
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provide a comprehensive review, the following will highlight two general types of effort. A first type of effort emphasized the ideational foundation and elaborated on the idea of mindset. Following the pioneering work of Loriaux (1999) on the French state, Weiss (2014) contended that the United States should be considered a ‘national security state’ rather than a developmental state even though the government works closely with the private sector to generate many cutting-edge technologies. The driving force (i.e. mindset) behind the US national security state is military–political primacy rather than economic growth or national autonomy, and this hegemonic concern has interacted with the country’s political norm of ‘antistatism’ to shift public–private coordination away from the military–industrial complex to the multitude of high-tech firms that work with state actors in ‘hybrid organizational forms’ to facilitate United States’ present-day technological leadership. Though paying far less attention to the institutional framework and politico-economic contexts, Thurbon (2016) followed this line of reasoning to explain the perseverance of the developmental state in South Korea. She described mindset as ‘a set of shared ambitions on the part of the policy elite, as well as shared understandings about how best to realize those ambitions’. Examining South Korea, she argued against the declinist concern with the eradication of specific institutions (e.g. Economic Planning Board) and policies (e.g. state-mandated credit allocation) but, instead, pointed to the mindset underlying Lee Myung-bak’s green growth policy and the continuing vitality of ‘financial activism’. A second type of effort centres on the bureaucracy and sociopolitical contexts. Chu (2009, 2021), Kim (2019), Lee (2019), and numerous other researchers examined specific sectors and provided empirical evidence to argue for the resilience of the developmental states in East Asia. Despite the abolishment of the pilot agencies, sector-specific ministries stepped up to work with business corporations, both to negotiate the techno-economic goals and to coordinate their efforts. Responding to the declining importance of credit allocation, whether due
to the increase in economic strength of the conglomerates or changes in rules that govern global trade, state institutions utilize new resources to incentivize the business firms, coordinate their efforts, and reduce the risk of individual enterprises. These researchers have proposed different concepts to characterize the changes in the developmental state. Examples include ‘reconfigured developmental state’ (Chu 2009, 2021) and ‘hybridized industrial ecosystems’ (Kim 2019). Despite their differences, they share the concern that, instead of featuring the unchanging mindset, it is just as important to examine the reconfiguration of institutional practices and other adaptations to the changing sociopolitical contexts that allow the developmental states to continue their pursuits. Block (2008) and his co-authors have likewise problematized the institutional practices and sociopolitical conditions necessary for the working of a developmental state. However, their analyses of the United States were also attempts to elaborate on the idea of a ‘developmental network state’ and to deepen the discussion of ‘embedded autonomy’ by building on the foundation of Evans (1995) and Ó Riain (2004). Block and Negoita (2016), for instance, examined the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Bureau of Standards in the United States to delineate different types of state autonomy (‘organizational’ versus ‘cognitive’) and, therewith, explain how marginal government offices could operate under the radar to launch development policies and how the officials’ specialty knowledge would allow them to discipline the business enterprises they support. They also explained why the embeddedness of state officials within such networks could generate additional funds, technological expertise, network information, and policing works to help prevent ‘network failures’. The brief overview presented in this short entry can hardly do justice to the complex and profound analysis of the developmental state. As new research on the phenomenon continues to emerge, one may also expect further refinement in the theoretical and empirical substance of the concept. Yin-wah Chu
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References
Amsden, Alice H. 1989. Asia’s next giant. New York: Oxford University Press. Block, Fred. 2008. Swimming against the current. Politics & Society, 36(2), 169–206. Block, Fred and Marian Negoita. 2016. Beyond embedded autonomy. In Yin-wah Chu (ed.), The Asian developmental state, 57–72. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Castells, Manuel. 1992. Four Asian tigers with a dragon head. In Richard P. Appelbaum and Jeffrey Henderson (eds), States and development in the Asian Pacific rim, 33–70. London: Sage. Chibber, Vivek. 2003. Locked in place. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chu, Yin-wah. 2009. Eclipse or reconfigured? Economy and Society, 38(2), 278–303. Chu, Yin-wah. 2021. Democratization, globalization, and institutional adaptation. Review of International Political Economy, 28(1), 59–80. Cumings, Bruce. 1987. The origins and development of the Northeast Asian political economy. In Frederic C. Deyo (ed.), The political economy of the new Asian industrialism, 44–83. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Deyo, Frederic C. 1987. State and labor. In Frederic C. Deyo (ed.), The political economy of the new Asian industrialism, 182–202. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Evans, Peter B. 1995. Embedded autonomy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gold, Thomas B. 1986. State and society in the Taiwan miracle. Armonk: ME Sharpe. Johnson, Chalmers A. 1982. MITI and the Japanese miracle. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Johnson, Chalmers A. 1995. Japan, who governs? New York: WW Norton & Company. Johnson, Chalmers A. 1999. The developmental state: odyssey of a concept. In Meredith Woo-Cumings (ed.), The developmental state, 32–60. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
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Kim, Sung-young. 2019. Hybridized industrial ecosystems and the makings of a new developmental infrastructure in East Asia’s green energy sector. Review of International Political Economy, 26(1), 158–82. Lee, Hye-Kyung. 2019. Making creative industries policy in the real world. International Journal of Cultural Policy, https://doi.org/10 .1080/10286632.2019.1577401. Loriaux, Michael. 1999. The French developmental state as myth and moral ambition. In Meredith Woo-Cumings (ed.), The developmental state, 235–75. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Low, Linda. 2001. The Singapore developmental state in the new economy and polity. The Pacific Review, 14(3), 411–41. Ó Riain, Seán. 2004. The politics of high-tech growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stubbs, Richard. 2009. What ever happened to the East Asian developmental state? The Pacific Review, 22(1), 1–22. Thurbon, Elizabeth. 2016. Developmental mindset. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Wade, Robert. 1990. Governing the market. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Weiss, Linda. 2014. America Inc.? Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Weiss, Linda and John M. Hobson. 1995. States and economic development. Cambridge: Polity. Woo, Jung-en. 1991. Race to the swift. New York: Columbia University Press. Woo-Cumings, Meredith (ed.) 1999. The developmental state. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Wong, Joseph. 2011. Betting on biotech. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Yeung, Henry W.C. 2016. Strategic coupling. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Digital citizenship The prevalence of various digital media has influenced many aspects of our society in recent decades. In some cases, new media has changed the ways in which we communicate and interact with other individuals and institutions. In some other cases, our understanding and knowledge of existing concepts require reinvestigations in today’s society shaped by new media. Digital citizenship, to a certain extent, is a concept that reflects both changes mentioned above. It is self-evident that the term ‘digital citizenship’ is a derivation of ‘citizenship’ in the era of digital media. This entry will begin, therefore, with a review of how citizenship is defined and investigate its evolution accompanied with the development of digital media. Furthermore, to explore how digital citizenship influences today’s society, this entry will approach the concept of digital citizenship via three important gateways: civic participation, education, and identity.
Defining citizenship and digital citizenship
Prior to unfolding the term digital citizenship, it is necessary to review the advent and evolution of the concept of citizenship. People in today’s modern society largely take their citizenship for granted. Nevertheless, citizenship emerged along with industrialization and had evolved from civil rights, through political rights, to social rights during the timespan between the eighteenth century and the twentieth century (Marshall, [1950] 1973). One of the most adopted notions, which is made by T.H. Marshall, defines citizenship as ‘endowing all members of a political community with certain civil, political, and social rights of membership’ (see Mossberger et al., 2008, p. 1). Giddens and Sutton (2017, p. 194) proposed an alternative yet similar definition of citizenship as ‘a status accorded to individuals within a specific nation or political community which carries with it certain rights and responsibilities’. Both of these definitions address two essential elements of citizenship: affiliation and rights. As summarized by Bellamy (2008), citizenship inherently comes along with political participation within a particular kind of community.
Based on the definitions of citizenship reviewed before, the concept of digital citizenship additionally includes the impacts brought by digital media. Some scholars define digital citizenship as ‘the ability to participate in society online’ (Mossberger et al., 2008, p. 1). Other scholars pay more attention to responsibility than accessibility in terms of digital citizenship. For instance, Ribble and Bailey (2007, p. 10) describe digital citizenship as ‘the norms of appropriate, responsible behaviour with regard to technology use’. Meanwhile, Jenkins and Carpentier (2013) approach the concept of digital citizenship through the perspective of participatory culture. This perspective specifically looks at a citizen’s proficiency in digital media, such as ‘the ability to produce, collaborate, share, and critique media using current and emerging technologies’ (Gleason & von Gillern, 2018). In summary, Ribble and Bailey (2007, p. 10) conclude nine elements that define digital citizenship: 1. Digital Access: full electronic participation in society 2. Digital Commerce: the buying and selling of goods online 3. Digital Communication: the electronic exchange of information 4. Digital Literacy: the capability to use digital technology and knowing when and how to use it 5. Digital Etiquette: the standards of conduct expected by other digital technology users 6. Digital Law: the legal rights and restrictions governing technology use 7. Digital Rights and Responsibilities: the privileges and freedoms extended to all digital technology users, and the behavioural expectations that come with them 8. Digital Health and Wellness: the elements of physical and psychological well-being related to digital technology use 9. Digital Security: the precautions that all technology users must take to guarantee their personal safety and the security of their network.
Digital citizenship and civic participation
According to the definitions given above, the concept of digital citizenship is foremost related to civic participation. The employ-
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ment of digital media technologies has offered citizens more knowledge and measures to engage in civic participation. In the current media environment, breaking news is often exposed and circulated on social media platforms and then attracts the attention of traditional media and publics. The increase in online news consumption is positively correlated to the inclination and capability for civic participation. Drawing on the survey data from America’s national elections in 2000 and 2002, as well as those from the primary elections in 2004, a study has discovered that online news users are more willing to participate in political discussion, and have more knowledge about politics than non-users (Mossberger et al., 2008, p. 63). Apart from facilitating knowledge distribution and political discussion, digital media also functions as a domain in which publics can spontaneously form groups on the basis of common interests. This characteristic was even predicted by the pioneers of Internet development in the 1960s (Meikle, 2016). Borrowing the concept of media practice (Couldry, 2012), we can consider digital media technology as a precondition for citizens to practise their digital citizenship. In this sense, the concept of digital citizenship goes beyond retrieving information and engaging discussion online. Practising one’s digital citizenship also refers to including digital media use into their daily social life, satisfying their social needs via digital media, and promoting their offline civic participation with digital media technology. In recent decades, the role played by social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and Telegram, in social movements like Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, and Stop Asian Hate have demonstrated the linkage between digital citizenship and civic participation.
Digital citizenship and education
Another primary gateway to the concept of digital citizenship is education. The focus of digital citizenship education lies on two questions. First, what is digital citizenship education? Second, how can digital citizenship be taught? To answer the first question, it is necessary to distinguish digital citizenship education from another similar but different concept, digital literacy education. In general, media Jiajie Lu
literacy refers to the skill and proficiency in accessing media resources, critically evaluating media content, creating media content, and other usage of media technology (Koltay, 2011). Accordingly, digital literacy education primarily emphasizes the training of a specific set of media use skills and the capabilities to adapt to society in digital media era. Meanwhile, digital citizenship education focuses on helping citizens behave appropriately and respectfully towards others online to prevent digital misconducts such as cyberbullying and sexting (Jones & Mitchell, 2015). As to the second question, Ribble and Bailey (2007) have introduced a detailed scheme for including digital citizenship into existing education system: from creating a digital citizenship programme in schools to developing digital citizenship lessons in class. Nevertheless, in the current media environment, students inevitably have to spend their afterschool time using digital media to access necessary information and entertainment. Various social media platforms have become a critical domain in which such practice occurs. Consequently, teaching students how to share information in responsible manners and converse with others in appropriate ways on social media platforms is an essential component of digital citizenship education. Gleason and von Gillern (2018) hence suggest that educators responsible for teaching digital citizenship should integrate social media as a measure to promote digital citizenship education.
Digital citizenship and identity
With the increasing level of globalization after the Second World War, transnational migration has become a common social phenomenon. Facilitated by convenient and affordable digital media technologies, many diasporic groups around the world are able to engage with the public discussions and civic activities taking place in their country of origin through digital media, despite their citizenship of another country (Brinkerhoff, 2009). In these cases, digital citizenship is juxtaposed with the issue of identity and urges us to look at this concept beyond the boundary drawn by civic participation and education. In the view of ethnic people in Western countries, digital media is an important measure
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for maintaining social and cultural connections with their country of origin, which is an essential element defining their identity. A survey conducted in Netherlands and Flanders has disclosed such a fact: more than one-third of the ethnic youths in these areas maintain contact with their relatives and friends in their country of origin (D’Haenens et al., 2007).
Conclusion
Digital citizenship has inherited some important essence from the concept of citizenship. These two concepts are both related to one’s membership of a given community and the rights of members to engage with civic participation within this community. In comparison with citizenship, the term digital citizenship addresses the impacts brought by digital media technology on the ways in which people engage with civic participation. Moreover, concerning responsible digital media use is another trait distinguishing digital citizenship from citizenship. Finally, the phenomena of transnational migration and ethnic identity bring forward an interdisciplinary approach to digital citizenship. Jiajie Lu
References
Bellamy R. (2008). Citizenship: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press. Brinkerhoff, J.M. (2009). Digital diasporas: identity and transnational engagement. Cambridge University Press. Couldry, N. (2012). Media, society, world: social theory and digital media practice. Polity. D’Haenens L., Koeman, J., & Saeys, F. (2007). Digital citizenship among ethnic minority youths in the Netherlands and Flanders. New Media & Society, 9(2), 278–99. Giddens, A., & Sutton, P.W. (2017). Essential concepts in sociology. Polity. Gleason, B., & von Gillern, S. (2018). Digital citizenship with social media: participatory practices of teaching and learning in secondary education. Educational Technology & Society, 21(1), 200–212. Jenkins, H., & Carpentier, N. (2013). Theorizing participatory intensities: a conversation about participation and politics. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 19(3), 265–86. Jones, L.M., & Mitchell, K.J. (2015). Defining and measuring youth digital citizenship. New Media & Society, 18(9), 2063–79. Koltay, T. (2011). The media and the literacies: media literacy, information literacy, digital literacy. Media, Culture & Society, 33(2), 211–21. Marshall, T.H. ([1950] 1973). Class, citizenship and social development. Greenwood Press. Meikle, G. (2016). Social media: communication, sharing and visibility. Routledge. Mossberger, K., Tolbert, C.J., & McNeal, R.S. (2008). Digital citizenship: the internet, society, and participation. The MIT Press. Ribble, M., & Bailey, G.D. (2007). Digital citizenship in schools. International Society for Technology in Education.
Jiajie Lu
Digital inclusion What is digital inclusion?
Digital inclusion describes a state of having access to reliable, affordable digital technologies and internet connections, and possessing the skills to use them effectively. Conceptually, a fully digitally included person has unbounded opportunities to carry out any activity online using high-speed connections and diverse devices. Conversely, a digitally excluded person has extremely limited or no capacity to go online owing to a range of shortfalls, such as lack of internet infrastructure or services, inability to pay for devices and services, or lack of digital literacy.
Digital inclusion and social inclusion: two sides of the same coin
Digital inclusion is important because we now rely on the internet for almost all aspects of our lives, from education and healthcare to work and business. Broadband access is now a core public utility (Edwards, 2009), and digital inclusion is increasingly being promoted as a human right (Economist Intelligence Unit Ltd, 2018, p. 2). Helsper (2008) argues that ‘technology is so tightly woven into the fabric of society today that ICT deprivation can rightly be considered alongside, and strongly linked to, more traditional twentieth-century social deprivations, such as low income, unemployment, poor education, ill health and social isolation’ (p. 8). Accordingly, digital inclusion is inextricably linked to social inclusion. Researchers have thus investigated digital inclusion from the standpoint of socially and economically disadvantaged individuals and groups such as seniors (e.g. Charmarkeh, 2017), children from low-income families (e.g. Livingstone & Helsper, 2007), people living with disabilities (e.g. Seale et al., 2010), Indigenous people (Rennie et al. 2019), and those living in rural and remote areas (e.g. Salemink et al., 2017). Overall, there is evidence that digital exclusion is strongly associated with social exclusion (Broadbent & Papadopoulos, 2013); that is, the combinations of social disadvantage such as poor skills, low employment, poor health,
lack of education, and low income are likely predictive of low levels of digital inclusion, although a causal link is not universally accepted (Helsper, 2008).
Origins of digital inclusion
Digital inclusion as a concept first appeared in academic literature around 2003 (Warschauer, 2003), stemming from an existing discussion about the ‘digital divide’, a term coined in the mid-1990s (Foster & Burkowski, 2007, as cited in Walton et al., 2013). This earlier concept emphasized disparities in people’s access to internet infrastructure and services, which hampered participation in the ‘information age’ (Compaine, 2001) and led to ‘information inequalities’ (Selwyn, 2004). Thus, digital inclusion policy in the UK, US, and other developed nations has been, and to some extent still is, driven by economic factors and infrastructure investment, and can tend to overlook more nuanced socio-economic factors of digital inclusion such as income, gender, age, education, ethnicity, geography, and household composition (Selwyn, 2004). Several authors (e.g. Light, 2001; Warschuaer, 2003; Livingstone & Helsper, 2007) have paved the way to the broader concept of digital inclusion by expanding the debate about inequitable access to technology and linking digital exclusion to broader social problems and solutions. For example, Warschuaer (2003) argued for the need to refocus efforts from the digital divide to digital inclusion in the UK because access-driven policy had largely failed to have long-term impact for disadvantaged populations. Similarly, Acilar (2011) points out that ‘there are significant differences between developed and developing countries in terms of accessing and using the ICTs’ (p. 232), and that there are various types of digital divide within a country, such as age digital divide and gender digital divide. The concept of digital inclusion is suitably flexible to incorporate these different iterations and experiences of diverse populations.
Measuring digital inclusion
Digital inclusion has been measured, assessed, and evaluated in many and varied ways by policymakers, scholars, and practitioners. Digital inclusion surveys, frame-
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works, and tools range from individual to global scales, and emphasize different aspects of digital inclusion. Most, however, conform to the definition offered in the introduction of this article, covering (fully or partially) the dimensions of access, affordability, and digital ability (Thomas et al., 2020). One of the global measures of digital inclusion is The Inclusive Internet Index,1 commissioned by Facebook and developed by The Economist Intelligence Unit. It measures digital inclusion of countries across four dimensions: availability (quality and breadth of available infrastructure required for access and levels of internet usage), affordability (cost of access relative to income and the level of competition in the internet marketplace), relevance (existence and extent of local language content and relevant content), and readiness (capacity to access the internet, including skills, cultural acceptance, and supporting policy). Another global example is the International Telecommunication Union’s Digital Development Dashboard,2 which measures infrastructure and access, internet use, and enablers and barriers to digital inclusion in 196 economies. In line with the increasing emphasis on digital skills (as opposed to access), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies3 (PIAAC) conducts a Survey of Adult Skills in over 40 countries that includes digital competencies such as digital access, digital taste, digital readiness, and digital literacy. Likewise, the European Union’s Digital Economy and Society Index4 (DESI) includes measures of digital human capital, specifically internet user skills and advanced skills and development, which inform its digital inclusion strategy and programmes. There is a plethora of other frameworks by which scholars, governments, communities, organizations, and individuals evaluate digital inclusion. Notably, The European Digital Competence Framework for Citizens5 by the European Commission measures five digital competencies: information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, safety, and problem solving. This ‘DigComp’ framework (1.0 and 2.0) has been adopted across Europe in various formats for tracking individual progress and the success of interventions.
A criticism of many of these frameworks, however, is that they are underpinned by lists of generic technical skills that are not socially situated in the context in which they applied. For example, the UK Department of Education’s Essential Digital Skills Framework6 – comprising of five digital skills for life and work (communicating, handling information and content, transacting, problem solving, and being safe and legal online) – constitutes a ‘baseline’ set of skills which, though simple and generalizable, is difficult to measure effectively across sectors and communities. As Covello (2010) argues, generic frameworks make it difficult to determine which digital skills are important for a particular population, and how they can be identified and deployed in different local contexts.
The future of digital inclusion
Despite global efforts ‘to ensure that everybody can contribute to and benefit from the digital world’ (European Commission, 2021, para. 1), there are significant barriers to achieving this ambitious goal. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated digital exclusion across the globe. As work, schooling, and healthcare were rapidly transitioned to online service delivery, individuals, families, and organizations without sufficient digital connectivity and skills could not access essential services when they needed them most. Further challenges associated with the digitization of everyday practices include increased loneliness and social isolation (Allen, 2018), the spreading of disinformation and misinformation online (Graham et al., 2020), and heightened exposure to cybercrime (Monteith et al., 2021). In response to the pandemic, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2021) has released a ‘roadmap for digital cooperation’ to leverage digital technologies for social inclusion founded on the principle that ‘leaving no one behind means leaving no one offline’ (p. 1). Some scholars have suggested, however, that digital inclusion is creating a new modality of inequality underpinned by a lack of choice about whether we connect or not (Andrade & Techatassanasoontorn, 2020). If being connected is a human right, should it also be a right to not be connected? Amber Marshall
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While digital inclusion has been almost universally framed as a positive construct – something that individuals, communities, and societies should aspire to – scholars of digital inclusion should take stock to consider alternative approaches and outcomes associated with their research endeavours. Amber Marshall
Notes
1. 2.
3. 4. 5. 6.
https://theinclusiveinternet.eiu.com/. https://w ww. itu. int/e n/I TU- D/S tatistics/ Dashboards/Pages/Digital-Development.aspx. https://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/ desi. https://e c. europa. eu/j rc/e n/d igcomp/d igital -competence-framework. https://w ww. gov. uk/g overnment/p ublications/ essential-digital-skills-framework.
References
Acilar, A. (2011). Exploring aspects of the digital divide in a developing country. In E.B. Cohen (ed.), Navigating informational challenges: Issues in informing science and information technology, volume 8 (pp. 231–41). Informing Science Institute. Allen, D.C. (2018). How the digitalisation of everything is making us more lonely. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/how -the-digitalisation-of-everything-is-making-us -more-lonely-90870. Andrade, A.D., & Techatassanasoontorn, A.A. (2021). Digital enforcement: Rethinking the pursuit of a digitally-enabled society. Information Systems Journal, 31(1), 184–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12306. Broadbent, R., & Papadopoulos, T. (2013). Bridging the digital divide – an Australian story. Behaviour & Information Technology, 32(1), 4–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X .2011.572186. Charmarkeh, H. (2017). Seniors and technologies: Issues of inclusion and exclusion. Canadian Journal of Communication, 42(2), 189–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.22230/ cjc2017v42n2e3277. Covello, S. (2010). A review of digital literacy assessment instruments. Syracuse University, School of Education/IDD & E.2. Compaine, B.M. (ed.) (2001). The digital divide: Facing a crisis of creating a myth? MIT Press. Economist Intelligence Unit Ltd. (2018). The inclusive internet index 2018: Executive summary. https://theinclusiveinternet.eiu.com/assets/ external/downloads/3i-executive-summary.pdf. Edwards, J.C. (2009). Digital deliverance: Dragging rural America, kicking and screaming, into the information economy [PhD disserta-
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tion, The University of Southern Mississippi]. https://www.proquest.com/docview/305518285/ abstract/DA5C15073BB84163PQ/1. European Commission (2021). Digital inclusion. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/ policies/digital-inclusion. Graham, T., Bruns, A., Zhu, G., & Campbell, R. (2020). Like a virus: The coordinated spread of Coronavirus disinformation. https://apo.org.au/ node/305864. Helsper, E. (2008). Digital inclusion: An analysis of social disadvantage and the information society. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/26938. Light, J.S. (2001). Rethinking the digital divide. Harvard Educational Review, 71(4), 709–33. Livingstone, S., & Helsper, E. (2007). Gradations in digital inclusion: Children, young people and the digital divide. New Media & Society, 9(4), 671–96. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1461444807080335. Monteith, S., Bauer, M., Alda, M., Geddes, J., Whybrow, P.C., & Glenn, T. (2021). Increasing cybercrime since the pandemic: Concerns for psychiatry. Current Psychiatry Reports, 23(4), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11920–021–01228-w. Rennie, E., Thomas, J., & Wilson, C. (2019). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and digital inclusion: What is the evidence and where is it? Communication Research and Practice, 5(2), 105–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 22041451.2019.1601148. Salemink, K., Strijker, D., & Bosworth, G. (2017). Rural development in the digital age: A systematic literature review on unequal ICT availability, adoption, and use in rural areas. Journal of Rural Studies, 54, 360–71. https://doi.org/10 .1016/j.jrurstud.2015.09.001. Seale, J., Draffan, E.A., & Wald, M. (2010). Digital agility and digital decision-making: Conceptualising digital inclusion in the context of disabled learners in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 35(4), 445–61. https://doi .org/10.1080/03075070903131628. Selwyn, N. (2004). Reconsidering political and popular understandings of the digital divide. New Media & Society, 6(3), 341–62. Thomas, J., Barraket, J., Wilson, C.K., Holcombe-James, I., Kennedy, J., Rennie, E., Ewing, S., & MacDonald, T. (2020). Measuring Australia’s digital divide: The Australian digital inclusion index 2020. https://doi.org/10 .25916/5F6EB9949C832. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2021). Policy brief 92: Leveraging digital technologies for social inclusion. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. https://www.un.org/development/ desa/dpad/publication/un-desa-policy-brief -92-leveraging-digital-technologies-for-social -inclusion/.
Digital inclusion 191 Walton, P., Kop, T., Spriggs, D., & Fitzgerald, B. (2013). A digital inclusion: Empowering all Australians. Australian Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, 1(1), 9.1–9.17. https://doi.org/10.7790/ajtde .v1n1.9.
Warschauer, M. (2003). Technology and social inclusion: Rethinking the digital divide. MIT Press.
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Disability and development
and thematic areas that need further consideration and research.
It is estimated that around 16 per cent of the global population are disabled people, and some 80 per cent of these reside in the so-called global South (WHO, 2023). The numbers continue to rise, whether on account of increasing poverty and inequality, fragmented access to affordable quality healthcare, climate change and disasters, conflict, and wars, forced migration, ageing, and increasing prevalence of chronic diseases in an increasingly globalized world. The link between disability and development has been established over the first two decades of this century, in particular via the connection between disability and poverty as well as policies and international declarations that brought the two closer together, directly or indirectly. However, it was also the glaring disconnection, notably the continued exclusion or marginalization of disability from mainstream development research, policies, and programmes, including poverty reduction efforts, that helped drive much of the lobbying for ‘inclusive development’ and more recently ‘disability inclusive development’. The latter is defined as a process whereby ‘all stages of development … are inclusive of and accessible to persons with disabilities’ and which ‘requires that all persons be afforded equal access to education, health care services, work and employment, and social protection, among others’ (UN, 2014, p. 3). Despite such developments, it also undeniable that disability and development as a field of study and practice is still in its infancy. Disability still lingers on the peripheries of development theory and policy, empirical research is still lacking, as are longitudinal studies and evaluations looking at the inclusion of disability and development in practice. There is also a dramatic gap in critical theoretical work probing the intersectional space between disability and development. This entry will start off with an explanation of the disability and poverty relationship as the key connector between disability and development and will then lay out some key policy and discursive developments bringing the two closer together. The entry will round off with a critical discussion on some gaps
The poverty and disability cycle
Reference to the relationship between disability and poverty provides the major discursive basis for linking disability and development, not least in supporting efforts to ensure that disabled people are not left out of development efforts. This relationship has often been described as a mutually reinforcing cycle, that is, bidirectional and where one (disability) feeds into the other (poverty) in a seemingly endless cycle (see Banks, Kuper and Polack, 2018). Despite the lack of empirical evidence, references to this relationship became a major advocacy tool for those lobbying for inclusive development. Multidimensional poverty is said to provide multiple conditions for impairment. These include lack of access to financial assets, fragmented access, or delays in obtaining critical healthcare (notably specialized care required by some disabled people), poor sanitation, lack of clean water, poor and perilous living and working conditions, unsafe infrastructure and transportation, lack of or no access to social protection, undernutrition and malnutrition, natural disasters, conflict, and unsafe forced migration routes among others. In many cases, treatable illnesses can easily become impairments, and untreated impairments in contexts of poverty can also lead to secondary impairments. Early literature speculated that as many as 50 per cent of impairments in the global South were a result of poverty and hence preventable (DFID, 2000). The presence of disability, in turn, leads to or intensifies existing poverty. Disabled people face multiple and interacting barriers that cut across physical, social, economic, political, cultural, ideological, religious, and attitudinal dimensions. Less than 2 per cent of disabled people in the global South have access to healthcare and rehabilitation, and only around 2 per cent have access to adequate education, with girls disproportionately disadvantaged (WHO and World Bank, 2011). Disabled people also face enhanced direct and indirect costs, such as those on specialized healthcare, transportation, and assistive devices where these are sought. With scare to no social protection, most of these costs are out of pocket. A recent report
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found that living with a moderate disability leads to costs ranging from 21 per cent to 40 per cent of average income, while for severe disability, they range from 39 per cent to 70 per cent (UN, 2019). Disabled people also face high opportunity costs, including those on lost labour. Violence, discrimination, isolation, racism and disablement may also be realities faced by many disabled people, some (for example, women, ethnic minorities and lower castes) more than others. The resultant poverty faced by disabled people has often been described in the literature as chronic and extreme (see, for example, Grech, 2015) and intergenerational (Groce et al., 2014). Overall, it has even been suggested that around 20 per cent or rather 1 in 5 of the poorest people in the world are in fact disabled people (WHO and World Bank, 2011). This poverty extends beyond the disabled individual and impacts families to the extent that some critical authors (see, for example, Grech, 2015) have started speaking about ‘disabled families’. For example, family members may be pushed to withdraw from livelihood activities to care for the disabled family member or to leave education prematurely because financial assets are drained, with serious implications for their own poverty and that of the families they will form. References to the disability and poverty relationship have provided a solid anchor for those arguing the need for disability to become a legitimate development issue and to be included in development. The argument is simple. If development is concerned with poverty and its reduction, and if disabled people are among the poorest of the poor, then development cannot possibly exclude and not prioritize disabled people, their rights, and their well-being, if it is to deliver on any its targets.
Policy developments
Over the years, policies as well as conventions and declarations have helped solidify the link between disability and development. These include, in particular, the following.
From the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) The development and agreement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2001, which set the development agenda for the next 15 years was a watershed moment for the development community. The MDGs had implications for the movement to include disability in development too. However, and paradoxically, this came through the fact that disability was flagrantly left out of these goals. This exclusion was so glaring that it provided a solid basis for, and incited sustained lobbying by those arguing that disability not only crosscuts all these goals, but also how neither can be achieved when the poorest and most marginalized, among them disabled people, are not included, and their needs are left unaddressed. It also sparked initiatives to monitor these MDGs vis-à-vis disability inclusion through specific indicators. Importantly, it stimulated debates and indeed a movement to ensure that disability would not be left out again in the post 2015 agenda (what would become the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Disability now cuts across various parts of the SDGs, and is specifically mentioned in those pertinent to employment, growth, education, accessibility of human settlements, and data collection and monitoring, part of the pledge to ‘leave no one behind’. There are also references to disability in relation to human rights, vulnerable groups, and education. Disability is also referenced directly in the goals themselves, that is, on education (Goal 4), employment (Goal 8), reducing inequalities (Goal 10), inclusive cities (Goal 11) and means of implementation (Goal 17). Critics (see Kingston, 2017; Modéer and Viera, 2023) argue that it is too early to determine the extent (if at all) to which the SDGs will translate into anything concrete for disabled people on the ground, especially if these are not well aligned with core human rights standards with core human rights standards and when progress on many of the goals is well off-track. However, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 SDGs has for the first time provided a framework guiding local and international communities towards the achievement of disability-inclusive development. Importantly, it continues to support efforts at Shaun Grech
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positioning disability as a legitimate development issue. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities The development of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) in 2006 marked the first major human rights instrument pertinent to disability at a par with others such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The UNCRPD, the result of solid and consistent lobbying by the international disability movement, makes multiple references to development and inclusive development, alongside various provisions that are both sector-specific as well as generic. Article 28, for example, makes provisions for adequate standard of living and social protection, while Article 24 calls on State parties to ensure inclusive education. Article 32 specifically recognizes the role of international cooperation in promoting, protecting and ensuring the rights and inclusion of persons with disabilities and makes provisions for undertaking ‘appropriate and effective measures in this regard, between and among States and, as appropriate, in partnership with relevant international and regional organizations and civil society, in particular organizations of persons with disabilities’. Overall, the UNCRPD has critically helped shift the focus away from vulnerability and weakness, towards rights, strengths and empowerment, to reframe disabled people and their own organizations as genuine partners, and importantly as resources in the process of inclusive development. Critically, any support or intervention is not an act of charity, but instead one of rights, and the inclusion of disability in development has positive implications for everyone across the board. The initiatives above have also benefited from others. Of particular note was the publication of the very first World Report on Disability by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank in 2011. The report devotes a whole section to ‘disability and development’ and opens with the statement that ‘disability is a development issue, because of its bidirectional link to poverty’ while reiterating the need for ‘measures to promote the participation and well-being of people with disabilities worldwide’ (11). Shaun Grech
A twin-track approach
Working towards genuine disability inclusive development, that is, the integration of disability across design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all development policies and programmes, requires an approach that ensures that all the needs and demands of disabled people are accommodated at all stages of the process. It has been argued that while the inclusion of disability in existing development policies and programs is critical – that is, ‘disability mainstreaming’ – disabled people also have specific needs and requirements (e.g. specialized healthcare and/or social protection) that may not be accommodated through mainstream development efforts. This means that they also require disability-specific initiatives, a process known as ‘disability targeting’. While disability mainstreaming has become a reasonably common term, an approach promoting both mainstreaming and targeting continues to be solidly promoted, known as a ‘twin-track approach’, to highlight the need to not only mainstream disability in development, but to also ensure there are targeted efforts to accommodate disability-specific needs and requirements (see Makuwira, 2022). The overall goal is that of achieving the rights and inclusion of persons with disabilities in all dimensions and areas of society and development.
From rhetoric to practice: critical reflections
While all these initiatives have marked positive shifts in bringing disability and development closer together, at least at the level of discourse, a number of issues remain and haunt the landscape. First, it is a fact that disability remains on the peripheries of development policy, research and practice and is far from mainstreamed (Niewohner et al., 2019; Grech, 2023). Development studies are still to incorporate disability as a core development topic, relegating it instead to fields such as global health and rehabilitation. Disability, more specifically, is still not a fully legitimate subject of ‘development’ study and practice on a par with gender, childhood, race, and indigeneity, areas which have long garnered a solid foothold within the sector. It also remains on the peripheries of critical themes where disability is
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not only relevant, but indeed cross-cutting, such as social protection, humanitarian aid, governance, climate action, disaster risk reduction, poverty reduction, or the SDGs. Intersectional areas, for example migration and disability, are sparsely addressed within international development, highlighting not only a tremendous gap in policy and practice, but also a tendency to adopt an ableist approach, whereby only able-bodied subjects are seen and constructed as development subjects (Grech and Pisani, 2022). The implication is that disabled people and their representative voices, notably those of their own organizations, are hardly heard. Instead, disability, if and when mentioned, for example in development documents and literature, is often frugally assumed to be included in the faceless list of ‘vulnerable populations’, a category that paradoxically renders it even more invisible, while stripping it of agency. The disabled person is consequently reframed as helpless, and perhaps more a subject of charity than of development. Overall, disability and development as a field of thought and practice has a long way to go. The development sector remains relatively uneducated in disability, and this dynamic is perhaps maintained by the fact that disability studies, too, remain global North centric, and rather unschooled in global South and development issues. There remains a worrying dearth of empirical research into the relationship between disability and poverty (Groce et al., 2011; Grech, 2023), notably the dynamics assumed to be operating within. Disability data remains scarce and/or is unreliable, for example that drawn from surveys or censuses, because methods cannot be standardized and/or because methods themselves may not be contextually adapted and responsive (see Mitra et al., 2011; Mitra and Yap, 2021). Longitudinal data, importantly, is virtually nonexistent, which means that we only have static snapshots of disability as opposed to genuinely dynamic analyses. We also know little about the intergenerational impacts of disability on poverty, and hence how this relationship impacts family members too, including children, and the effects on household poverty across generations. Critically, disabled people are a heterogeneous population with complex and varying circumstances, needs
and demands that change across space and time. Importantly, there is a dire lack of critical research and literature looking at disability and development, to address a range of thorny issues, including colonial and post/ neocolonial concerns in development, geopolitics, neoliberal globalization and development, and concentration of power among global North stakeholders, including donors and international non-governmental organizations. Elsewhere (see Grech, 2011), I have highlighted how critical questions are rarely posed, including by those lobbying for disability inclusive development, in particular whether development is necessarily beneficial to disabled people, and whether inclusion within it can in fact be harmful if hegemonic discourses and practices remain in place, and if the sector remains uneducated in disability.
Final observations
Intersecting disability and development is not a straightforward process, and indeed requires serious interdisciplinary theorizing, critical thinking, and importantly empirical research. Indeed, there is so much to harness from a range of disciplines and fields, including critical disability studies, global health, rural development, anthropology, development studies, to name but a few. However, and the most important point here is that disabled people need to define the research agenda and to lead on debates about their own lives, and these voices need to not only be heard, but prioritized and articulated on their own terms. Engaging disability and development necessitates an epistemological and ontological stance that does not simplify or generalize, but which is instead open to complexity, especially of disability, and that is questioning and probing, including of development policies and practices, and how these interact with and impact a range of disabled persons. Disability and development discourse needs to steer away from individualizing positions focusing exclusively on the disabled person, to adopt a critical approach focused on families and communities. Disability in impoverished rural areas in the global South is experienced as a family, and strengthening families not only protects them, but also indirectly impacts the disabled family member. Shaun Grech
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Overall, we need a decolonizing approach to disability and development, including within global disability studies (see Grech, 2015; Nguyen, 2018), to seriously engage with power relationships, including the historical/colonial lineage of development and the geopolitics of knowledge and intervention. Shaun Grech
References
Banks, L.M., Kuper, H., & Polack, S. (2018). Correction: poverty and disability in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review. PLOS ONE, 13(9), e0204881. DFID (2000). Disability, poverty and development. Report. Grech, S. (2011). Recolonising debates or perpetuated coloniality? Decentring the spaces of disability, development and community in the global South. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 15(1), 87–100. Grech, S. (2015). Disability and Poverty in the Global South: Renegotiating Development in Guatemala. Palgrave Macmillan. Grech. S. (2023). Disability and rural poverty in the global South. In M. Romero (eds), Research Handbook on Intersectionality, (pp. 108–122). Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Grech, S., & Pisani, M. (2022) Disability and forced migration: critical connections and the global South debate. In F. Felder, L. Davy, & R. Kayess (eds), Disability Law and human Rights: Theory and Practice, (pp. 199–220). London: Palgrave. Groce, N., Kembhavi, G., Wirz, S., Lang, R., & Trani, J.-.F. (2011). Poverty and Disability: A Critical Review of the Literature in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. Leonard Cheshire Disability and Inclusive Development Centre. Working Paper Series No. 16. http://www.ucl .ac.uk/lc-ccr/centrepublications/workingpapers.
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Kingston, D. (2017). Can the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) be achieved without addressing disability rights? Disability and the Global South, 4(1), 1180–88. Makuwira, J. (2022). Disability-inclusive development. In K. Sims, N. Banks, et al. (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Global Development, (pp. 480–492). New York: Routledge. Mitra, S., Posarak, A., & Vick, B. (2011). Disability and poverty in developing countries: a multidimensional study. World Development, 41(C), 1–18. Mirta, S., & Yap, J. (2021). The Disability Data Report. Disability Data Initiative. Forham Research Consortium on Disability: New York. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3871045. Modéer, U., & Viera, J. (2023). Rethinking disability inclusion for the SDGs. UNDP. https:// www.undp.org/blog/re-thinking-disability -inclusion-sdgs. Nguyen, X.T. (2018). Critical disability studies at the edge of global development: why do we need to engage with Southern theory? Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 7(1). https://doi .org/10.15353/cjds.v7i1.400. Niewohner, J., Pierson, S., & Meyers, S.J. (2019). ‘Leave no one behind’? The exclusion of persons with disabilities by development NGOs. Disability & Society, 35(7), 1171–6. UN (2014). Toolkit on Disability for AFRICA: Disability Inclusive Development. UN. UN (2019). Disability and Development Report Realizing the Sustainable Development Goals by, for and with Persons with Disabilities 2018. UN. WHO (2023). Disability. https://www.who.int/ news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and -health. WHO and World Bank (2011). World Report on Disability. WHO.
Disaster and development The United Nations disaster agency, UNISDR, defines disaster as a ‘serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources’. Disasters may be triggered by hydro-meteorological (e.g. floods, droughts, forest fires, windstorms), geophysical (e.g. earthquakes, avalanches, volcanic eruptions) or man-made events (e.g. industrial and traffic accidents, violent conflict). Of these, hydro-meteorological events claim the most victims each year and their number has sharply risen. Major disasters cause losses that may exceed a country’s gross domestic product (GDP), undo years of physical (cash, equipment, inventory) and human (skills, knowledge, and capabilities) capital accumulation (Shabnam 2014) and wipe out years of development programming. Disaster risk is highest in areas with a high chance of hazards with people who are vulnerable (socio-economic, physical, political, etc.) who lack the capacities to cope: R = H × V / C. Industrial economies are more likely to be hurt by quick onset disasters such as floods and earthquakes, rural economies are less hurt by rapid onset disasters but more vulnerable to creeping catastrophes, island states depending on one crop or mineral are vulnerable to tropical storms, while already stressed economies (e.g. war-torn places), will be further destabilized (Stephenson & DuFrane 2002). While the number of disaster fatalities is steadily falling, the number of disaster-affected people and value of losses are increasing. While events like Fukushima in Japan (2011) and Superstorm Sandy hitting New York (2012) illustrate that the West is not immune to disasters, the number of disaster-impacted people remains mostly concentrated in the global South, and disasters disproportionally affect the poor. In economic terms, primary impacts of a disaster are direct, measurable losses (loss of a house or a crop); secondary impacts are indirect losses incurred (e.g. being out of business for a while); while tertiary impacts
are flow losses or negative impacts due to shifts in the macro-economy from other sectors to emergency response and recovery to respond to the disaster. Benefit–cost analysis of disaster risk reduction measures, however, tend to miss the poor, whose losses do not simply translate into dollar terms (Lavell 1999). Not only do the poor have fewer means to recover from disasters, a disaster often pushes them back into poverty, which deepens their vulnerability to the next disaster. For them, a barrage of smaller disasters that may never make the media leads to attrition and drives them deeper into disaster (Hillier & Nightingale 2013). Their losses, however, may not show up in official statistics but involve a considerable section of the population. The development opportunities for those who have had to sacrifice their means of existence to survive the disaster are thus radically reduced. The poorest people, then, tend to be the most vulnerable to disaster as they live on the most marginal, disaster-prone terrain and have few resources to protect their homes and livelihoods. For the most vulnerable in society, everyday life is already highly hazardous. In the past few decades, alternative links between development and disaster have been proposed: (1) a negative reading, viewing disasters as interrupted development; (2) a positive interpretation, considering disaster a development opportunity (‘beautiful disaster’, resilience); (3) a more critical perspective blaming development itself for creating disaster vulnerabilities and (4) a post-development critique questioning both development and vulnerability. We close with (5) the currently trending ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction.
Disasters as interrupted development
Macro-economic development is widely assumed to be held back or disrupted by major disaster events. Post-war, with development states and multilateral organizations in the lead, development was widely considered the best way for disaster-stricken countries to modernize out of poverty and, hence, disaster vulnerability. Development aid, it was believed, would reduce future vulnerabilities to natural hazards, prevent conflicts and trickle down to less-developed areas.
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Source: Erdelj et al. (2017).
Figure 1
The disaster cycle
Around the 1960s, the realization grew that disasters are not external Acts of God or Acts of Nature, but a function of vulnerability (Manyena 2012). Vulnerability, according to UNDRR, refers to susceptibility of a community system or asset to the damaging effects of a hazard. Disaster thus occurs through exposure (being in the ‘wrong place, at the wrong time’) without sufficient protection. Reducing vulnerability means reducing disaster risk. Once it is accepted that the choices made about where and how human development will proceed actually determine the losses that will be suffered in future disasters, we can prepare for disaster and mitigate losses (Mileti 1999). Human settlement and behaviour, for example, can be influenced by education and incentives (such as insurance cover) to settle outside vulnerable locations or or introduce sufficient safeguards to mitigate risks. Disaster risk reduction (DRR) developed globally as a systematic approach to idenJeroen Warner
tifying, assessing and reducing the risks of disaster, by both reducing the hazards and socio-economic vulnerabilities. Moving from disaster response to integrated disaster risk management, we can visualize disasters as having a life cycle, the Disaster Risk Reduction cycle (Figure 1), which is now the main conceptual tool in DRR. It suggests: ● A backward shift to disaster mitigation: While some hazards (anything that can cause harm) are unavoidable, disasters are not. If we cannot prevent the event, we can prevent hazard turning into disaster by reducing the stress or increasing the coping capacity: the institutional, material and mental capacity of people to absorb the impact and recover from loss or damage (Anderson & Woodrow 1989). Anecdotal evidence suggests that US$4 in damage is saved with each US$1 investment in prevention and mitigation, lending credence to Benjamin Franklin’s
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adage that ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’. ● A forward link to rehabilitation and development: Relief aid, it was believed, could act as ‘a springboard for recovery’. In practice, however, relief can get in the way of development and perpetuate the disaster. Taking the responsibility to save people means a long-term investment in their well-being, the responsibility to keep people going rather than undermining their livelihoods. But large-scale, short-term external assistance easily disrupts the local economy and runs counter to self-generated risk reduction without addressing the root causes of disaster. In this line of reasoning, disasters set back poverty reduction, as resources get diverted to immediate relief needs rather than longer-term development trajectories, and also worsen the investment climate. Thinking long-term development while reconstructing a hazard area, however, makes for often contradictory goals. It emerges that bringing about recovery and development in tandem takes twice the effort. The go-to solution has been to try and make development disaster-proof: a form of development that would be resilient to temporary setbacks by turning the mutually reinforcing relationship between development and DRR into a virtuous rather than vicious cycle. Disaster-proofing development calls for more flexible programming. The 1984–85 Ethiopian famine highlighted the need to better coordinate short-term relief and longer-term development planning. The resulting concept of Linking Response, Rehabilitation and Development (LRRD) proved hard to translate into real-life action and lost traction around the turn of the millennium. In the 2010s the idea was resuscitated, if phrased in terms of resilience (Mosel & Levine 2014). From a disaster perspective, resilience as ‘bouncing back’ to the previous equilibrium, however, is undesirable, as it reproduces the same vulnerabilities that produced the disaster in the first place. The tendency therefore is ideally to refer to transformative resilience: to ‘bounce forward’ after a shock.
Disaster as a development opportunity
Can disaster be a development opportunity? ‘Creative destruction’, a term popularized by the economist Joseph Schumpeter to explain technical innovation creating wealth, suggests that the upset caused by disaster releases energy necessary for innovation. It assumes that technical, social and political development breakthroughs become possible that normally are not. Big disasters can pave the way for new approaches, and have directly or indirectly instigated technological, economic and social revolutions. Technological innovation may be such that the post-disaster economy even ends up on a higher growth path than pre-disaster (Chhibber & Laajaj 2008). Evidence of a long-term development impetus resulting from disasters, however, seems largely anecdotal (Okuyama 2003). By highlighting areas of vulnerability, a disaster may catalyse political energy for investment into vulnerability reduction and development impulses. It can open up different livelihoods, a new life trajectory, new skills and leadership (Stephenson & DuFrane 2002). In terms of complex adaptive systems theory, systems respond to uncoordinated changes to maintain their functions by ‘releasing trapped elements and permitting novelty to (re)shape the whole’ (Bănică et al. 2020). It brings a recombination of pre-existing elements, components, functions or feedbacks, but is also forced to accept a new context, new elements, or the relocation of former elements and qualitative changes of structure and function, and establishes new goals, perspectives and governance regimes (Thomalla et al. 2018). Disasters have also been understood as a chance to reorganize/‘re-order’ society, for example in Mexico in 1985 where the poor and biased handling of disaster caused popular outrage and fuelled the revolution. Disasters may be seen as a tipping point for radical socio-political change – but they can also intensify authoritarianism (Pelling & Dill 2009).
Disaster as a consequence of development
In context of the Hyogo Framework for Action, a global compact to reduce disaster Jeroen Warner
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risk convened in in 2005, ‘disaster-proof development’ emerged as a concept to safeguard development from natural disasters, more recently supplemented by climate-proofing development approaches such as climate-smart agriculture. These efforts focused on making development project more resilient. Investment in DRR would prevent projects from being washed or blown away in the next disaster event. However, this approach missed the extent to which development itself sets the scene for disasters. While the modernist development paradigm maintains that underdevelopment causes people to live in vulnerable places, such as makeshift housing on steep hills, development itself also has unfortunate impacts that create rather than reduce disaster risk. Employment and economic growth development creates attracts high-density population and a flurry of activity in areas that are poorly adapted to it. Such disasters appear to be due to the lack of coordination between the development and disaster cycles, which turns the disaster cycle into a ‘disaster bicycle’ (Lewis 2012). Unresolved development dilemmas, already visible in Fordist development planning, were only reinforced by liberalization and state reform. While liberating more investment funds reducing brakes on development, ‘neoliberal’ development also unleashed a race to the bottom in the demolition of mass protection, deregulation (building codes, land use controls) and fragmentation. Entirely avoidable development disasters such as the toxic emission from Union Carbide in Bhopal, India, fanned a critical perspective of disaster as fallout from development (Ravi 2011). The Pressure and Release and Access models discussed in the classic At Risk book (Wisner et al. 2004) provide a chain of explanation of how uneven development creates vulnerabilities that turn hazards into disaster. This political ecology approach extends ‘vulnerability’ beyond the UN’s interpretation to dissect the social construction of disaster. Disaster in this view can be equated with ‘failure of human development’ (Wisner et al. 2004). A destructive cocktail of neo-colonial capitalist exploitation and poor governance can lay the basis for unsafe conditions tipping an earthquake or a flood into a state of disaster. The tendency to look for root causes makes critical disaster analysts look back Jeroen Warner
deep into history to identify root causes, such as Oliver Smith’s (1999) ‘500-year earthquake’. In response to the failures of ‘big’ development, community-based disaster risk reduction and alternative forms of development was celebrated (Maskrey 1984; Wisner et al. 2004) as an alternative self-propelled form of disaster reduction and found inroads into the UN system (Heijmans 2012).
From misguided development to rejecting development
While the critique of development disaster leaves the hope that ‘the right kind of development reduces disasters’ (Collins 2009), an even more fundamental critique emerged in the 1990s unpacking (deconstructing) the development and DRR concepts as neo-colonial practices. Development narratives (Mitchell 1991) picture an area as badly in need of development, legitimizing external interventions and experimentation without much consultation of the population expected to benefit. Many development projects turned out to be entirely predictable ‘white elephants’. Dams causing displacement with poor or no compensation not only often proved uneconomic, but dam break is also a major hazard. Likewise, areas may be successfully presented as in need of DRR. The good sense of DRR is not self-evident to its intended beneficiaries, requiring marketing effort, and missionary work to persuade local people that they need protection. People living at the toe of a volcano, near a nuclear reactor or below sea level will accept the low-incidence, high-consequence risk of a disaster as it seems amply offset by the economic benefits of living there. Through incentives (carrots and sticks) and public education, DRR has sought to condition more sensible settlement and disabuse people of their risk misperception. Disaster can also create another kind of opportunity for some: for fast-tracking reforms and for grabbing resources. Klein’s (2007) Disaster Capitalism suggests disasters create opportunities for business to get governments to fast-track market deregulation in cash and jobs-starved disaster zones. As damaged houses get condemned, people are evicted and the land is used for alternative ends (e.g. Schuller 2016). A vulnerability focus indicates that disasters may be as much caused by development
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as impinging on it (Wisner et al. 2004). However, there are some salient problems with the vulnerability label itself: Bankoff (2002) has argued it is often a patronizing, neo-colonial label reinforcing old myths of the tropics as the site backwardness and source of disease. Moreover, ‘vulnerable groups’ rarely self-identify as vulnerable (Heijmans 2012). If aid perpetuates poverty, development projects are often misguided and ‘vulnerability’ reflects a colonial mindset, maybe we should not strive for development.
The environmental turn in DRR
Meanwhile, a social and environmental critique of classical development led to calls for sustainable development. Accordingly, in assessing disaster impact, we should look beyond immediate loss of life, and to include loss of human security which in turn prevents sustainable development (Collins 2009). This reflects the rise of environmental concerns in disaster and development. Not only does the degradation of the natural environment erode both, but natural buffers have been rediscovered as assets. Ecomodernist approaches such as ‘nature-based solutions’ came to hold sway over both the development (Green Growth), disaster (Eco-DRR) and climate adaptation domain. Promoting eco-system based livelihoods is hoped to kill two birds with one stone. This green focus, however, appears to have taken some of the steam out of global poverty reduction efforts. Development and DRR take place at different time horizons: development is forward-looking and long-term, while DRR looks back and is immediate. A somewhat uneasy integration between DRR, development and climate change adaptation, however, manifested in the run-up to 2015, the year when both the Sendai framework on DRR, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris climate agreement were proclaimed, all with a strong sustainability focus, which seeks to strike a balance between present and future generations. The focus on climate change, however, risks avoiding dealing with deficiencies in planning and local vulnerability reduction. While in previous models natural hazards are taken as a given, critical scholars have started to analyse how human (in)actions modify hazards (Wisner et al.
2004). They critiqued how our unsustainable handling of the natural environment, agro-industrial intensification and globalization, are believed to have set the systemic conditions for a global pandemic such as COVID-19. Some have predicted or promoted a systemic change after COVID-19, heralding an end to neoliberal development and a tipping point to a more sustainable relation between humanity and nature. However, as Kelman (2020) suggests, disasters tend to accelerate rather than create latent trends and, as they seldom address root causes, can easily regress to established patterns. Jeroen Warner
References
Anderson, M.B., & Woodrow, P. (1989). Rising from the Ashes: Development Strategies in Times of Disaster. Intermediate Technology. Bankoff, G. (2002). Rendering the world unsafe: ‘vulnerability’ as western discourse. Disasters, 25(1), 19–35. Bănică, A., Kourtit, K., & Nijkamp, P. (2020). Natural disasters as a development opportunity: a spatial economic resilience interpretation. Review of Regional Research, 40(2), 223–49. Chhibber, A., & Laajaj, R. (2008). Disasters, climate change and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa: lessons and directions. Journal of African Economies, 17(suppl.2), ii7–ii49. Collins, A.E. (2009). Disaster and Development. Routledge. Erdelj, M., Król, M., & Natalizio, E. (2017). Wireless sensor networks and multi-UAV systems for natural disaster management. Computer Networks, 124, 72–86. Heijmans, A. (2012). Risky encounters: institutions and interventions in response to recurrent disasters and conflict. PhD dissertation, Wageningen University, Wageningen. Hillier, D., & Nightingale, K. (2013). How Disasters Disrupt Development: Recommendations for the post-2015 Development Framework. Oxfam. Kelman, I. (2020). Disaster by Choice: How Our Actions Turn Natural Hazards into Catastrophes. Oxford University Press. Klein, N. (2007). Disaster capitalism. Harper’s Magazine, 315, 47–58. Lavell, A. (1999, July). The impact of disasters on development gains: clarity or controversy. In IDNDR Programme Forum (pp. 5–9). The Impact of Disasters on Development Gains: Clarity or Controversy (https:// www .desenredando.org/).
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202 Elgar encyclopedia of development Lewis, J. (2012). The good, the bad and the ugly: Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) versus Disaster Risk Creation (DRC). PLoS currents, 4. Maskrey, A. (1984). Community-based hazard mitigation: disasters mitigation program implementation. Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Virginia Tech University. Mitchell, T. (1991). America’s Egypt. Middle East Report (March–April), 18–34. Manyena, S.B. (2012). Disaster and development paradigms: too close for comfort? Development Policy Review, 30(3), 327–45. Mileti, D. (1999). Disasters by Design: A Reassessment of Natural Hazards in the United States. Joseph Henry Press. Mosel, I., & Levine, S. (2014). Remaking the case for linking relief, rehabilitation and development: how LRRD can become a practically useful concept for assistance in difficult places. HPG report, Overseas Development Institute. Okuyama, Y. (2003). Economics of natural disasters: A critical review. https://www.researchgate .net/publication/228817770_Economics_of _natural_disasters_A_critical_review. Oliver-Smith, A. (1999). Peru’s five-hundred-year earthquake: vulnerability in historical context. In Oliver-Smith, A., & Hoffman, S.M. (eds), The Angry Earth: Disaster in Anthropological Perspective (pp. 88–102). Routledge.
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Pelling, M., & Dill, K. (2009) Disasters: tipping points for change in the adaptation of sociopolitical regimes. Progress in Human Geography, 34(1), 21–37. Ravi, R.S. (2011). Disaster, development and governance: reflection on the lessons of ‘Bhopal’. Environment and Society, 11(3), 369–94. Schuller, M. (2016). Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti. Rutgers University Press. Shabnam, N. (2014). Natural disasters and economic growth: a review. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science, 5(2), 157–63. Stephenson, R.S., & DuFrane, C. (2002). Disasters and development: Part I. Relationships between disasters and development. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine, 17(2), 110–16. Thomalla, F., Boyland, M., Johnson, K., Ensor, J., Tuhkanen, H., Gerger Swartling, Å., … & Wahl, D. (2018). Transforming development and disaster risk. Sustainability, 10(5), 1458. Wisner, B., Blaikie, P., Cannon, T., & Davis, I. (2004). At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability, and Disasters. Routledge.
Domestic violence and development Violence against women, including domestic violence, is widely recognized as a human rights violation, yet less so as a key development concern. This recognition as a development concern is particularly important for addressing/buttressing the social, cultural, and economic dynamics that inhibit or support the Sustainable Development Goals. To some extent, there is a limited understanding of the effects of development on domestic violence. More importantly, as development practice has moved from the primary pursuit of economic growth to a wider concern for linking economic growth to indicators of social justice, capabilities and individual well-being, a deeper understanding of the significant impacts of domestic violence on development itself is critical. The consequences of domestic violence for development indicators – such as those of economic growth, improvements in public health, stability, poverty alleviation, and access to education – are important to explore as these may impact the realization of wider development objectives and the commitment with which violence is addressed.
Defining domestic violence Naming involves making visible what was invisible, defining as unacceptable what was acceptable and insisting that what was naturalized is problematic. (Kelly 1988: 139)
degrees of violence, intimidation, isolation and control. Coercion can cover a spectrum of degrees of force – physical force, psychological intimidation, blackmail or other threats. It can also occur when the person is unable to give consent due to, for instance, intoxication. In addition, reproductive coercion involves behaviours such as refusal to use birth control and coerced pregnancy termination. Financial abuse comprises acts such as preventing a partner from working, controlling all household finances and withholding money. Perpetrators employ several tactics, such as structural forms of deprivation, exploitation, monopolization of vital resources and micro-regulation of a partner’s behaviour. The abusive actions often get worse over time and are difficult to identify. Women often experience multiple types of violence and multiple incidents. It occurs on a continuum, ranging from one hit that may or may not impact the victim to chronic, severe battering. Domestic violence is perpetrated by men and women, and intimate partner violence occurs in both hetero and same-sex relationships. However, women and girls are predominantly the victims of domestic and intimate partner violence, and men and boys are primarily the perpetrators of this violence. Moreover, women who experience partner violence are more likely to be injured during assaults by intimate partners than men. Also, women suffer more severe forms of violence. Where violence by women occurs, it is more likely to be self-defence.
Feminist understanding of Domestic violence (or domestic abuse) is domestic violence abuse perpetrated by a member(s) of a family/ household against another member(s) of that family/household. This includes spouse/ partner to spouse/partner violence (i.e. intimate partner violence), parent to child violence, child to parent violence, child to grandparent violence, and sibling to sibling violence. Domestic violence, and intimate partner violence in particular, is pervasive across the globe, traversing cultures and recorded history. Intimate partner violence involves a pattern of coercive control perpetrated in intimate relationships. According to Stark (2007), coercive control involves varying combinations and
Domestic violence occurs across all socioeconomic, cultural and educational groups, with one in three women experiencing physical and/or sexual violence by a partner in their lifetime (WHO 2013). In, fact, the prevalence ranges from 65 per cent in central sub-Saharan Africa to 40 per cent in South Asia to about 16 per cent in East Asia. Recognizing its complex and multifaceted nature, Heise (1998: 265) delineates the dynamic interactions between personal, situational and sociocultural predictors of violence against women. These factors include an individual’s experiences of witnessing relationship violence as a child, adherence to traditional norms of masculinity, male domi-
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nance in the relationship, social isolation and a cultural ethos that condones interpersonal violence. As highlighted by Stark, coercive control is at the heart of intimate partner violence. The understanding that coercive control involves a pattern of controlling behaviours aimed at obtaining obedience and creating fear, is important for recognizing the fact that domestic violence is not physical alone, nor always physical.
Domestic violence as a development issue
In development discourse, domestic violence has not been a central issue of focus. To the extent it is has been considered, the primary concerns are the links between violence and poverty, and violence and low education. Research focused on identifying the risk factors for domestic violence has established that domestic violence is associated with poverty – low-income women have a higher likelihood of reporting domestic violence (Heise 2012), poorer communities with higher levels of violence have a higher incidence of violence in the home (Benson et al. 2003; Gage 2005) and shocks such as conflict (Kelly et al. 2021) or natural disasters (Delaney and Shrader 2000; Fisher 2010) or economic downswings exacerbate the risk of domestic violence. For example, during the financial crisis of 2008–09 and the subsequent austerity cuts, increases in violence against women were documented across Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia (Social Watch 2009: 18). The recent Covid-19 pandemic has also intensified domestic violence against women worldwide (UN Women 2020). Lockdown restrictions confine women to the home with their abusive partners, thus facilitating coercive control, while intensifying psychological and economic stressors that increase domestic violence and impede help-seeking (Usher et al. 2020). Equally important argumentation to consider is how domestic violence impacts development. There are three identifiable approaches to violence as a development issue wherein violence is variously viewed as a cost undermining development outcomes, an obstacle to participation in development, or a blatant contradiction of development goals (Sen 1998). Nata Duvvury
Violence impedes development The first argument is an efficiency argument: violence against women depletes resources and its impact is measured in terms of costs and inefficiency. Work over the past 20 years has identified some of the consequences of domestic violence for women and households in terms of direct costs (medical, criminal justice system, social services) that undermine household consumption and savings, and perceived non-monetary costs (such as increased homicide, suicide, alcohol/drug abuse, depressive disorders) that undermine acquisition of human capital. Violence also results in larger economic consequences via loss of productivity, reallocation of resources to violence service provision and prevention efforts, and overall decreased resources for investment. Research establishing costs of domestic violence have estimated that the total costs, including all the impacts discussed above, are as high as $4.4 trillion or about 5 per cent of the world’s GDP (Hoeffler 2017). In developing countries, the main cost of domestic violence is in terms of productivity loss and its implications for women’s labour force participation. For example, in Ghana, the days of productivity loss due to violence experienced by working women, including partner and family violence, were 64.5 million workdays, which is equivalent to 4.5 per cent of the Ghanaian women’s labour force in 2016 (Asante et al. 2019). The economic loss of output translates to undermining the positive multiplier effects of economic investments in terms of employment and well-being, particularly in female-dominated sectors such as agriculture and services. For example, in the multiplier effect of agricultural investment, agriculture in Vietnam was halved due to domestic violence (Raghavendra, Duvvury and Ashe 2017). The health impacts of domestic violence have been a focus of international public health research, in particular establishing its contribution to the cost of the public health burden (Murray et al. 2012). Violence obstructs participation Early research has established that domestic violence, apart from being costly, may inhibit women’s ability to engage effectively in development programmes. For example, child marriage and domestic violence often inhibit girls’ access to education, as well as their
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continued engagement in schooling (World Bank 2017). As women’s participation in development programmes and planning is a central objective of the current agenda for women’s empowerment, the impact on social participation is a serious concern. Equally, domestic violence is cited as a factor in limiting women’s participation in micro-credit programmes.1 Other projects have highlighted how violence or the threat of violence hinders women’s ability to use contraception, answer personal questions in surveys and leave the house long enough to participate in community projects (Rao Gupta and Weiss 1998). In essence, domestic violence limits the space for action for women – chronic suffering, stigma and shame all constrict the agency of women. Qualitative research in Ghana and Pakistan suggests that women experiencing violence self-restrict their engagement with market activity and social clubs, and even self-isolate (Duvvury et al. 2021; Alvarado et al. 2019). Similarly, research shows that in some circumstances a woman’s participation in activities outside of the home may precipitate bouts of violence at home. For example, recent studies of micro-credit activities in India and Bangladesh indicate that women’s increased access to credit upsets the traditional divisions of labour in the home; some women, therefore, feel obliged to give away money and/or control over it to their partners (Schuler et al. 1998). Studies have also established additional deleterious social impacts of domestic violence, including intergenerational transmission of violence, reduced quality of life and reduced participation in democratic practices (Duvvury et al. 2013). Without addressing domestic violence and its impact upon women’s everyday freedoms, development efforts will remain compromised, with uneven success. Violence contradicts development goals In addition to participation in programmes, the very existence of violence against women contradicts the goals of development more broadly. Based on the human development paradigm, development defined by UNDP as ‘enlargement of choices’, highlights the essential role of improvement in women’s individual agency. Violence fundamentally prevents women from accessing or experiencing the benefits of development by inhib-
iting their ability to act and move freely. In effect, violence against women may be seen as the ultimate contributor to a profound lack of choices open to women and girls (Sen 1999). Sen, in fact, defined capabilities as the freedom to choose what you have reason to value. Thus, development, to him, is a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy – or, in essence, a process of removing the major sources of unfreedom. Domestic violence undermines a woman’s economic freedoms to work and prosper through the fear of reprisals that affect her ability to maintain regularity of work, sustain her productivity and realize upward mobility (Agarwal and Panda 2007). Equally, domestic violence undermines women’s social opportunities via isolation from family and networks, thus producing stigma associated with violence, which in turn, weakens her social capital, self-esteem and self-respect, which can limit social participation. For example, in Ghana, women in leadership of religious clubs/associations reported withdrawing from such positions if they experienced domestic violence, not only because of the gossip/ stigma, but because they deemed themselves as unworthy (Alvarado, Scriver and Duvvury 2019). Last but not least, domestic violence undermines a woman’s political freedoms by limiting her ability to seek entitlements as a citizen or to participate in political life as a citizen, given her limited mobility. These three approaches to violence as a development issue play a key role in advancing understanding of domestic violence and overall community/societal responsibility for violence, and, thus, improving opportunities to realize women’s human rights. Links between development practice and human rights advocacy are more clearly articulated now with the wider acceptance of economic, social and cultural rights. Violence as a development issue demands a continued consideration of the ways in which the existence of violence both intrudes upon traditional development objectives, such as economic growth, and forces a further reframing of the development paradigm itself. In the process of attempting to understand and address the problem of domestic violence as a development concern, researchers and advocates reaffirm the inextricable link between human rights and development practice. Nata Duvvury Nata Duvvury
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Duvvury, N., Scriver, S., Gammage, S. and John, N. (2021) ‘The Impacts of Violence Against Women on Choice and Agency: Evidence from Ghana and Pakistan’, Women Studies International Forum 89(1), https://doi.org/10 .1016/j.wsif.2021.102536. Fisher, S. (2010) ‘Violence Against Women and Natural Disasters: Findings From Post-Tsunami Sri Lanka’, Violence Against Women 16(8): References pp. 902–18. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ Agarwal, B. and Panda, P. (2007) ‘Toward pdf/10.1177/1077801210377649. Freedom from Domestic Violence: The Gage, A.J. (2005) ‘Women’s Experience of Neglected Obvious’, Journal of Human Intimate Partner Violence in Haiti’, Social Science and Medicine 61(2): pp. 343–64. Development 8(3): pp. 359–88. Alvarado, G., Mueller, J., O’Brien Milne, L., Heise, Lori L. (1998) ‘Violence Against Women: An Integrated, Ecological Framework’, Ghaus, K., Duvvury, N. and Scriver, S. (2019) Violence Against Women 4(3): pp. 262–90. ‘The Social Costs of Violence against Women and Girls on Survivors, their Families and Heise, Lori L. (2012) ‘Determinants of Partner Violence in Low and Middle-Income Countries: Communities in Pakistan’, Pakistan Journal Exploring Variation in Individual and of Women’s Studies: Alam-e-Niswan 26(1): Population Level Risk’, PhD thesis, London www .proquest pp. 1–20. Available at https:// School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. .com/docview/2424508910?pq-origsite= https://doi.org/10.17037/PUBS.00682451. gscholar&fromopenview=true. Alvarado, G., Scriver, S. and Duvvury, N. (2019) Hoeffler, A. (2017) ‘What Are the Costs of Violence?’, Politics, Philosophy & ‘The Health and Economic Costs of Violence Economics, 16(4): pp. 422–45. https://doi.org/ against Women and Girls on Survivors, Their 10.1177/1470594X17714270. Families, and Communities in Ghana’ [online first], IntechOpen, https://doi.org/10.5772/ Kelly, L. (1988). Surviving Sexual Violence. London: Wiley. intechopen .88690. Available at https:// www Kelly, J., Calantouni, E., Robinson, C. and Decker, .intechopen.com/online-first/the-health-and M. (2021) ‘Quantifying the Ripple Effects of -economic-costs-of-violence-against-women Civil War: How Armed Conflict Is Associated -and-girls-on-survivors-their-families-and-co. with More Severe Violence in the Home’, Asante, F., Fenny, A., Dzudzor, M., Chadha, Health and Human Rights Journal 23(1): M., Scriver, S. Ballantine, C., Raghavendra, S. pp. 75–89. and Duvvury, N. (2019). Economic and Social Murray, C.J.L. et al. (2012) ‘Disability-Adjusted Costs of Violence against Women in Ghana: Life Years (DALYs) for 291 Diseases Technical Report. Department for International and Injuries in 21 Regions, 1990–2010: Development (DFID), London, UK. Available A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden at https://www.whatworks.co.za/resources/ of Disease Study 2010’, The Lancet 380(9859): reports/item/595-economic-and-social-costs-of pp. 2197–223. -violence-against-women-and-girls-in-ghana Raghavendra, S., Duvvury, N. and Ashe, S. (2017) -country-technical-report. ‘The Macroeconomic Loss due to Violence Benson, M.L., Fox, G.L., DeMaris, A. and Against Women: The Case of Vietnam’, VanWyck, J. (2003) ‘Neighborhood Feminist Economics 23(4): pp. 62–89. https:// Disadvantage, Individual Economic Distress doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2017.1330546. and Violence Against Women in Intimate Rao Gupta, G. and Weiss, E. (1998) Bridging Relationships’, Journal of Quantitative the Gap: Addressing Gender and Sexuality in Criminology 19(3): pp. 207–35. HIV Prevention, Washington, DC: International Delaney, P.L. and Shrader, E. (2000) Gender Center for Research on Women. and Post-disaster Reconstruction: The Case of Schuler, S.R., Hashemi, H.M. and Bada, S.H. Hurricane Mitch in Honduras and Nicaragua, (1998) ‘Men’s Violence Against Women in Washington, DC: World Bank. Available at Rural Bangladesh: Undermined or Exacerbated http://www.gdnonline.org. by Microcredit Programmes?’, Development in Duvvury, N., Callan, A., Carney, P. and Practice 8(2): pp. 148–57. Raghavendra, S. (2013). Intimate Partner Sen, A. (1999). Development as Freedom, New Violence: Economic Costs and Implications York: Knopf. for Growth and Development. Women’s voice, Sen, P. (1998) ‘Development Practice and Violence Against Women’, Gender and Development agency, and participation research series no. 3, 6(3): pp. 7–16. Washington, DC: World Bank. 1. Based on field communication from organizers of group savings programme run by Mahila Samakhya in Andhra Pradesh, India, in the late 1990s when micro-credit programmes were being implemented widely following the success of the Grameen Bank schemes in Bangladesh.
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Domestic violence and development 207 Social Watch (2009). Making Finances Work: People First – A Citizens’ Global Progress Report on Poverty Eradication and Gender Equity, Montevideo: Third World Institute. Stark, E. (2007). Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press. UN Women (2020). Violence Against Women and Girls: The Shadow Pandemic, New York: UN Women. Usher, K., Bhullar, N., Durkin, J., Gyamfi, N. and Jackson, D. (2020). ‘Family Violence and COVID-19: Increased Vulnerability and Reduced Options for Support’, International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 7 May. https://doi.org/10.1111/inm.12735.
WHO (2013) ‘Global and Regional Estimates of Violence Against Women: Prevalence and Health Effects of Intimate Partner Violence and Non-Partner Sexual Violence’, available at https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/ 9789241564625. World Bank (2017) Economic Impacts of Child Marriage: Global Synthesis Brief, available at https://documents1.worldbank.org/ curated/en/454581498512494655/pdf/ 116832-BRI-P151842-PUBLIC-EICM-Brief -GlobalSynthesis-PrintReady.pdf.
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Early childhood development
What happens in early childhood?
An explosion of research has led to major advances in understanding the conditions under which children get off to a promising or worrisome start in life. Four advances are particularly noteworthy and will provide the foci for this entry. The first highlights the importance of early life experiences for the development of human behaviour and for the interacting biological systems that support healthy development. The second includes the powerful learning capabilities, complex emotions, and essential social skills that develop during the earliest years of life. The third points to the central role of early relationships as a source of adaptation and resilience or risk and dysfunction. The fourth concerns the unique malleability of development during early childhood and increasing knowledge about planned interventions that carry the greatest odds of improving early developmental outcomes and life trajectories. Early childhood development, as discussed in this entry, captures the birth through five-year-old age period, although the boundaries are fuzzy. It is widely recognized that prenatal development sets the stage for early childhood development and ages six to eight are a transition stage between early and middle childhood. As noted in the seminal report, From Neurons to Neighborhoods (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2020), demarcating the early childhood period with a birth-to-five window both ‘begins too late and ends too soon’ (p. x). While the timing of early experiences matters, the developing child remains vulnerable to risks and open to protective influences throughout childhood and adolescence.
Infants are born with an imperative and active capability to adapt to and learn from the surrounding world. They are active participants in their own development and are driven to explore and master their environments. The expression of this capability involves a complex interplay between nature (the genetic and neurobiological make-up of the child) and nurture (the contexts within which the child is reared). Nature shapes how children respond to their rearing contexts and is also deeply affected by these contexts. Even the expression of the child’s genetic code is far from pre-programmed but is, instead, affected by the physical and social environments the child encounters – processes under study within the relatively new field of epigenetics (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2010). The terminology of critical or sensitive periods is often used to characterize the unique nature of these dynamic early developmental processes. Such periods are defined as episodes in development when specific structures or functions have evolved to be especially dependent on, and thus susceptible to, the influence of specific essential experiences that, if absent or aberrant, do not develop normally (Bornstein, 1998). The early childhood years constitute a developmental window when the rapid consolidation of certain capacities (e.g. sensory and motor systems) is essential for successful adaptation, while other capacities (e.g. learning) retain lifelong flexibility to support adjustment to changing life circumstances. There is some experimental evidence, for example, that infants reared for more than two years in institutional settings without the essential experience of a consistent and sensitive caregiver are significantly less likely to establish a secure attachment or to acquire typical neurobiological responses to stress even when subsequently placed with a loving
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Early childhood development 209
foster family compared to infants placed with families earlier (Fox et al., 2017; McLaughlin et al., 2015). Yet, such developmental timing effects are both difficult to establish and rare, indicating that enduring capacities for some degree of recovery from adversity – however modest – are more the norm than are deterministic early sensitive periods. The unique nature of the early childhood years derives more from the rapidly developing nervous system – both its structures and functioning – that, if exposed to acute or prolonged exposure to adversity (i.e. experiences of threat and deprivation), can have long-term detrimental consequences for learning, behaviour, and health outcomes (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2020). Notably, the human stress response system, as well as structures that affect learning, language, behaviour regulation, executive functions, and emotion and reward processing, are acutely sensitive to the child’s surrounding contexts. These systems and structures are designed to actively recruit information from these contexts – for better or for worse – to calibrate and shape their functioning. If these early contexts are supportive and consistent, odds are that neurobiological development will proceed normally, reactions to stress will show a normal pattern of rapid response followed by a return to a regulated resting state, and behaviour and health (e.g. immune and metabolic functioning) will display typical developmental growth. If not, as has been documented in the context of chronic or severe poverty during early childhood, the odds of atypical neurobiological development are greatly increased as are risks for poor psychological and health outcomes (Chen et al., 2017; Merz & Noble, 2017).
What develops in early childhood?
The rate at which children acquire capacities, skills, and knowledge during the first five years of life is a source of amazement for parents and researchers alike. It is no surprise that the birth-to-five years are characterized as formative. The rapid pace of motor and language development are among the most salient features of early development. The child also becomes a social being with an array of deeply important relationships. Powerful communicative capacities develop. Knowledge about the surrounding world expands exponentially, as does the child’s
motivation to explore and act upon this world. Moreover, the child’s emotional repertoire and awareness grow to encompass a vast range of feelings. The tasks to be accomplished are wide-ranging (e.g. developing day/night rhythms, acquiring a rudimentary moral code, learning how to navigate peer groups). We owe much of what we know about ‘what develops’ in early childhood to the legacy of longitudinal studies that have followed children over time starting at birth or in infancy through the preschool years and beyond. These studies have identified several arenas of accomplishment that are especially important during early development: (1) transitioning from external to self-regulation, (2) acquiring language, reasoning, and problem-solving skills, and (3) learning to relate well to others, both children and adults. Negotiating the transition to self-regulation from complete dependence on others to do everything from falling asleep and eating to staying away from danger and managing one’s feelings is a central task of the early childhood years (McCoy, 2016). Self-regulation cuts across all aspects of human adaptation. It enables us to deal constructively with strong feelings (both negative and positive), impulses, thoughts, and distractions. As such it is often divided into the triad of emotion regulation, behaviour regulation, and attention regulation. The accomplishment of this task, and the major strides with which are made during the early childhood years, predicts a wide array of long-term academic, social, and mental health outcomes. In addition to being highly consequential for many future skills, self-regulation development is also highly vulnerable to disruption from various forms of adversity ranging from chronic and extreme poverty to maltreatment. Importantly, self-regulation development is malleable, meaning that it can be affected by interventions aimed at supporting young children who struggle with these capacities. The young child’s growing skills in communication, language, and problem-solving are also vitally important. They provide the path to success and persistence in school (National Research Council, 2000). A child’s academic skills at school entry are predictive of their educational outcomes in adolescence and beyond. They are also amenable to improvement through both home and Deborah A. Phillips
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early childhood programme-based efforts to support strong language and learning skills. Guided by early evidence from programmes like Head Start, successful interventions into young children’s school readiness skills have fuelled the national commitment to supporting public prekindergarten programmes. This research identified several active ingredients that foster these essential early learning capacities: (1) evidence-based, subject-specific curricula accompanied by aligned coaching for early childhood teachers, (2) adult–child interactions characterized by back-and-forth conversations and open-ended questions, and (3) learning activities that are sequenced and tailored to individual children’s skill levels and interests. Acquiring positive social interaction skills, particularly with peers, is another central developmental task of the early childhood years, and perhaps the most challenging (Hartup & Laursen, 1999). Consider the many skills involved: How to join a peer group, take turns, and sustain a bout of play? How to express and deal with one’s own and others’ expressions of strong emotions – both positive and negative? How to reason constructively about interpersonal dilemmas? How to help, share, and work together? How to navigate small and large group encounters? The consequences of how well a child acquires social skills and manages these challenges are pervasive. Young children who develop positive social interaction skills, become well liked, and have good friends are significantly more likely than those who do not get along well with others, let alone who are actively rejected, to do well in school and careers, to avoid later affiliations with deviant peer groups, and to have sustained strong mental health. The precursors of these differing pathways can be identified in the early childhood years, which has led to growing interest in the early detection of and intervention with young children at risk of conduct disorders, persistent noncompliance, and callousness to others’ distress.
What factors influence early development?
Influences on early development are broadly framed as risk factors that compromise developmental growth or protective factors that foster growth directly or shelter children from risk. Virtually all children experience both, Deborah A. Phillips
and developmental impacts arise from the accumulation and balance of risk and protective factors over time. The most potent early risk and protective factors arise in the proximal interactions that occur in young children’s families that are, in turn, conditioned by their surrounding contexts with regard to toxic exposures; neighbourhood safety or violence; and the policy, economic, and human resources to which they have access. The National Scientific Council on the Developing Child (2004) states clearly that ‘young children develop in an environment of relationships’. For each domain of development just discussed (and all others), the experiences, support, and encouragement that enable children to thrive are deeply embedded in their relationships with others, initially parents and parent-figures, then accompanied by other family members, caregivers and teachers, and friends. Children thrive when these relationships provide a sense of safety, security, and predictability. The power of these earliest relationships has been amply demonstrated by ‘deprivation’ studies of children reared in orphanages, mentioned above, and, at the other end of the spectrum, by studies of the ‘social buffering’ effect of secure parent–child attachments in the earliest years of life (Hostinar et al., 2014). The presence of sensitive, predictable, and responsive parents or parent figures in the context of potentially fear-inducing exposures (e.g. a thunderstorm, medical procedure, ill parent) protects the child’s feelings of safety and security observed behaviourally, as well as with regard to physiological stress responses. With over half of US children under the age of five in some form of out-of-home childcare, early childhood teachers and the environments they provide for young children are second only to parents and the home environment as a pervasive source of risk or protection during early development (Phillips, 2016). As with home environments, the experiences that children have in childcare vary widely and this variation affects developmental outcomes, though to a notably lesser extent than in home-based experiences. Parent–child attachment, for example, is minimally affected by the extent of children’s exposure to and experiences in childcare. Extensive research aimed at identifying the most developmentally consequential elements of childcare quality has targeted the
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proximal emotional (e.g. warmth, patience, lack of intrusiveness and hostility), behaviour management (supportive redirection vs. punishment), and instructional interactions that teachers have with the children in their care, the expression of which necessarily changes with the child’s age. The strongest developmental impacts of variation in quality are seen at relatively high levels of observational ratings which, unfortunately, are rarely seen in US childcare arrangements that have been characterized as ‘highly varying’ and typically ‘mediocre’ in quality (Zaslow et al., 2016). A relatively new area of research into how children’s environments affect their development has highlighted the importance of individual differences in children’s responses. For example, children who vary in their temperaments respond differently to intrusive and harsh interactions from their teachers. Those who are shy and reticent by nature are more likely to respond with anxiety and stress to such interactions than are their more easy-going peers (Gunnar et al., 2011). The term now used to describe this phenomenon is biological sensitivity to context (Boyce, 2019; Ellis et al., 2011). This term captures two important concepts. First, some children seem to be constitutionally more reactive to their surroundings (sometimes called ‘orchid children’) for reasons that remain to be understood, though temperament appears to be one of the disposing factors. Second, while these children are more likely than others (called ‘dandelion children’ in contrast) to struggle when exposed to adversity they also are more likely to do extremely well when their experiences surround them with sensitivity, reassurance, and stability. This evidence has modified views of risk and protection not as inherent in specific circumstances but rather as descriptors of circumstances for which the developmental impacts depend on what the child brings to the experiences.
What can be done to change the course of early development?
The rapid pace and openness to environmental conditions that characterize early development bring with them powerful opportunities to intervene when life circumstances pose challenges that exceed young children’s capacities for healthy adaptation. Whether it
be severe poverty, child abuse and neglect, maternal depression, domestic and community violence, or malnutrition and poor health, developmental scientists have sought to deploy their empirical knowledge in the service of designing successful interventions and public policies for improving early developmental outcomes and life trajectories. The accumulated knowledge from years of early intervention efforts has generated some key lessons, as well as some disappointments (Votruba-Drzl & Dearing, 2017). The key lessons include several important shifts from (a) involving parents in early childhood intervention programmes to dual generation approaches that develop the skills of parents while also providing young children with high quality services; (b) offering instruction to parents to highly participatory approaches involving video-taped adult–child interaction sessions followed by joint coach–parent analysis; (c) a focus on compensating for problems to building on strengths, catching moments when adults ‘do things right’, and incorporating cultural assets; and (d) short-term consultation to long-term access to coaching and mentoring, including mental health coaching for both adults and children. The disappointments pertain to implementation and child impacts, especially at scale. All too often, a model programme that demonstrates strong impacts fails to maintain strong implementation fidelity, and thus strong impacts, when offered on a larger scale. In response, intervention scientists are now turning their attention to the heterogeneity of impacts that interventions invariably produce and attempting to isolate ‘for whom’ specific strategies are most effective. They are also calling for an additional shift from designing intervention programmes to building platforms, community infrastructure, and public policies focused on preventing the need for specialized interventions (Dodge & Goodman, 2019). For example, paediatric care practices – a near-universal platform in every community – are now being redesigned as a powerful delivery channel for individualized approaches to mitigating the consequences of early adversity. With regard to public policy, investments in young children in the United States confront several challenges, two of which are especially prominent. The first is a deeply held value around family privacy in which Deborah A. Phillips
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government supports are portrayed as intrusive, stigmatizing, and even threatening. These sentiments are stronger the younger the child involved. The second is our system of federalism in which the states, rather than the federal government (with the exception of tax provisions and public expenditures on healthcare), assume most of the responsibility for child and family policies. As a consequence, efforts to affect many key areas of public policy that affect the daily lives of young children (e.g. early education, child welfare services, social services) must often be directed at 50 different state governments, or even county and municipal entities, rather than a central federal agency. The private sector also plays a large role in policies such as family leave, for which the United States still does not have a national paid family leave policy, and wages, which perpetuates vast income equities for young children and their families. Perhaps the starkest demonstration of this policy context is the disparity between the 25 per cent of the population that consists of 0–19-year-olds and the 9 per cent of federal expenditure that is directed to this age group. While we have learned a lot about how best to redirect development towards promising lifelong outcomes, our capacities to detect problems early and to mobilize the necessary resources to address them at scale, let alone nationally, are limited. The next generation of work in this arena is looking to existing community-based programmes and services, as well as localized public policy levers, to reach a broader, if not universal, swath of young children and their families before serious problems arise.
Summary
Scientific advances of the past decade have generated a much deeper understanding of the unique importance of what happens during early child development and how much it matters for lifelong health and well-being, the central role of early relationships in the intricate nature-with-nurture processes involved, and the opportunities this initial stage of development presents to prevent and quickly address threats to each child’s capacity to fulfil her potential. While these early years do not provide an indelible blueprint for adult outcomes, they do establish either a sturdy or Deborah A. Phillips
fragile stage on which subsequent development is constructed. Deborah A. Phillips
References
Bornstein, M.H. (1998). Sensitive periods in development: Structural characteristics and causal interpretations. Psychological Bulletin, 105(2), 179–97. Boyce, W.T. (2019). The Orchid and the Dandelion: Why Some Children Struggle and How All Can Thrive. Knopf. Chen, E., Brody, G.H., & Miller, G.E. (2017). Childhood close family relationships and health. American Psychologist, 72(6), 555–66. Dodge, K.A., & Goodman, W.B (2019). Universal reach at birth: Family connects. The Future of Children, 29(1), 41–60. Ellis, B.J., Boyce, W.T., Belsky, J. Bakermans-Kranenburg, M.J., & van Ijzendoorn, M.H. (2011). Differential susceptibility to the environment: An evolutionary-neurodevelopmental theory. Development and Psychopathology, 23, 7–28. Fox, N.A., Nelson, C.A., & Zeanah, C.H. (2017). The effects of psychosocial deprivation on attachment: Lessons from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project. Psychodynamic Psychiatry, 45(4), 441–50. Gunnar, M., Kryzer, E., Van Ryzin, M., & Phillips, D. (2011). The import of the cortisol rise at child care differs as a function of behavioral inhibition. Developmental Psychology, 47(3), 792–803. Hartup, W.W., & Laursen, B. (1999). Relationships as developmental contexts: Retrospective themes and contemporary issues. In W.A. Collins & B. Laursen (eds), Relationships and the Developmental Significance: The Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology, Vol. 29 (pp. 13–35). Erlbaum. Hostinar, C.E., Sullivan, R.M., & Gunnar, M.R. (2014). Psychobiological mechanisms underlying the social buffering of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis: A review of animal models and human studies across development. Psychological Bulletin, 140 (1), 256–82. McCoy, D.C. (2016). Early adversity, self-regulation, and child development. In N.K. Lesaux & S.M. Jones (eds), The Leading Edge of Early Childhood Education: Linking Science to Policy for a New Generation (pp. 29–44). Harvard Education Press. McLaughlin, K.A., Sheridan, M.A., Tibu, F., Fox, N.A., Zeanah, C.H., & Nelson, C.A. (2015). Causal effects of the early caregiving environment on development of stress response systems in children. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112, 5637–42.
Early childhood development 213 Merz, E.C., & Noble, G.K. (2017). Neural development in context: Differences in neural structure and function associated with adverse childhood experiences. In E. Votruba-Drzal & E. Dearing (eds), Handbook of Early Childhood Development Programs, Practices, and Policies (pp. 135–60). John Wiley & Sons. National Research Council (2000). Eager to Learn: Educating Our Preschoolers. Committee on Early Childhood Pedagogy, Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. National Academy Press. National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. (2004). Young Children Develop in an Environment of Relationships, Working Paper No. 1. National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. National Scientific Council on the Developing Child (2010). Early Experiences Can Alter Gene Expression and Affect Long-Term Development, Working Paper No. 10. National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. National Scientific Council on the Developing Child (2020). Connecting the Brain to the Rest of the Body: Early Childhood Development and Lifelong Health Are Deeply Intertwined, Working Paper No. 15. National Scientific Council on the Developing Child.
Phillips, D. (2016). Integrating enriched learning and protection from toxic stress in early education settings. In S. Jones & N. Leseau (eds), Leading Edge in Early Childhood Education (pp. 7–28). Harvard University Press. Shonkoff, J., & Phillips, D. (eds) (2000). From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development. National Academy Press. Votruba-Drzal, E., & Dearing, E. (2017). Handbook of Early Childhood Development Programs, Practices, and Policies. John Wiley & Sons. Zaslow, M., Anderson, R., Redd, Z., Wessel, J., Daneri, P., Green, K., Cavadel, E.W., Tarullo, L., Burchinal, M., & Martinez-Beck, I. (2016). Quality thresholds, features, and dosage in early care and education: Secondary data analysis of child outcomes. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 81(2), 7–26.
Deborah A. Phillips
Education and development The relationship between education and development is often misdefined as being about education for development. Even more problematically, it slides into a focus on schooling for economic development. That is to say, the broader debate about the complex, multifaceted and multidirectional relationship between the wider range of forms of education and the multiple dimensions of development gets reduced to the extent to which schooling supports economic development (McGrath, 2018). This narrow education–development relationship is grounded theoretically in an economics of education tradition that came to prominence c.1960 with the emergence of human capital theory. That this coincided with a major wave of political decolonization, especially in Africa, is highly significant as it gave the new field of aid a ready set of tools for considering the relative importance of education generally for economic take-off, and an ability to differentiate between the rates of return to investments in the various sub-sectors of education. This in turn reinforced the new theoretical account as a new cadre of economists of education found employment in ministries, aid agencies and think tanks, supporting growth in graduate programmes and academic employment. Whilst some remain wedded to this monodimensional and narrow understanding of education–development relationship, particularly in the world of official development assistance, the majority view in the academic field is that both development and education are inherently contestable concepts both individually and in relation to each other. In what follows, I will sketch out some aspects of these contestations through a very stylized account of five dimensions of the development and education relationship. In doing so, I will stress throughout the need to go beyond schooling to think of lifelong learning across settings, including informal learning.
Education and economic development
That education is a good investment at family, community and national level is pop-
ularly accepted. In economics this emerged as a formal theoretical account in the 1960s (Becker, 1964). The new human capital theory argued that formal education was an importance source of human capital, which, in turn, was a key contributor to productivity. By the early 1970s, this account became established in the World Bank, and the Bank began to supplant UNESCO as the leading global actor in education and development. If education is indeed an investment in human capital, then it is subject to the same calculations as pertain to other investments. Thus, investment in education became increasingly subject to the question of whether it was justified, at household and/or national level, because its expected rate of return on education was higher than the alternative rate of return from other possible investments. Quickly, this led to analyses that showed that some education investments tended to be better than others. Three World Bank studies from approximately 40 years ago were central to this and continue to have massive sway, even though they have been widely critiqued and reflect very different economic and educational contexts than today. Cochrane (1979) showed that girls’ (primary) education was a good investment as it reduced both fertility and infant mortality. Lockheed, Jamison and Lau (1980) showed that only a few years of lower primary school education were enough to make rural farmers more productive. Most influentially, Psacharopoulos (1981) confirmed that primary schooling gave the best rate of return on investment. Inevitably, the field has matured considerably in the past 40 years. Most importantly, the initial use of years of schooling as a key variable has been replaced by a focus on educational quality, often measured by data from major international surveys such as the Programme for International Student Assessment and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. In our different context regarding the supply and demand for human capital, the argument that primary schooling is the best investment has been revisited, although consensus here has been hard to find, with studies claiming that everything from early childhood education to higher education provides the best investment. The approach has always faced criticisms. Even within economics of education, there are arguments that the data is simply not robust enough both on
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Education and development 215
the education and labour market sides. Many argue that the social rate of return is systematically underestimated in many studies. Accounts from heterodox economics, science and technology studies, and sociology point to a far more complex interplay between firms, state and market that drive innovation in economic development, whilst feminist economists point to the systematic undercounting of the value of women’s work. Nonetheless, it has been the most influential approach to education and development for more than half a century.
Education and human development
If the emergence of the education and economic development literature can be tied to the wave of optimism during the wave of formal decolonization at the start of the 1960s, then the education and human development account can perhaps be dated from a moment of increased pessimism only a few years later. By the end of that decade, confident promises about economic take-off fuelled by rapidly growing schooling were being contrasted with concerns about ‘educated unemployment’ as many of the newly schooled youth were not finding ‘real’ jobs. This led to a growing interest in rural and non-formal education and the ‘discovery’ of the informal sector. The emergence of the basic needs approach to development (Streeten, 1979) and the human development index stressed the need to see development not just in narrow economic terms. This flowed into the human development and capability approach (HDCA), in which ‘Development can be seen … as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy’ (Sen 1999: 3). Education is seen as playing a key role in this expansion. In particular, it is seen as a necessary tool for building the reasoning individuals need to identify their capabilities. Moreover, education is routinely identified in such capabilities’ lists. By stressing that development is about more than income (and, by inference, jobs) and that it should be defined by individuals, HDCA opens up a wider set of possibilities for why people participate in education. This includes strategies to gain better recognition within their communities, and to serve their communities. It has led to engagement
with alternative accounts of the nature of work, including from the feminist economics tradition and the sustainable livelihoods approach. It implicitly also opens up a broader focus on lifelong learning rather than the schooling-dominated account under human capital theory. Significant amounts of HDCA and education research are focused on adult, vocational and higher education. In all of this, there is an important shift to seeing learners as more agentic. However, increasingly the literature, particularly on vocational education and training and capabilities, has sought to balance the individualistic and agentic aspects of the approach with a stronger focus on relationality and on the structural barriers faced by learners (McGrath et al., 2020). At the educational institutional level, a capabilities approach offers an alternative way of thinking about success. Rather than a human capital/new public management approach that holds institutions externally accountable for pass rates and employment destinations, the HDCA approach focuses on the extent to which institutions promote the capabilities of their learners. HDCA accounts of education and development have faced less sustained critique than the human capital account. HDCA generally has been critiqued for its limited attention to issues of structure and power. As noted above, work in the education and human development tradition has increasingly sought to address this. Nonetheless, as with HDCA more widely, there are concerns that the education and human development approach is not easily operationalized. Nonetheless, some policy influence has been evident, particularly on UNESCO, and some institutions have sought to draw on the approach in their practices.
Education and sustainable development
The origins of the sustainable development approach can also be traced back to the 1960s albeit to a concern with how economic development was progressing in the North. From Carson (1962) on, a number of authors highlighted the environmental damage being brought by advanced capitalism and questioned the implicit assumption of the economic development approach that growth was infinite (Meadows et al., 1972). Simon McGrath
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These concerns entered into global policy debates in the early 1970s before coming to wider attention in 1987 with the Brundtland Commission report, Our Common Future (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1988). These reports sought to find a way to harmonize economic development and environmental sustainability. However, more radical academic and activist voices have continued to argue that this is impossible. As the environmental crisis mounts, so there are increasingly calls for some form of radical repositioning of economic systems to ensure that we both remain within planetary boundaries of natural systems sustainability and meet social needs (Raworth, 2017). This tension between more ameliorative and transformational views of sustainable development is mirrored in the education for sustainable development (ESD) literature. Vare and Scott (2007) characterize these as ESD1 and ESD2. The former is about changing attitudes, behaviours and skills to be more sustainable but is critiqued as expert-led and top-down, telling people what they need to learn and do. The latter, in contrast, emphasizes learning for collective agency but rejects any blueprints regarding what sustainable futures might look like. Based in a critical reading of education as complicit in unsustainability, authors such as Wals (2020) emphasize the need for an education that promotes criticality, emancipation and relationality. Both approaches fit with a wider educational interest in place-based education – a concern with grounding curriculum in local contexts and knowledge systems and then connecting these out to wider national and global issues and debates. They have led to a series of movements to ‘green’ educational institutions. However, such initiatives are seen as being more typically in ESD1 mode, the radical message of ESD2 being far less palatable for formal education systems and institutions. This has led to some in the ESD tradition to focus much more on non-formal and informal learning sites. As with education for human development, the approach is still largely located within its own academic bubble, making as yet limited impact on wider education and development debates. However, the growing awareness of the scale and urgency of the environmental challenge is beginning to change this. There Simon McGrath
are attempts to bring together the human development and sustainable development perspectives, such as when Tikly (2020: 57) argues for an ESD that is ‘socially and environmentally just education that facilitates the capabilities of existing and future generations and of natural systems to flourish’.
Education and human rights
Whilst not couched in development terms, the rights-based approach also is influential in the education and development literature. This draws from the well-established international systems of rights conventions that build on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). In terms of education, Article 26.1 of the UDHR begins: ‘Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory.’ This is developed most significantly by the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Whilst being powerfully in support of education for all, the rights-based approach has led to a particular focus on the educational inclusion of the most marginalized. This was developed into a comprehensive analytical framework by the first UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, Katarina Tomaševski, through her 4A approach (2001): Availability – Not just that education is free in legal and policy terms but that there is adequate infrastructure and trained teachers able to support the delivery of education. Accessibility – The education system is non-discriminatory and accessible to all, and positive steps are taken to include the most marginalized. Acceptability– The content of education is relevant, non-discriminatory and culturally appropriate, and of quality; schools are safe, and teachers are professional. Adaptability– Education evolves with the changing needs of society and challenges inequalities, such as gender discrimination; education adapts to suit locally specific needs and contexts. As with the ESD account, there is disagreement regarding how the approach has been used in practice. McGrath (2018) argues that
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the apparent agreement of a rights and an economic argument is what has made education such as key part of the Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals. This can rightly be seen as a major achievement. Rights lawyers and NGOs have won a series of important victories holding governments to account for limited compliance with international and national legal frameworks. The girls’ education agenda has been particularly strongly advanced by the combination of economic and rights language. However, there are arguments that the rights agenda has been compromised in this process. Right to education academics and activists argue that we have achieved a highly restricted form of the right to education that meets none of the 4As and which still discriminates hugely against migrants and refugees, girls with early pregnancies, ethnic minorities and many others. Moreover, there is a real tension between the rights and development communities regarding the role of private providers in delivering schooling, particularly where these providers are international chains, supported both by philanthrocapitalism and official development assistance. Moreover, whilst the human and sustainable development accounts see an important place for adult, vocational and community education, the right to education approach has focused much more narrowly on children and schooling, reflecting the influence of the CRC. There are concerns too that an emphasis on measuring compliance can lead to over-emphasis on what is measurable in education.
Contesting education and development
In both education and development research communities there are those who offer radical critiques of these often-uncontested concepts. Hints of this have been present above, particularly around ESD2 but it is time to focus more closely on this issue. In development studies, there have been waves of anti-, post- and alternative development accounts. Alternative development accounts often seek to ground themselves in Southern concepts such as Buen Vivir, swaraj and ubuntu/ukama. These are all more radically relational than in Northern schema, extending this relationality beyond
other persons to nature and, often, to god(s). In keeping with the human and sustainable development accounts, these stress the need to think and act beyond the economic domain. Ziai (2015) argues that there is much to applaud in these accounts as they seek to engage with development practice in reflexive ways. However, he is critical of what he sees as a neo-populist strand of anti-development thinking that romanticizes peasant society and which critiques developmental thinking amongst the poor as false consciousness. The education accounts above all tend to assume that education is a good thing, although some of both the human and sustainable development literatures does see education as complicit in capability diminution and/or unsustainability. However, there is a more critical tradition that sees education as violence condoning and producing. Education is charged with contributing to actual ethnic, sexual and class-based violence. More broadly, it is accused of committing symbolic violence, epistemic injustice and linguicide through a prioritizing of certain cultures, languages and knowledges over others (Santos, 2014). Bringing together critical accounts of education and development serves largely to develop a critique of existing assumptions and practices. However, there are elements of education for human and sustainable development that align with alternative development accounts. In doing do, they emphasize the need for education that stresses relationality and criticality. This leads some of them to look at alternative forms of education as having the most potential to bring about more just and people-driven forms of development.
Conclusions
Of course, a balanced academic view of the relationship between education and development would note that there is an overall correlation between levels of formal education and economic indicators at the individual, firm and country levels. However, it is clear that the relationship is both bigger and messier than that. One thing that is striking in what I have presented above is that this is not really an academic debate. Rather, most of what is going on is conducted in separate disciplinary and ideological silos. This is to the detriment of the debate but, more importantly to pracSimon McGrath
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tice and policy. Regardless of any argument about what education does or does not do, it is also clearly established in international law that education (or at least some aspects of it) is a human right. However, we need to go beyond this and focus on what individuals and communities are saying about what they value in both education and development. Simon McGrath
References
Becker, G. (1964) Human Capital, Columbia University Press, New York. Carson, R. (1962) Silent Spring, Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Cochrane, S. (1979) Fertility and Education, World Bank, Washington. Lockheed, M., Jamison, D. and Lau, L. (1980) ‘Farmer education and farm efficiency’. Economic Development and Cultural Change 29(1): 37–76. McGrath, S. (2018) Education and Development, Routledge, Abingdon. McGrath, S., Powell, L., Alla-Mensah, J., Hilal, R. and Suart, R. (2020) ‘New VET theories for new times’. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, https://www.tandfonline.com/ doi/ref/10.1080/13636820.2020.1786440.
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Meadows, D.H., Meadows, D.L., Randers, J. and Behrens, W. (1972) The Limits to Growth, Universe Books, New York. Psacharopoulos, G. (1981) ‘Returns to education’. Comparative Education 17(3): 321–41. Raworth, K. (2017) Doughnut Economics, Penguin, Harmondsworth. Santos, B. (2014) Epistemologies of the South, Routledge, Abingdon. Sen, A. (1999) Development as Freedom, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Streeten, P. (1979) ‘Basic needs’. Journal of Policy Modeling 1, 136–46. Tikly, L. (2020) Education for Sustainable Development in the Post-colonial World, Routledge, Abingdon. Tomaševski, K. (2001) Human Rights Obligations, http://www.right-to-education.org/sites/right -to-education.org/files/resource-attachments/ Tomasevski_Primer%203.pdf. Vare, P. and Scott, W. (2007) ‘Learning for a change’. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development 1(2): 191–8. Wals, A. (2020) ‘Transgressing the hidden curriculum of unsustainability’. Educational Philosophy and Theory 52(8): 825–6. World Commission on Environment and Development (1988) Our Common Future (Brundtland Report), Fontana, London. Ziai, A. (2015) ‘Post-development’. Development and Change 46(4): 833–54.
Energy and development What is the role of energy in economic activity?
The economic system must operate within the constraints determined by the laws of physics and human knowledge of technology. Production, including household production, requires energy to carry out work to convert materials into desired products and to transport raw materials, goods, and people. The second law of thermodynamics implies that energy cannot be recycled and that there are limits to how much energy efficiency can be improved. Therefore, energy is an essential factor of production, and continuous supplies of energy are needed to maintain existing levels of economic activity as well as to grow and develop the economy (Stern, 1997). The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created and so energy (and matter) must be extracted from the environment. Also, energy must be invested in order to capture useful energy (Hall et al., 1986). Before the Industrial Revolution, economies depended on energy from agricultural crops and wood as well as a smaller amount of wind and waterpower, all of which are directly dependent on the sun (Kander et al., 2014). This is still largely the case in the rural areas of the least developed countries. While solar
energy is abundant and inexhaustible, it is very diffuse compared to concentrated fossil fuels. This is why the shift to fossil fuels in the Industrial Revolution relaxed the constraints on energy supply and, therefore, on production and growth (Wrigley, 1988).
How does energy use change with economic development?
Figure 1 shows that energy use per capita increases with GDP per capita, so that richer countries tend to use more energy per person than poorer countries. The slope of the logarithmic regression line implies that a 1 per cent increase in income per capita is associated with a 0.8 per cent increase in energy use per capita. As a result, energy intensity – energy used per dollar of GDP – is on average lower in higher income countries. These relationships have been very stable over the last several decades (Csereklyei et al., 2016). Energy intensity in today’s middle-income countries is similar to that in today’s developed countries when they were at the same income level (van Benthem, 2015). Energy intensity has also converged across countries over time, so that countries that were more energy intensive in the 1970s tended to reduce their energy intensity by more than less energy intensive-countries, and the least energy-intensive countries often increased in energy intensity. Though data
Sources: GDP data from the Penn World Table version 10 (https://doi.org/10.15141/S5Q94M) and energy data from the International Energy Agency World Energy Balances.
Figure 1
GDP and energy use per capita
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are limited to fewer and fewer countries as we go back further in time, these relationships also appear to hold over the last two centuries – energy use increased, energy intensity declined globally, and countries converged in energy intensity (Csereklyei et al., 2016). Though data is even more limited, it seems that the share of energy in consumption expenditure and production costs also declines as countries develop (Csereklyei et al., 2016; Burke et al., 2018). The mix of fuels used changes over the course of economic development. Figure 2 shows the average mix of energy sources in each of five groups of countries ordered by income per capita in 2018. In the lowest income countries in the sample (approximately below $5,000 per capita in 2017 purchasing power parity (PPP) adjusted dollars), traditional use of biomass such as wood and agricultural waste dominates, and oil use for transportation as well as electricity generation and other uses is the second most important energy source. As we move to richer countries, the relative role of biomass declines radically, and first oil and then natural gas and primary electricity increase in importance. Note that biomass use per capita in the richest quintile (above $40,000 per capita) is actually greater than in the lowest quintile, as total energy use increases with income. The ways in which this biomass is used will of course be quite different. Higher quality fuels are those that provide more economic value per joule of energy content
by being converted more efficiently, being more flexible or convenient to use, and by producing less pollution. We would expect that lower income households would be more willing to tolerate the inconvenience and pollution caused by using lower quality fuels to produce energy services. So as household income increases, we would expect households to gradually ascend an ‘energy ladder’ by consuming higher quality fuels and more total energy. Recent studies often find a more ambiguous picture where multiple fuels are used simultaneously as modern fuels are added to the use of traditional fuels (Gregory & Stern, 2014). In 2016, approximately one billion people remained without access to electricity at home (International Energy Agency, 2017). Around 85 per cent of these people lived in rural areas. There has been rapid progress in electrification in recent years with both grid expansion and the spread of off-grid systems (Burke et al., 2018; Lee et al., 2020). Due to the complexity and costs of electricity-sector management and constrained and weak institutions, power supply is usually less reliable in developing countries than in developed countries (Figure 3) and electricity theft is also more common (Burke et al., 2018). Best and Burke (2017) found that countries with higher levels of government effectiveness have achieved greater progress in providing access to reliable electricity. Industry and other electricity consumers, therefore, often
Sources: GDP data from the Penn World Table version 10 (https://doi.org/10.15141/S5Q94M) and energy data from the International Energy Agency World Energy Balances.
Figure 2
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Fuel mix and development
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rely on self-generation of electricity, but this is a costly solution (Fingleton-Smith, 2020).
Does energy use drive economic growth?
Economic growth refers to the process that results in increasing GDP per capita over time while development refers to a broader range of indicators including health, education, and other dimensions of human welfare. However, GDP per capita is highly, although not perfectly, correlated with broader development measures (Jones & Klenow, 2016), and so it is worth considering what the role of energy is in economic growth. Mainstream economic growth models largely ignore the role of energy in economic growth and focus on technological change as the long-run driver of growth. On the other hand, there is a resource economics literature that investigates whether limited energy or other resources could constrain growth. By contrast, many ecological economists believe that energy plays the central role in driving growth and point to the switch from traditional energy sources to fossil fuels as the cause of the Industrial Revolution (Stern, 2011). To reconcile these opposing views, Stern and Kander (2012) modified Solow’s
neoclassical growth model (Solow, 1956) by adding an energy input that has low substitutability with capital and labour. Their model also breaks down technological change into those innovations that directly increase the productivity of energy – energy-augmenting technical change – and those that increase the productivity of labour – labour-augmenting technical change. In this model, when energy is superabundant, the level of the capital stock and output are determined by the same functions of the same factors as in the Solow model. But when energy is relatively scarce, the size of the capital stock and the level of output depends on the level of energy supply and the level of energy-augmenting technology. Therefore, in the pre-industrial era and possibly when energy was scarce – and possibly in developing countries today – the level of output was determined by the supply of energy and the level of energy augmenting technology. Until the Industrial Revolution, output per capita was generally low and economic growth was not sustained (Maddison, 2001). After the Industrial Revolution, as energy became more and more abundant, the long-run behaviour of the model economy becomes more and more like the Solow growth model. If this model is a reasonable representation of reality, then mainstream
Source: http://reports.weforum.org/pdf/gci-2017–2018-scorecard/WEF_GCI_2017_2018_Scorecard_EOSQ064.pdf.
Figure 3
Electricity reliability and development, 2017
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economists are not so wrong to ignore the role of energy in economic growth in developed economies where energy is abundant, but their models have limited applicability to both earlier historical periods and possibly to today’s developing countries. McCulloch and Zileviciute (2017) find that electricity is often cited as a binding constraint on growth in the World Bank’s enterprise surveys. Energy is expensive relative to wages in developing countries. The price of oil is set globally, and the share of electricity in costs or expenditures can be very high in middle income countries (Burke et al., 2018).
Electricity and development
Access to energy and electricity, in particular, is a key priority for policymakers and donors in low-income countries. For example, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 7 targets universal access to modern energy by 2030. Electrification can allow poor households to have easy access to lighting for evening chores or studying and power for phone charging and for a range of new small business activities, both on and off the farm (Lee et al., 2020). Electricity access allows a reallocation of household time, especially for women, away from obtaining energy, for example by collecting firewood, and towards more productive activities. Electricity could also provide health benefits by allowing deeper wells, refrigeration, reduced exposure to smoke and so on (Toman & Jemelkova, 2003). The micro-level effect of electrification is a growing area of empirical research (Lee et al., 2020). While micro studies typically suggest positive impacts of electrification on income and other development outcomes, more recent quasi-experimental approaches such as randomized controlled trials typically find a smaller impact for electrification than earlier studies did (Lee et al., 2020). Estimates of the effect of electricity infrastructure on economic growth are typically small. One of the best studies (Calderón et al., 2015) estimates the elasticity of GDP with respect to electricity generation capacity as 0.03 (Burke et al., 2018). Lee et al. (2020) argue that providing poor households with access to electricity alone is not enough to improve economic and David I. Stern
noneconomic outcomes in a meaningful way. Complementary inputs are needed, which will accumulate very slowly. Imagination and role models are also important in understanding how to exploit electricity to develop businesses (Fingleton-Smith, 2020). When electricity becomes available in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa, it is often not used to power agricultural or other productive activities (Bernard, 2012). Institutions are also vital for attaining broad-based benefits from electricity in developing countries. Many developing countries have reformed their electricity sectors during the last few decades, mostly towards market liberalization and corporatization. These efforts have only been partially successful in promoting efficient pricing and greater electricity access (Jamasb et al., 2017). Studies assessing the economic effects of these reforms are scarce. The effects on economic growth seem positive, while the effects on poverty are mixed (Jamasb et al., 2017). In this context, technology transfer and development finance will be critical for increasing the use of electricity in developing countries (Madlener, 2009). Burke et al. (2018) examined electrification success stories – countries that, from a low level of economic development, have now achieved near-universal electricity access as well as relatively high levels of electricity use. These countries are South Korea, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Egypt, and Paraguay. The first four are well-known development success stories too. Paraguay has abundant hydroelectricity and both Paraguay and Egypt have had relatively strong economic growth. Egypt has been less successful in providing a reliable electricity supply. The most successful countries in increasing access in sub-Saharan Africa have been South Africa and Ghana, which both suffer from unreliable electricity, which constrains economic activity. David I. Stern
References
Bernard, T. (2012). Impact analysis of rural electrification projects in sub-Saharan Africa. World Bank Research Observer, 27(1), 33–51. Best, R., & Burke, P.J. (2017). The importance of government effectiveness for transitions toward greater electrification in developing countries. Energies, 10(9), 1247.
Energy and development 223 Burke P.J., Stern, D.I., & Bruns, S.B. (2018). The impact of electricity on economic development: a macroeconomic perspective. International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics, 12(1), 85–127. Calderón, C., Moral-Benito, E., & Servén, L. (2015). Is infrastructure capital productive? A dynamic heterogeneous approach. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 30, 177–98. Csereklyei, Z., Rubio Varas, M.d.M., & Stern, D.I. (2016). Energy and economic growth: the stylized facts. Energy Journal, 37(2), 223–55. Fingleton-Smith, E. (2020). Blinded by the light: the need to nuance our expectations of how modern energy will increase productivity for the poor in Kenya. Energy Research & Social Science, 70, 101731. Gregory, J., & Stern, D.I. (2014). Fuel choices in rural Maharashtra. Biomass and Bioenergy, 70, 302–14. Hall, C.A.S., Cleveland, C.J., & Kaufmann, R.K. (1986). Energy and Resource Quality: The Ecology of the Economic Process. Wiley Interscience. International Energy Agency (2017). Energy Access Outlook 2017: From Poverty to Prosperity. World Energy Outlook Special Report. Jamasb, T., Nepal, R., & Timilsina, G.R. (2017). A quarter century effort yet to come of age: a survey of electricity sector reform in developing countries. Energy Journal, 38(3), 195–234. Jones, C.I., & Klenow, P.J. (2016). Beyond GDP? Welfare across countries and time. American Economic Review, 106(9), 2426–57. Kander, A., Malanima, P., & Warde, P. (2014). Power to the People: Energy in Europe over the Last Five Centuries. Princeton University Press.
Lee, K., Miguel, E., & Wolfram, C. (2020). Does household electrification supercharge economic development? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 34(1), 122–44. Maddison, A. (2001). The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective. OECD. Madlener, R. (2009). The economics of energy in developing countries. In L.C. Hunt & J. Evans (eds), International Handbook on the Economics of Energy. Edward Elgar. McCulloch, N., & Zileviciute, D. (2017). Is electricity supply a binding constraint to economic growth in developing countries? EEG State-of-Knowledge Paper Series 1.3. Solow, R.M. (1956). A contribution to the theory of economic growth. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 70, 65–94. Stern, D.I. (1997). Limits to substitution and irreversibility in production and consumption: a neoclassical interpretation of ecological economics. Ecological Economics, 21, 197–215. Stern, D.I. (2011). The role of energy in economic growth. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1219, 26–51. Stern, D.I., & Kander, A. (2012). The role of energy in the industrial revolution and modern economic growth. Energy Journal, 33(3), 125–52. Toman, M.A., & Jemelkova, B. (2003). Energy and economic development: an assessment of the state of knowledge. Energy Journal, 24(4), 93–112. van Benthem, A.A. (2015). Energy leapfrogging. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 2(1), 93–132. Wrigley, E.A. (1988). Continuity, Chance, and Change: The Character of the Industrial Revolution in England. Cambridge University Press.
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Ester Boserup Introduction
Born in Copenhagen on 18 May 1910, Ester Borgesen graduated as Ester Boserup in 1935 with a Candidatus Politices, an MA-level degree she described as mostly theoretical economics plus courses in sociology and agricultural policy (Boserup, 1999). She worked for the Danish government (1935–47), a period in which she gave birth to three children, and the UN Economic Commission of Europe (1947–65) on agricultural trade policy. In this last capacity, she and her husband, Mogens Boserup, worked in India from 1957 to 1960, an experience that transformed her view on agricultural development. Returning to Denmark, Boserup took on consultancies and served on various commissions as she penned her most important works, at least two of which would have far reaching impacts on interdisciplinary research and real-world practice, become the subjects of intensive academic scrutiny, and lead to her award of three honorary doctorate degrees in the agricultural (Wageningen), economic (Copenhagen), and human sciences (Brown). Boserup was elected Foreign Associate, National Academy of Sciences, USA, 1989. She died in Geneva, Switzerland, 24 September 1999.1
Ester Boserup’s lifetime achievements
Boserup appeared on the international, trans-disciplinary scene in 1965 with the publication of her landmark book, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population Pressure (Boserup, 1965). This book offered a powerful set of ideas in opposition to neo-Malthusian and other prevailing ideas of the time about agricultural development, and ‘underdevelopment’ more generally. Her book was discovered and enthusiastically embraced by other social sciences, foremost those parts of anthropology and geography dealing with subsistence, smallholder farming systems. By now, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth has been published by five different publishing houses in 17 issues from 1965 to 2008, and translated into French, Swedish, Japanese, and Estonian.
For three reasons, this book, and possibly even more so, her later books on Woman’s Role in Economic Development (1970) and The Impact of Population Growth on Agricultural Output (1975), were timely and special interventions into the ongoing development debate. First, they opposed the widespread conviction that the key to avoiding environmental overuse of the planet was containing population growth. This conviction, derived from Thomas Malthus who propagated it for England as early as 1798, was passionately re-animated by Paul Ehrlich’s book, The Population Bomb – Population Control or Race to Oblivion in 1968, calling for restrictive birth control measures.2 Second, she reversed the causality, arguing that increases in population (or land) pressure trigger the development or use of technologies and management strategies to increase production commensurate with demand. Agricultural intensity thus rises with population density. Mirroring the ideas of the Russian A.V. Chayanov (Chayanov, 1925/1966), she argued that the behaviour of subsistence farmers differed from commercial ones (Boserup, 1975).3 Subsistence farmers responded to household (consumption) more so than to market demand and sought to minimize risk to household needs, not maximize gain, affecting the allocation of land, labour, and landesque capital.4 Farmers shifted known techno-managerial strategies, or explored innovations in them, only if land–labour dynamics pressured them to do so. This production logic was subsequently demonstrated to be present, side-by-side or variously mixed with market behaviour, among many smallholder households worldwide (Brookfield, 1972, 2001; Dorsey, 1999; Netting, 1993). Substantial work since the early 2000s continues to find links between land pressures and agricultural intensification or to demonstrate the rudiments of household production logic, thus underpinning Boserup’s thesis (Carswell, 2002; Demont et al., 2007; Lambin et al., 2000; Laney, 2004; Wood et al., 2004; Zaal & Oostendorp, 2002). Third, Boserup challenged development research and practice yet again with the release in 1970 of Woman’s Role in Economic Development (Boserup, 1970).5 Her thesis was so obvious in hindsight that it is somewhat difficult to understand why it was so challenging. Women have always been an
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important component in the practice of agriculture beyond the corporate-commercial farming systems of the world, and yet their consideration was missing in economic theory and development practice of the time. Boserup argued that Western-led development reduced the status of and opportunities for women. Her challenge to rectify this omission is credited, even by her critics (Aikman et al., 2005; Benería & Sen, 1981; Datta Gupta, 2002; El-Bushra, 2000; Jackson, 2002; Lind, 2003; Vazquez Garcia, 2001), with helping to inspire the United Nations Decade for Women (1976–85). Indeed, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) distributed a summary of her book at the first World Conference on Women held in Mexico City in 1975, the UN’s International Women’s Year. Boserup not only anticipated gender studies, or at least their application to development, but set strong analytical standards for engaging the multifaceted realities of this research and provided the foundation for the Women in Development (WID) perspective. Boserup observed that women were discriminated against at all levels of the development process in the 1960s–1970s. Boserup and WID did not reject the modernization effort for this omission. Rather, they argued for women to be made an explicit part of the development program, while paying attention to cultural variations regarding women’s productive roles. Drawing on historical data, Boserup argued that economic development created a gender gap (female equity) that evolved in a curvilinear manner. Modernization initially enlarged the gap owing to economic changes that disintegrated established household relationships, but subsequently closed it, especially owing to increased women’s education. Almost in passing, Boserup speculated in the conclusion of Woman’s Role in Economic Development (Boserup, 1970, p. 224f.) that increased education for women in the developing world might reduce family size. This observation thrust Boserup into the UN World Population Conference in Bucharest in 1974. Interestingly, demographers would subsequently demonstrate that drops in the fertility rates worldwide track with the level of women’s education (Becker et al., 2010; Caldwell, 1980; Lutz & Samir, 2011; Lutz et al., 2014).
In 2010, an international conference was held in Vienna, in honour of her 100th birthday, reconfirming Ester Boserup’s scientific insights with empirical examples across the world, but also with critical tones with respect to her underestimation of the special impact of industrializing agriculture with the support of fossil fuels (Fischer-Kowalski et al., 2014; Birch-Thomson & Reenberg, 2014; Infante-Amate et al., 2014), also impacting on gender roles (Behrmann et al., 2014; Schmook & Vance, 2009). As stated in the conclusions to the conference volume: ‘Today, it is much more apparent than at the time of Boserup’s writing that development has not been following the transition pathway she propagated, but in much of the world rather resembled a “gold rush” leaving barren land behind’ (Fischer-Kowalski & Reenberg, 2014, p. 264). Boserup was not only a scientist, but also a diplomat. She spent much of her lifetime on making her scientific insights bear fruits in international policies: over many years, she was consultant and delegate to the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the UN Industrial Development Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and the International Labour Organization. Many traces of her work are buried in the archives of these organizations. Her keen interest in understanding the interrelations between population growth, gender issues, rural development, agriculture and environmental problems was driven both by academic curiosity and practical concern, and allowed her to question development issues with a persistency that continues to impact current discourses: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with 17 Sustainable Development Goals agreed upon at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in 2015 (United Nations, 2022), still bear the marks of Boserup’s work. Marina Fischer-Kowalski
Notes
1. For details on the life of Ester Boserup, see Abernethy (2005), Boserup (1999), Tinker (2004) and http://irenetinker.com/publications-and -presentations/ester-boserup. 2. Interestingly, both Malthus and Ehrlich based their conviction on the dynamics of their respective home countries, England and the US, which indeed were marked by substantial population growth at the time of writing. Population growth in the
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226 Elgar encyclopedia of development Boserup, E. (1999). My Professional Life and Publications. Museaum Tusculanum Press. Brookfield, H.C. (1972). Intensification and disin3. tensification in Pacific agriculture: a theoretical approach. Pacific Viewpoint, 13(1), 30–48. Brookfield, H.C. (2001). Intensification and alternative approaches to agricultural change. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 42(2–3), 181–92. Caldwell, J.C. (1980). Mass education as a determinant of the timing of fertility decline. 4. Population and Development Review, 6(2), 225–55. Carswell, G. (2002). Farmers and following: agricultural change in the Kigezi District, Uganda. The Geographical Journal, 168(2), 130–40. 5. Chayanov, A.V. (1925/1966). The theory of peasant economy [Russian original 1925]. In D. Thorner, R.E.F. Smith, & B. Kerblay (eds), The Theory of Peasant Economy. American Economic Association. References Datta Gupta, N. (2002). Gender, pay and develAbernethy, V. (2005). Ester Boserup and agriculopment: a cross-country analysis. Journal of tural development. Society, 42(5), 55–8. Labour and Management Development, 3(2), Aikmann, S. et al. (eds) (2005). Beyond Access: 1–19. Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Demont, M., Jouve, P., Stessens, J., & Tollens, Equality in Education. Oxfam GB. E. (2007). Boserup versus Malthus revisited: Becker, S.O., Cinnarella, F., & Woessmann, L. evolution of farming systems in Northern (2010). The trade-off between fertility and eduCote D’Ivoire. Agricultural Systems, 93(1–3), cation: evidence from before the demographic 215–28. transition. Journal of Economic Growth, 15(3), Dorsey, B. (1999). Agricultural intensification, 177–204. diversification, and commercial production Behrmann, J., Meintzen-Dick, R., & Quisumbing, among smallholder coffee growers in central A.R. (2014). An interpretation of large-scale Kenya. Economic Geography, 75(2), 178–95. land deals using Boserup’s theories of agricul- El-Bushra, J. (2000). Rethinking gender and develtural intensification, gender and rural developopment practice for the twenty-first century. ment. In M. Fischer-Kowalski, A. Reenberg, A. Gender and Development, 8(1), 55–62. Schaffartzik, & A. Mayer (eds), Ester Boserup’s Fischer-Kowalski, M., & Reenberg, A. (2014). Legacy on Sustainability: Orientations for Conclusions: re-evaluating Boserup in the light Contemporary Research (pp. 189–202). of the contributions to this volume. In M. Springer Netherlands. Fischer-Kowalski, A. Reenberg, A. Schaffartzik, Benería, L., & Sen, G. (1981). Accumulation, & A. Mayer (eds), Ester Boserup’s Legacy on reproduction, and women’s role in economic Sustainability: Orientations for Contemporary development: Boserup revisited. Signs, 7(2), Research (pp. 259–65). Springer Netherlands. 279–98. Fischer-Kowalski, M., Krausmann, F., Mayer, A., Birch-Thomsen, T. & Reenberg, A. (2014). The & Schaffartzik, A. (2014). Boserup’s theory on dwindling role of population pressure on technological change as a point of departure land-use change – a case from the South-West for the theory of sociometabolic regime transiPacific. In M. Fischer-Kowalski, A. tions. In M. Fischer-Kowalski, A. Reenberg, A. Reenberg, A. Schaffartzik, & A. Mayer (eds), Schaffartzik, & A. Mayer (eds), Ester Boserup’s Ester Boserup’s Legacy on Sustainability: Legacy on Sustainability: Orientations for Orientations for Contemporary Research Contemporary Research (pp. 23–42). Springer (pp. 45–60). Springer Netherlands. Netherlands. Boserup, E. (1965). The Conditions of Agricultural Infante-Amate, J., González de Molina, M., Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change Vanwalleghem, T., Fernández, D.S., & Gómez, J.A. (2014). Reconciling Boserup with Under Population Pressure. Aldine/Earthscan. Malthus: agrarian change and soil degradaBoserup, E. (1970). Women’s Role in Economic tion in olive orchards in Spain (1750–2000). Development. St Martin’s Press. In M. Fischer-Kowalski, A. Reenberg, A. Boserup, E. (1976). Environment, population, and Schaffartzik, & A. Mayer (eds), Ester Boserup’s technology in primitive societies. Population Legacy on Sustainability (pp. 99–116). Springer and Development Review, 2(1), 21–36. https:// Netherlands. doi.org/10.2307/1971529. US during this period, though, was mainly due to immigration, not excessive reproduction numbers, as Ehrlich insinuates. Bill Turner reports to have once asked Boserup why she did not cite the 1920s work of Chayanov in her own. She replied that she had never read or heard of Chayanov at the time, and explained the close similarities of their logic to the fact that both he and she were essentially drawing on the same ‘school’ of economic thought (Turner & Fischer-Kowalski, 2010). Landesque capital is a term employed in human, political and cultural ecology, and land change science to refer to permanent land improvements for production, such as terrace or irrigation systems, especially among non-commercial land managers. Woman’s Role in Economic Development has been released by five publishers in seven issues from 1970 to 2007, and has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Swedish and Indonesian.
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Ester Boserup 227 Jackson, C. (2002). Disciplining gender? World Development, 30(3), 497–509. Lambin, E.F. et al. (2000). Are agricultural land-use models able to predict changes in land-use intensity? Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 82(1–3), 321–31. Laney, R.M. (2004). A process-led approach to modelling land change in agricultural landscapes: a case study from Madagascar. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 101(2–3), 135–53. Lind, A. (2003). Feminist post-development thought: ‘women in development’ and the gendered paradoxes of survival in Bolivia. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 31(3–4), 227–46. Lutz, W., & Samir, K.C. (2011). Global human capital: integrating education and population. SCIENCE, 333(29), 587–92. Lutz, W., Butz, W.P., & Samir, K.C. (2014). World Population and Human Capital in the 21st Century. Oxford University Press. Netting, R. McC. (1993). Smallholders, Householders. Farm Families and the Ecology of Intensive, Sustainable Agriculture. Stanford University Press. Schmook, B., & Vance, C. (2009). Agricultural policy, market barriers, and deforestations: the case of Mexico’s Southern Yucatán. World Development, 37(5), 1015–25.
Tinker, I. (2004). Utilizing interdisciplinarity to analyze global socio-economc change: a tribute to Ester Boserup. In L. Beneria, & S. Bisnath (eds), Global Tensions: Challenges and Opportunities in the Economy (pp. 173–84). Routledge. Turner II, B.L., & Fischer-Kowalski, M. (2010). Ester Boserup: an interdisciplinary visionary relevant for sustainability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(51), 21963–5. United Nations (Department of Economic and Social Affairs) (2022). The 17 Goals. https:// sdgs.un.org/goals. Vazquez Garcia, V. (2001). Taking gender into account: women and sustainable development projects in rural Mexico. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 29(1–2), 85–98. Wood, E.C. et al. (2004). Understanding the drivers of agricultural land use change in South-Central Senegal. Journal of Arid Environments, 59(3), 565–82. Zaal, F., & Oostendorp, R.H. (2002). Explaining a miracle: intensification and the transition towards sustainable small-scale agriculture in dryland Machacos and Kitui districts, Kenya. World Development, 30(7), 1271–87.
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Everyday peace The concept of ‘everyday peace’ emerged in the academic literature in the early 2000s and has only recently begun to be adapted into development, humanitarian and peacebuilding practice. The term is used to refer to the means by which ordinary individuals and groups navigate life in deeply divided societies in ways that minimize awkward situations and conflict triggers, and then possibly consider active steps to engage with the other (Mac Ginty, 2014; Ware & Ware, 2021). It thus explores local agency in promoting nonviolent coexistence, social cohesion, even active local peacebuilding. With the increasing convergence of development, humanitarian and peacebuilding activities, the ideas and frameworks of everyday peace relate closely to approaches that seek to support local bottom-up, human-centred or community-led development (Ware & Ware, 2020; Ware et al., 2021a, 2021b).
The everyday
The ‘everyday’ has long been the central focus of a great deal of anthropology and been a staple of sociology for decades. Kalekin-Fishman (2013) traces how the concept has been explored by philosophers and social scientists such as Lefebvre, De Certeau, Foucault, Bourdieu, Smith, Durkheim, Marx and Engels (also Mac Ginty, 2014). However, for most of this time and in most of this literature, the focus was on extraordinary individuals, events and actions, and the everyday was presented primarily as a contrast. Weber (1976, p. 140), for example, explained his ideal of charisma and charismatic leadership as ‘spezfisch außertäglich’, meaning, outside the everyday. Until recently, most of this scholarship on the everyday thus framed extraordinary, charismatic individuals and actions as the forces shaping history, in direct contrast to everyday, ordinary individuals and actions perceived to have minimal impact. As a result, despite the long history of the concept in social science literature, everyday life was largely reduced to a kind of ‘referential obscurity’, a space ‘of passive enactment, lacking in creative, productive or emancipatory force’ (Ring, 2006, p. 178). Even today, it is largely seen as a private, ‘feminine’, largely apolitical space
maintaining the status quo, distant from the forces driving change or innovation (Ring, 2006, p. 2). Recent literature on ‘the everyday’, and certainly the literature on ‘everyday peace’, refutes this idea, exploring the significance, agency and impact of everyday people and actions. ‘The everyday’ has emerged as an explicit concern of social and political sciences in its own right. Kalekin-Fishman (2013) offers a thorough review of the use of ‘the everyday’ in sociology. Mac Ginty (2014) notes growing attention within international relations, for example by Davies and Niemann (2004), Montsion (2010), Kessler and Guillaume (2012) and Autesserre (2014). Felski (2000) argues it brings to the fore practices and narratives that appear routine and are otherwise taken for granted, seeking to revisit their agency and impact. Recent studies propose the everyday as a site of intense micropolitical action, a field of struggle contributing to and altering narratives and practices around closely related macro issues – a place of resistance to cultural norms and innovation in social practice. For example, drawing heavily on Foucault and Bourdieu, de Certeau (1984) explores everyday life as a place in which ordinary people practice a range of tactics to reclaim a degree of autonomy from otherwise all-pervasive cultural forces, by reappropriating traditions, language, symbols, art, exchange, and so on, subverting the representations and meanings that institutions seek to impose upon them. In other words, to de Certeau, the everyday is a highly creative space where ordinary people, despite being largely subjugated by the comparative social power of institutions, structures and narratives, exercise continuous creative resistance to those rules, narratives and meanings – albeit in limited ways and seized moments, within spaces otherwise produced and governed by powerful strategic relations. There is thus a transgressive and radical, almost subversive, aspect of using the everyday as a lens for analysis, given the usual top-down and state-centric lens.
Everyday peace
Ring (2006) was the first to use the term ‘everyday peace’. Working in Karachi, Pakistan, she looked at the everyday peace practices of people from diverse ethnic back-
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grounds thrown together as neighbours in the same apartment complex. She noted just how much hard work many, many people put into maintaining non-violence and everyday peace, when the context was full of deep tensions, hate speech, and narratives promoting conflict, especially when serious communal violence erupted around them from time to time. Since then, a significant and growing academic literature on ‘everyday peace’ has emerged (e.g. Berents, 2015, 2018; Berents & McEvoy-Levy, 2015; Brewer et al., 2018; Chandler, 2015; Dutta et al., 2016; Firchow, 2018; Mac Ginty, 2013a, 2013b, 2017, 2021; Mac Ginty & Firchow, 2016; Marijan, 2017; Mitchell, 2011; Richmond, 2009; Ring, 2006; Visoka, 2020; Williams, 2013, 2015; Yoshizawa & Kusaka, 2020; Ware & Ware, 2020, 2021; Ware et al., 2021a, 2021b.). This literature explores the importance of ordinary individuals and groups on peace dynamics, and the potentially significant agency they enact through everyday life and social behaviour. It examines nonviolent coexistence or more positive peaceful engagement in everyday life, within contexts steeped in histories and narratives of social division, antagonism, conflict and violence. It examines the dynamics and nature of that peace, and its potential contribution to wider peace formation. It could be said that everyday peace seeks to understand what peace looks like from a subaltern perspective, including the potential and dangers inherent in that peace, and subaltern agency for creating and expanding that peace. Mac Ginty’s definitions are perhaps the most widely adopted and clearest: ‘the everyday is regarded as the normal habitus for individuals and groups, even if what passed as “normal” in a conflict-affected society would be abnormal elsewhere’ (Mac Ginty, 2014, p. 550); hence, ‘everyday peace refers to the routinized practices used by individuals and collectives as they navigate their way through life in a deeply divided society that may suffer from ethnic or religious cleavages and be prone to episodic direct violence in addition to chronic or structural violence’ (Mac Ginty, 2014, p. 549). Everyday peace thus focusses on the actions adopted by ordinary community members as they seek to get on with their everyday lives in routine ways, without exacerbating social tensions or risk precipitating violence – the behaviours and social practices they adopt in the aim of coex-
istence with at least occasional non-violent engagement, if not episodic or regular positive engagement. It recognizes a diversity of motives and ambitions behind the desire to coexist, which may range from loathing the Other but simply not wanting to participate in violence, through a recognition that a shared future is the best option they face, through to a strong desire to build peace and harmony, with reconciliation and justice. At the minimalist end of the spectrum, as Mac Ginty (2014) points out, everyday peace may be simply eking out safe space in which a façade of normality prevails, despite the conflict, allowing people to get on with life. At this level, everyday peace may be the first peace, the first inter-group contact after violence, or the last peace in the sense of being the last remaining social capital before total rupture. However, everyday peace can grow from this, to evolve into wider peace formation, and become a foundation upon which social cohesion may be rebuilt. Everyday peace is thus agnostic as to motive and describes a spectrum of social practices. In the same way that ‘the everyday’ was long relegated to referential obscurity, so too has ‘peace’. War and violence have proven to be far more seductive for social scientists than peace and nonviolence (Williams, 2015, p. 4). It is widely accepted that, as the popular quote from nineteenth-century playwright Thomas Hardy (1904) put it, ‘War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.’ Nonviolent and peaceful societies not only exist but are actually the norm throughout human prehistory and history (Sponsel, 2017). As Williams (2015, p. 9) puts it, ‘The dominance of academic inquiry seeking to explain violence masks the fact that much of everyday life in conflict settings is not characterised by perpetual inter-community violence.’ Yet, violence is often taken for granted as a fundamental human condition (Kurlansky, 2006). Everyday peace proliferates yet goes largely unremarked (Ring, 2006, p. 65). Perhaps central to this obscuring is that everyday nonviolence usually coexists with inequitable power relations, which while stopping short of open conflict, can often manifest as domination, repression, coercion, exclusion, marginalization, and so on. Everyday peace describes a spectrum of social practices. Mac Ginty (2014) is a ‘conceptual scoping’ paper, culminating Anthony Ware
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in a proposed typology of social practices argued to constitute everyday peace. This typology categorizes everyday peace social practices under ideas of avoidance, ambiguity, ritualized politeness, telling and blame deferral. While deeply insightful and widely cited, other detailed ethnographic research on everyday peace documents additional social practices beyond this typology. With a colleague, I (Ware & Ware, 2021) have therefore published a revised typology of social practices constituting everyday peace, as summarized below. Full details are available in that article. Types of social practice that constitute everyday peace: ● Avoidance: ● of contentious or sensitive topics, talk of past issues ● of high-risk people, places, situations, offensive displays ● via escapism into other activities ● by not drawing attention to oneself ● Reading: ● ethnically-informed identification and social ordering of others ● constantly judging motives, morals, attitudes and feelings of others ● sensitized alertness, to know when/ how to avoid/engage without provocation ● Ambiguity: ● discarding or concealing signifiers of identity in mixed settings ● non-observance, ‘not seeing’ differences or potential issues ● dissembling in speech and actions, to hide unfriendly feelings ● Shielding: ● keeping more volatile and aggressive people away from confrontations ● peaceful dealing with confrontations oneself, to avoid involvement of others ● using overt but controlled displays of anger and hostility, if necessary, to ensure other back down and achieve quick peaceful outcomes ● Civility: ● in interactions in shared public spaces, especially transactional economic engagements ● ritualized politeness, attention to the etiquette of status, acts of tolerance ● shifting blame to outsiders, some Anthony Ware
within own group, or the system ● Reciprocity: ● neighbourliness and sociality based on exchange of gifts, assistance ● expectation of delayed reciprocity, mutual indebtedness ● active maintenance, nonresolution of exchange tension, to maintain need for relationship ● a type of exchange normally reserved for kin ● Solidarity: ● intercommunal networking and collaboration around everyday issues ● groups engaged in cooperation and accommodation ● creation of ‘imagined community’, even if rhetorical or discursive narratives of communal harmony more than active engagement or defence of others ● Compromise: ● sustained dialogue, negotiation and conflict resolution ● submission, surrender, renunciation as acts of agency ● justice potentially conceded or suspended for status quo ● peace contingent on concealing patterns of inequality and uneven power
Operationalization in development/ humanitarian/peacebuilding practice
Three significant innovations make everyday peace a very useful concept to adapt and operationalize into development/humanitarian/ peacebuilding practice. Mac Ginty (2013a) argues that everyday peace offers great scope for crowd-sourced participatory input, giving the approach an ability to listen to ‘hidden transcripts’ of peace found in deeply divided societies. Importantly, he argues the process of communities thinking about what peace might look like and how it could be realized has the potential to contribute to conflict transformation. Another important innovation of everyday peace is that, rather than seeing behaviours usually perceived as negative, such as avoidance, ambiguity or blame shifting, as being inherently negative, everyday peace re-conceptualizes them as potentially positive actions towards peace. Mac Ginty (2014) frames these as acts of
Everyday peace 231
agency by those who seek coexistence or non-violence but feel largely powerless to affect the macro conflict. He argues that these social practices have elements of resistance or subversion in them, towards the conflict narratives and extremist discourse, and the divisions preferred by elites promoting them. These behaviours also imply protection and regulation of remaining neutral spaces within which to engage safely. A third innovation of everyday peace is the recognition that, even in the most violent conflict situations, a majority of ordinary people resist acting on the more extreme conflict narratives, which call for violence and destruction, and refuse to participate in harming others. While they may share all the same fears and grievances as those participating in violence, even to the same degree, these people have already made a choice to refuse personal involvement in violence, if not a decision that violence is not the means to the ends they most desire. They may be motivated more by self-preservation than attempts to make peace, yet their non-violence in the face of violence and extreme narratives constitute an act of resistance. They have already made choices to refuse violence. In almost any conflict, a vast majority of people reject personal participation in violence and adopt a conflict-avoiding stance in defiance of conflict narratives and the cajoling of leaders. Everyday peace thus calls for an appreciative inquiry approach, recognizing that people’s everyday peace actions already rupture totalizing ideas of conflict and division, and thus hold potential to contribute to peace formation through strengthened agency, and the pooling of individual actions. Operationalization starts by recognizing that most people have displayed a range of social practices preferencing coexistence over violence and seeking to recognize and strengthen those. Their resistance of the violence exhorted by conflict narratives already demonstrates significant agency in the face of overwhelming power. It recognizes a range of actions and responses that, together, has potential to strengthen into wider peace formation. Recognizing most people have already acted with high degree of bravery, and considerable innovation, creativity and improvisation, even if the actions appear minimalistic to outsiders, or as negative acts,
allows innovative programming ideas around strengthening their agency. Operationalizing an approach to strengthening everyday peace formation is not without its problems. Most everyday peace research catalogues the types of agency people have been observed exerting in conflict settings, on their own. Hence, the idea of turning this into an external intervention could perhaps be seen as oxymoronic. Nonetheless, with a Freirian, community development, participatory approach, there is potential to support conscious awareness-raising about the situation they face, the extent of the agency they have, and the range of actions they might take based on understandings of social practices adopted in other conflicts, together with greater understanding of things like human rights and conflict resolution processes.
Dangers: a ‘dark side’
There is, however, a potential dark or dangerous side to everyday peace. People engaging in everyday peace practices do not necessarily – or usually – confront conflict behaviours or narratives, nor the attitudes that sustain them. Indeed, if everyday peace practices institutionalize avoidance-type behaviours or the submission, surrender, renunciation by less powerful groups, it has the potential to normalize injustice and help maintain the moral distance that conflict entrepreneurs rely on to ‘other’ individuals and groups, drive conflict narratives, and perpetuate sectarian culture. Williams (2015), in her ethnographic monograph on everyday peace in India, questions the justice and sustainability of everyday peace. She illustrates vividly ways in which everyday peace and non-violence are inherently highly political and can be ‘played with’ by those with power to manipulate responses and perpetuate inequalities and injustices. Noting that everyday peace resides in local capacity to create real and imagined spaces of connection, tolerance and civility, Williams highlights that maintaining such peace usually requires glossing over rather than addressing the underlying injustices, disparities and inequalities. In this sense, everyday peace is less than just, and can fail to deal with the major underlying conflict drivers. Any operationalization of everyday peace that does not incorporate recognition of human rights, justice mechanisms and processes to address power and socioeconomic Anthony Ware
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inequalities only advances stabilization, and a dangerous stabilization at that. Anthony Ware
References
Autesserre, S. (2014). Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention. Cambridge University Press. Berents, H. (2015). An embodied everyday peace in the midst of violence. Peacebuilding, 3(2), 1–14. Berents, H. (2018). Young People and Everyday Peace: Exclusion, Insecurity and Peacebuilding in Colombia. Taylor & Francis. Berents, H., & McEvoy-Levy, S. (2015). Theorising youth and everyday peace(building). Peacebuilding, 3(2), 115–25. Brewer, J.D., Hayes, B.C., Teeney, F., Dudgeon, K., Mueller-Hirth, N., & Wijesinghe, S.L. (2018). The Sociology of Everyday Life Peacebuilding. Palgrave Macmillan. Chandler, D. (2015). Resilience and the ‘everyday’: beyond the parados of liberal peace. Review of International Studies, 41(41), 27–48. Davies, M., & Niemann, M. (2004). International Relations and Everyday Life. Routledge. de Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California Press. Dutta, U., Andzenge, A.K., & Walkling, K. (2016). The everyday peace project: an innovative approach to peace pedagogy. Journal of Peace Education, 13(1), 79–104. Felski, R. (2000). The invention of everyday life. New Formations, 39, 13–32. Firchow, P. (2018). Reclaiming Everyday Peace: Local Voices in Measurement and Evaluation after War. Cambridge University Press. Hardy, T. (1904). The Dynasts, Part 1, Act 2, Sc. 5. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4043/4043 -h/4043-h.htm. Kalekin-Fishman, D. (2013). Sociology of everyday life. Current Sociology Review, 61(5–6), 714–32. Kessler, O., & Guillaume, X. (2012). Everyday practices of international relations: people in organizations. Journal of International Relations and Development, 15(1), 110–20. Kurlansky, M. (2006). Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea. Random House. Mac Ginty, R. (2013a). Indicators +: a proposal for everyday peace indicators. Evaluation and Program Planning, 36(2013), 56–63. Mac Ginty, R. (2013b). The transcripts of peace: public, hidden or non-obvious. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 7(4), 423–30.
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Mac Ginty, R. (2014). Everyday peace: bottom-up and local agency in conflict-affected situations. Security Dialogue, 45(6), 548–64. Mac Ginty, R. (2017). Everyday social practices and boundary-making in deeply divided societies. Civil Wars, 19(1), 4–25. Mac Ginty, R. (2021). Everyday Peace: How So-Called Ordinary People Can Disrupt Violent Conflict. Oxford University Press. Mac Ginty, R., & Firchow, P. (2016). Top-down and bottom-up narratives of peace and conflict. Politics, 36(3), 308–23. Marijan, B. (2017). The politics of everyday peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Northern Ireland. Peacebuilding, 5(1), 67–81. Mitchell, A. (2011). Quality/control: international peace interventions and ‘the everyday’. Review of International Studies, 37, 1623–45. Montsion, J.-M. (2010). Research (im)possibilities: reflections from everyday international relations. Altérités, 7(2), 79–94. Richmond, O. (2009). A post-liberal peace: Eirenism and the everyday. Review of International Studies, 35, 557–80. Ring, L. (2006). Zenana: Everyday Peace in a Karachi Apartment Building. Indiana University Press. Sponsel, L. (2017). The anthropology of peace and nonviolence. Diogenes, 61(3/4), 30–45. Visoka, G. (2020). Everyday peace capture: nationalism and the dynamics of peace after violent conflict. Nations and Nationalism, 26, 431–46. Ware, V.-A., & Ware, A. (2020). Strengthening everyday peace formation via community development in Myanmar’s Rohingya-Rakhine conflict. In B. Crisp, & A. Taket (eds), Sustaining Social Inclusion (pp. 247–61). Routledge. Ware, A., & Ware, V.-A. (2021). Everyday peace: rethinking typologies of social practice and local agency. Peacebuilding. http://doi.org/10 .1080/21647259.2021.1997387. Ware, A., Ware, V.-A., & Kelly, L. (2021a). Everyday peace as a community development approach: after ethnic cleansing in Myanmar’s Rohingya conflict. In J. Eversley, S. Gormally, & A. Kilmurray (eds), Peacebuilding, Conflict and Community Development. Policy Press. Ware, A., Ware, V.-A., & Kelly, L. (2021b). Strengthening everyday peace formation after ethnic cleansing: operationalisation of the framework using a conscientisation approach in Myanmar’s Rohingya conflict. Security Dialogue. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597 .2021.2022469. Weber, M. (1976). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. J. Winckelmann, trans. P. Siebeck. 5th edn. J.C.B. Mohr.
Everyday peace 233 Williams, P. (2013). Reproducing everyday peace in North India: process, politics, and power. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103(1), 230–50. Williams, P. (2015). Everyday Peace? Politics, Citizenship and Muslim Lives in India. Wiley-Blackwell.
Yoshizawa, A., & Kusaka, W. (2020). The arts of everyday peacebuilding: cohabitation, conversion, and intermarriage of Muslims and Christians in the Southern Philippines. Southeast Asian Studies, 9(1), 67–97.
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F
Faith-based organizations Introduction
Faith-based organizations (FBOs) are key actors in development. Basic issues that are central to the world of development – such as social justice, education, welfare and the meaning of progress, for example – are core issues in all major religions with intellectual and moral roots that can be traced back thousands of years (Marshall, 2001, p. 345). To mention only a few examples, Hebrew scriptures emphasized justice for the poor, and temples often served as sanctuaries for the persecuted or refugees. Christian faith and practice are also based on the values of charity and mercy, and Christian orders have long provided services to the poor, sick and vulnerable (Ferris, 2005, p. 313). Likewise, Islam emphasizes human dignity, giving, and assistance to the poor through charitable mechanisms such as zakat, waqf and sadaqa.1 Hinduism values compassion, non-violence and service to the community. And concepts of tolerance, inclusion and empathy for the suffering of others are central to Buddhism.2 Around the world, FBOs engage in a wide variety of activities related to development, ranging from health and educational services, disaster relief and financial aid to conflict resolution, social justice activism, climate action, human rights advocacy and women’s empowerment. Some of the world’s largest development and humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are faith-based; in fact, with an annual revenue of almost 3 billion USD, the Evangelical NGO World Vision may very well be the largest NGO in the world. In many parts of the world, FBOs make up a substantial part of civil society. In Lebanon, for instance, FBOs constitute around 20 per cent of the country’s NGOs (Chabaan & Seyfert, 2012). In Pakistan, more than one-third of civil
society is estimated to be faith-based (Iqbal & Siddiqui, 2008, p. 20), and in Rwanda, FBOs provide more than 25 per cent of the country’s health services (Kagawa et al., 2012). Any preconception that the study of FBOs necessarily deals with marginal, peripheral or small actors, then, is clearly misplaced (Fountain & Petersen, 2018, p. 404). This entry provides a brief introduction to FBOs, divided into four sections: Section one presents a definition of the term and discusses some of the challenges related to this; section two provides an overview of different FBO typologies and categorizations as a way to illustrate the diversity of the field; section three situates FBOs within official development cooperation and section four discusses some of the pitfalls inherent in contemporary donor engagement with FBOs.3
Defining FBOs
The term faith-based organization is typically used to refer to NGOs or institutions in civil society that define themselves as religious, by referring to religious principles, traditions, practices, authorities, figures or concepts in relation to their organizational identity, rationale, activities, staff, funding sources or target groups. Synonyms and related terms include, for example, religious NGOs, religious actors, faith-inspired or faith-linked organizations and faith-based non-profit organizations (Haynes, 2014, p. 7). The term FBO – and its synonyms, for that matter – is not unproblematic and easily definable, and some, among scholars as well as development practitioners, are weary of using this term, whether for theoretical, analytical or practical reasons. As noted by James (2009, p. 4): ‘For many, the term “FBO” conceals much more than it reveals. It gives the impression that FBOs are the same. Yet FBOs are extraordinarily heterogeneous.’ The term is, in other words, simply too broad
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to be analytically meaningful or possible to operationalize (Hegertun, 2012, p. 126). More specifically, much criticism turns on the reliance on terms such as ‘faith’ or ‘religion’. Critics argue that these terms have grown out of particular historical and religious contexts, and are thus better suited to capture some world views, traditions and practices than others. The focus on individual faith and the importance of scripture, for instance, are aspects of ‘religion’ that are difficult to align with e.g. Daoism or Shinto traditions. Along the same lines, some reject the distinction between the ‘secular’ and the ‘religious’ that underlies the concept of FBO, considering this to be a Western construction with little relevance in other contexts. In many parts of the world, religion is inseparable from other aspects of life, making it impossible – and meaningless – to distinguish between what is a faith-based organization and what is not (Bouta et al., 2005, p. 6).4 Others point to more practical challenges. In certain contexts, it is problematic for an organization to be classified as ‘religious’ or ‘faith-based’, and they may be prudent in using such terms due largely to the potentially negative connotations associated with religious references and the legal, social and political obstacles that may arise (Berger, 2003, p. 17). In particular, since 9/11 and the ‘War on Terror’, some Muslim organizations are wary of flagging their religious identity, out of fear for being accused of terrorist connections. Similarly, for Christian organizations in Muslim-majority contexts – and for representatives of minority religions in any given context, for that matter – public and explicit display of one’s faith can lead to accusations of sectarianism and mission. Despite these – very relevant – criticisms, the term has gained wide acceptance and use among organizations, donors and researchers, and alternative terms do not seem to overcome the criticisms.5 Using the term, however, requires close attention to and understanding of the vast diversity of organizations that are commonly grouped together under this term. It makes little sense – analytically as well as practically – to try to apply a very steadfast definition of FBOs as a relatively homogeneous group of organizations with clear-cut boundaries.
Categorizing FBOs6
The organizations and institutions commonly grouped together under the FBO heading make up a highly diverse group of civil society actors, including faith-based NGOs, associations, and charities; interfaith networks and councils; missionary organizations; education and health institutions; local community organizations; religious minority groups and many others. Researchers and practitioners have advanced different typologies and tools for categorizing FBOs according to their organizational types. Clarke and Jennings (2008, p. 25), for instance, distinguish between different organizational purposes, dividing FBOs into representative organizations; charitable or development organizations; socio-political organizations; missionary organizations; and radical, illegal or terrorist organizations.7 Other relevant parameters for categorization of FBOs are, for example, geographic scope (local, national, regional or international) or origin (North/ South); areas of work (e.g. health, education, microfinance, humanitarian aid); organizational structure (NGO, network, council, movement etc.) or membership (volunteer/ professional). We find FBOs in almost all religious traditions and communities. The vast majority of international FBOs are Christian. Studies of international NGOs with consultative status in the UN system, for instance, show that far more than half of the FBOs are Christian, while only 15 per cent are Muslim and only a few per cent Hindu and Buddhist (Petersen, 2010; Carrette & Miall, 2017). There is very little data on the religious distribution among other organizational types of FBOs; however, anecdotal evidence suggests that Christian, Muslim and Jewish FBOs tend to operate in relatively formal organizations, while Buddhist and Hindu FBOs are often more loosely organized in networks and movements. FBOs are organizationally linked to their religious community in different ways. Clarke and Ware (2015) suggest a basic typology of four different organizational set-ups, including FBOs that are directly linked to a local congregation, community or religious leader; FBOs that are linked to a specific religious denomination or branch and formally incorporated into this; FBOs that are linked to a religious denomination or branch but not Marie Juul Petersen
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formally incorporated into this; and finally FBOs that self-identify with a broad religious tradition without any formal organizational links to any denomination or branch. FBOs differ not only with regard to their organizational type and religious affiliation, but also with regard to the role they assign to religion in their organizational identity and activities. In some organizations, religion influences every aspect of organizational identity, work and constituencies; in others, it is relegated to the sphere of personal motivation and underlying values; and in most, it is somewhere in between these two extremes. Thus, as Sider and Unruh (2004, p. 116) note, ‘whether an organization is faith-based cannot be answered with a simple yes or no’; instead, we have to ask how an organization is faith-based. Researchers have suggested various ways of exploring the diverse roles of religion and the different types of religiosity in FBOs. Clarke and Jennings (2008, p. 32), for instance, distinguish between organizations with a passive, active, persuasive or exclusive religiosity. Sider and Unruh (2004, p. 116) suggest that rather than steadfast categories, the role of religion in FBOs is perhaps best described by way of a continuum going from ‘faith-permeated’ to ‘faith-centered’, ‘faith-affiliated’, ‘faith-background’, ‘faith-secular’ and finally ‘secular’.8 Religion influences the ways in which FBOs conceive of, and approach, development. To mention only a few examples: for many FBOs, universality and non-discrimination are indispensable religious principles, and they seek to provide aid to all in need, regardless of their beliefs or religious affiliation. For others, their religious conviction calls them to care for their own religious community, prioritizing intra-religious solidarity with fellow ‘brothers and sisters’. Some are avowedly non-confessional; others see proselytization as an integrated part of faith-based aid provision. Some rely on gender-sensitive or feminist theology, working actively to promote women’s rights through their activities; others consider women’s rights and gender equality as antithetical to their religion. FBOs are, in other words, faith-based in a wide variety of ways, blurring distinctions between the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’ and questioning the usefulness of this as the only, or even the main, distinction in defining, categorizing, and understanding FBOs.9 Marie Juul Petersen
FBOs and the official development system
FBOs have been partners in official development cooperation since the establishment of contemporary governmental and intergovernmental aid agencies.10 However, it is only in recent years that donors and other mainstream development actors have started to reflect explicitly on the particular characteristics and potential value of FBOs. For many years, official development cooperation paid little attention to FBOs, reflecting secularist conceptions of religion as something that would gradually recede with modernization. This did not mean that development donors would not cooperate with FBOs, but when they did, they would do so regardless of, or even despite, the religious identity of these organizations, not because of it (Clarke, 2007). The end of the millennium witnessed a sea change in the ways in which donors dealt with religion and FBOs, facilitated by global developments that had made it clear that religion had not disappeared from the public sphere. Key among these were, for example, the involvement of religious institutions in processes of democratization in Latin America and Eastern Europe, the rise of faith-based activism such as the anti-debt campaign Jubilee 2000, and the involvement of FBOs in responding to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, but also 9/11 and the emergence of radical Islamist groups around the world.11 This ‘religious turn’ in development circles was epitomized in the World Bank’s 1998 Development Dialogue on Values and Ethics, calling for dialogue among faith and development institutions, with the aim to strengthen efforts to combat world poverty. In subsequent decades, this has been followed by a wide range of other donor initiatives aimed at strengthening understanding of, and cooperation with, FBOs, including guidelines and strategies for FBO partnerships; networks, consultations, and knowledge exchange with FBOs; as well as research and analysis on FBOs.12 There is today broad consensus among donors on the relevance of engaging with FBOs in development cooperation. Key areas of cooperation are health, education and humanitarian aid, but there is increasing attention among donors to the potential role that FBOs can play in terms of influencing local norms and practices, in particular,
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in relation to gender equality, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and harmful practices. Peacebuilding, conflict resolution and prevention of violent extremism are also considered highly relevant areas of cooperation, particularly in relation to conflicts with a clear religious dimension. Most recently, the promotion of freedom of religion or belief seems to be an increasingly important theme in donor cooperation with FBOs, reflecting broader trends in foreign policy (see Petersen & Marshall, 2019).
FBOs: an ‘added value’ in development cooperation?
Underlying much donor engagement with FBOs is an understanding of FBOs as presenting an ‘added value’ to development cooperation. FBOs are, qua their religious identity, seen to bring unique contributions to development cooperation, because of characteristics such as a widespread and long-term presence in even the most remote villages; a high degree of recognition, support, legitimacy and trust in the population; extensive networks and relations; and an ability to mobilize people, funds and resources. Apart from the fact that such claims of an inherent ‘added value’ of FBOs are difficult – if not impossible – to substantiate empirically, taking into consideration the wide variety of organizations included in the category, this rationale entails several risks. First, and as has been pointed out by several observers, the emphasis on an ‘added value’ can lead to an overly instrumentalist approach. There is a risk that cooperation with FBOs comes to be solely about the ways in which they can be used to enhance existing donor agendas – not more fundamentally about the ways in which they may shape (or challenge) how these agendas are conceptualized or carried out. This has been a common criticism from many FBOs. They argue that ‘their resources and social capital have been instrumentalised by global development institutions to achieve a secular development model rather than one that is more human-centred and takes the human relationship with the divine seriously’ (Tomalin et al., 2018, p. 6).13 Second, the focus on the positive aspects, while often justified, risks downplaying the complexities of religion and FBOs. There is no doubt that the religious identity and
affiliation of FBOs may in some contexts be an advantage or an ‘added value’, facilitating access and legitimacy among beneficiaries; but in other contexts it may very well be a disadvantage. In her analysis of two NGOs engaging on women’s health in India, for instance, Anchita Ghatak argues that although this work absolutely requires religious sensitivity from the programme and staff, it was in fact easier for the NGOs not to be identified as a religious institution when engaging with religiously sensitive issues – both in terms of community perceptions and also as it was helpful that the institution did not bring its own theology to the engagement. (Olivier, 2016, p. 6)
Similarly, in their analysis of FBO involvement in the Sustainable Development Goal consultation process, Tomalin et al. (2018, p. 7) found that some FBOs felt that ‘keeping overt religious language out of the SDG process was […] important in a setting where religiously based conflict and tension is prominent’. Others note that the religious identity and approach of particular FBOs does not always resonate with beneficiaries of aid, challenging notions of religion as a default guarantee for local resonance. The vast majority of donors’ FBO partners are international, Western-based FBOs, often relying on values and approaches that are very similar to those of the donor agencies themselves. In many contexts, however, more conservative FBOs may in fact dominate the field, espousing values and approaches that may resonate with local communities to a much higher degree than donors’ typical FBO partners. Victoria Palmer, in her analysis of a Western-based Muslim FBO’s work in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, describes how the refugees were disappointed in the organization for not building a mosque in the camp. She quotes a refugee as saying: ‘We want [the organization] to establish a mosque inside the camp as we think they are Muslim and they should understand our needs. We can live without food but we can’t live without our religion …’ (cf. Palmer, 2011, p. 103). To these refugees, the non-proselytizing, ‘minimalist’ religiosity presented by the Western Muslim FBO did not resonate with their own religiosity. Marie Juul Petersen
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Such examples challenge simplistic notions of FBOs, calling for much more contextualized understandings of the various ways in which the nexus between religion and development plays out in different FBOs, in different settings and different times, duly reflecting the complexity and diversity of the field of contemporary FBOs. Marie Juul Petersen
Notes
Zakat is an obligatory alms tax that all Muslims are supposed to pay during the month of Ramadan. Sadaqa refers to voluntary alms giving, and waqf is a charitable endowment, typically in the form of a building, plot of land or other assets donated with no intention of reclaiming the assets. See Singer (2008) for a history of Islamic charity. 2. Similar concepts and practices can be found in virtually all of the world’s religions, whether new or old, small or big. For an analysis of traditions of charity in some of the world’s religions, see e.g. Ilchman, Katz & Queen (1998). 3. For introductory works and edited collections on religion, development and FBOs, see e.g. Clarke and Jennings (2008), Deneulin and Bano (2009), Fountain, Bush & Feener (2015), Haynes (2007, 2014), Koehrsen and Hauser (2020), Marshall and van Saanen (2007), and Tomalin (2016). See also Jones and Petersen (2011), Deneulin & Rakodi (2011), Fountain (2013), Heist & Cnaan (2016), and Tomalin (2012) for reviews of literature on FBOs. 4. One could also question whether it is meaningful to distinguish between faith-based and non-faith-based in the sense that all organizations are arguably faith-based, whether they are based on a religious faith or a secular faith (in human rights, in the Sustainable Development Goals or something else). An emphasis on religious organizations as faith-based risks advancing an understanding of these organizations as normative and ideological and secular organizations as neutral and objective. 5. See Tomalin (2012) and Bradley (2009) for a brief history of the term and discussion of its use. 6. For a critical discussion of FBO typologies, see Fountain and Petersen (2018), who argue that attempts at typologizing FBOs carry an inherent risk of essentializing FBOs, overlooking or sidelining issues of ambiguity, flexibility and change. 7. Arguably, the latter category – radical, illegal or terrorist organizations – is better understood as a cross-cutting category, insofar as we can find organizations that engage in militant or violet activism across the whole spectrum of different organizational types, whether they are representative organizations, charitable or development organizations, socio-political organizations or missionary organizations. 8. In her analysis of Muslim NGOs, Petersen (2016) presents a similar continuum, going from ‘minimalist’ to ‘maximalist’ religiosity. Thaut (2009) presents a typology of Christian humanitarian organizations. See also Clarke and Ware (2015) for a thorough discussion of different FBO typologies and their underlying conceptions of the relationship between FBOs and NGOs. 1.
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9.
Further complicating these typologies is the fact that the role of religion in an organization may very well change over time. Many international FBOs, for instance, have grown more secular over the years, a development that often runs parallel to their increasing cooperation with institutional donors. See Petersen (2016) for an analysis of this process as it has played out in international Muslim NGOs. 10. Obviously, FBOs have been engaged in development-related activities long before the establishment of the contemporary system of development cooperation; religious organizations and institutions have provided education, healthcare and other services for centuries, both in their own communities as well as abroad (Clarke & Ware, 2015, p. 39); see also Barnett (2011), Davies (2014) and Abruzzo (2011). 11. For an analysis of the impact of the ‘War on Terror’ on Muslim FBOs, and civil society more broadly, see Howell and Lind (2009). On FBOs’ involvement in HIV/AIDS responses, see e.g. Clarke, Charnley and Lumbers (2011). On Jubilee 2000 and faith-based activism, see Mayo (2005). 12. For further analysis of the trajectory of the religion and development discourse, including a detailed overview of donor initiatives, see Fountain and Petersen (2018), Jones and Petersen (2011) and Petersen and Le Moigne (2016). 13. It could, however, also be argued that the FBOs themselves have not always been very persistent in insisting on such alternative conceptions and practices of development in their cooperation with donors but have instead adopted and internalized donor conceptions and practices, and as such actively contributed to this instrumentalization of religion.
References
Abruzzo, M. (2011). Polemical Pain. Johns Hopkins University Press. Barnett, M. (2011). Empire of Humanity. Cornell University Press. Berger, J. (2003). Religious nongovernmental organizations: an exploratory analysis. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 14(1), 15–39. Bouta, T., Kadayiifci-Orellana, A., & Abu-Nimer, M. (2005). Faith-Based Peace-Building. Mapping and Analysis of Christian, Muslim and Multi-Faith Actors, Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael and Salam Institute for Peace and Justice. Bradley, T. (2009). A call for clarification and critical analysis of the work of faith-based development organizations. Progress in Development Studies, 9(2), https://doi.org/10 .1177/146499340800900202. Carette, J., & Miall, H. (2017). Religion, NGOs and the United Nations: Visible and Invisible Actors in Power. Bloomsbury. Chabaan, J., & Seyfert, K. (2012). Faith-based NGOs in Multi-Confessional Society: Evidence from Lebanon. Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.
Faith-based organizations 239 Clarke, G. (2007). Agents of transformation? Donors, faith-based organisations and international development. Third World Quarterly, 28(1), 77–96. Clarke, G., & Jennings, M. (eds) (2008). Development, Civil Society and Faith-Based Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan. Clarke, M., Charnley, S., & Lumbers, J. (2011). Churches, mosques, and condoms: understanding successful HIV and AIDS interventions by faith-based organisations. Development in Practice, 21(1), 3–17. Clarke, M., & Ware, V-.A. (2015). Understanding faith-based organizations: how FBOs are contrasted with NGOs in international development literature. Progress in Development Studies, 15(1), https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1464993414546979. Davies, T. (2014). NGOs: A New History of Transnational Civil Society. Hurst Publishers. Deneulin, S., & Bano, M. (2009). Religion in Development: Rewriting the Secular Script. Zed Books. Deneulin, S., & Rakodi, C. (2011). Revisiting religion: development studies thirty years on. World Development, 39(1), 45–54. Ferris, E. (2005). Faith-based and secular humanitarian organizations. International Review of the Red Cross, 87(858), 311–25. Fountain, P. (2013). The myth of religious NGOs: development studies and the return of religion. International Development Policy: Religion and Development, 4, 9–30. Fountain, P., Bush, R., & Feener, M. (eds) (2015). Religion and the Politics of Development. Palgrave Macmillan. Fountain, P., & Petersen, M.J. (2018). NGOs and religion: instrumentalisation and its discontents. In A. Kellow & H. Murphy-Gregory (eds), Handbook of Research on NGOs. Edward Elgar Publishing. Haynes, J. (2007). Religion and Development: Conflict or Cooperation? Palgrave Macmillan. Haynes, J. (2014). Faith-based Organizations at the United Nations. Palgrave Macmillan. Hegertun, N. (2012). En studie av erfaringer fra Nederland og England. In I. Vik, N. Hegertun & H. Kleppa (eds), Innblik i forholdet mellom religion og utvikling. En rapport for prosjektet Religion og utvikling 2011–2012. Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights. Heist, D., & Cnaan, R.A. (2016). Faith-based international development work: a review. Religions, 7(3), 19. Howell, J., & Lind, J. (2009). Counter-Terrorism, Aid and Civil Society: Before and After the War on Terror. Palgrave Macmillan. Ilchman, W.F., Katz, S., & Queen, Q. (1998). Philanthropy in the World’s Traditions. Indiana University Press.
Iqbal, M.A., & Siddiqui, S. (2008). Mapping the terrain: the activities of faith-based organisations in development in Pakistan, Working Paper no. 24, Religions and Development Programme, University of Birmingham. James, R. (2009). What Is Distinctive About FBOs? INTRAC Praxis Paper. Jones, B., & Petersen, M.J. (2011). Instrumental, narrow, normative? Reviewing recent work on religion and development. Third World Quarterly, 32(7), 1291–306. Kagawa, R.C., Anglemyer, A., & Montagu, D. (2012). The scale of faith based organization participation in health service delivery in developing countries: systemic review and meta-analysis. PloS one, 7(11), https://doi.org/ 10.1371/journal.pone.0048457. Koehrsen, J., & Hauser, A. (eds) (2020). Faith-based Organizations in Development Discourse and Practice. Taylor and Francis. Marshall, K. (2001). Development and religion: a different lens on development debates. Peabody Journal of Education, 76(3–4), 339–75. Marshall, K., & van Saanen, M. (2007). Development and Faith: Where Mind, Heart and Soul Work Together. World Bank Publications. Mayo, M. (2005). ‘The world will never be the same again’? Reflecting on the experiences of Jubilee 2000, mobilizing globally for the remission of unpayable debts. Social Movement Studies, 4(2), 139–54. Oliver, J. (2016). Hoist by our own petard: backing slowly out of religion and development advocacy. HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies, 72(4), 1–11. Palmer, V. (2011). Analyzing cultural proximity: Islamic relief worldwide and Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Development in Practice, 21(1), 96–108. Petersen, M.J. (2010). International religious NGOs at the United Nations: a study of a group of religious organizations. Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, November, http:// jha.ac/2010/11/17/international-religious-ngos -at-the-united-nations-a-study-of-a-group-of -religious-organizations/. Petersen, M.J. (2016). For Humanity or for the Umma: Aid and Islam in Transnational Muslim NGOs. Hurst & Co. Petersen, M.J. & Le Moigne, J. (2016). Donor engagement with religion and faith based organizations in development cooperation: a brief overview. The Ecumenical Review, 68(4), 387–97. Petersen, M.J., & Marshall, K. (2019). The International Promotion of Freedom of Religion or Belief. Danish Institute for Human Rights.
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Tomalin, E. (2012). Thinking about faith-based organisations in development: where have we got to and what next? Development in Practice, 22(5–6), 689–703. Tomalin, E. (ed.) (2016). The Routledge Handbook of Religions and Global Development. Routledge. Tomalin, E., Haustein, J., & Kidy, S. (2018). Religion and the Sustainable Development Goals. Institute on Religion & International Studies.
Finance and development
The banker, therefore, is not so much primarily a middleman in the commodity “purchasing power” as a producer – and stands between those who wish to form new combinations and the possessors of productive means. He is essentially a phenomenon of development though only when no central authority directs the social process. He makes possible the carrying out of new combinations, authorizes people, in the name of society as it were, to form them. He is the ephor of exchange economy. (Schumpeter, 1934, p. 74)
Introduction
A huge body of literature has well acknowledged the crucial role played by financial sector in economic growth. The financial sector enables mobilization of savings and allocation of credit for production and investment. Among its other functions are supplying transaction and portfolio management services and providing payment services, and source of liquidity for firms. The financial sector also monitors borrowers, matches illiquid assets with liquid liabilities, and integrates credit and liquidity provision functions (Bossone, 2000). Banks boost economic growth by identifying the entrepreneurs with the best chances of successfully initiating new goods and production processes (King & Levine, 1993a) and facilitate long-run investments in high-return projects (Bencivenga & Smith, 1991). In this entry we examine the role of financial sector in achieving economic growth and development. We also briefly look at the factors determining financial development.
Finance and economic growth
From early on, the crucial role of finance in economic development was acknowledged in the literature. Some of the notable examples include Bagehot (1873), Schumpeter (1912), Gurley and Shaw (1955), and Goldsmith (1969). Bagehot (1873) also argued that the financial system played a critical role in igniting industrialization in England (as noted in Levine, 1997). Dunning Macleod, a Scottish barrister and a political economist in the nineteenth century, also argued that by lending, banks bring under-utilized resources into production, extend the market by providing credit, and promote venture capitalists through cash credit facilities (see Skaggs, 1999, p. 489). Fisher (1930) also later demonstrated that in well-functioning competitive financial markets, savers would receive the highest possible returns on their savings, and producers would be able to obtain funds at the lowest possible costs. Schumpeter assigned an important role to the banks in economic development:
Gurley and Shaw too remarked: Economic development is retarded if only self-finance and direct finance are accessible, if financial intermediaries do not evolve. The primary function of intermediaries is to issue debt of their own, indirect debt, in soliciting loanable funds from surplus spending units, and to allocate these loanable funds among deficit units whose direct debt they absorb. (Gurley & Shaw, 1955, pp. 518–19)
However, the literature on finance and development was dormant during the 1970s and 1980s. The development textbooks did not even mention the role of finance in economic development (Levine, 1997). In fact, the noted economist Joan Robinson (1952) remarked the role of finance is overstretched in development. In a widely cited paper (cited 37,875 times as of 14 November 2021) by Lucas (1988) on mechanics of economic development, there is no mention of finance as an input to economic development. Drake observed that: In the voluminous literature of economic development, it is remarkable that relatively little attention has been given to financial aspects of the subject. This neglect is especially surprising in view of the key emphasis given to capital formation. (Drake, 1980, p. 1)
The decade of nineties, however, brought a deluge of literature in the area of finance and development, initiating with the seminal contributions from King and Levine (1993a, 1993b) and Levine (1997).1 Levine (1997) firmly established that there is first-order positive relationship between finance and economic growth. Overall, Levine (2021) concluded that countries with better financial systems grow faster; also, well-functioning financial systems enable economic growth
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through the channels of resource allocation and technological change. Further, better financial systems eliminate external financing constraints through improved screening and governance, and reduced liquidity risks. Several studies in recent years have, however, found a non-linear relationship between finance and growth (Deidda & Fattouh, 2002; Rioja & Valev, 2004; Shen & Lee, 2006; Ergungor, 2008; Huang & Lin, 2009; Cecchetti & Kharroubi, 2012; Arcand et al. 2015; Law & Singh, 2014). Arcand et al. (2015), for instance, raise the question whether too much finance harms economic growth. Their study found a non-monotonic relationship between economic growth and financial depth, that is, at intermediate level of financial development there is a positive relationship between economic growth and finance; however, at higher levels of financial depth, more finance leads to lower economic growth. Some of the issues involving the literature are use of different methodologies, single country vs. cross-country studies, different time frames, and most importantly, choice of indicators of financial development. The multidimensionality of the nature of financial development entails that no single indicator can represent accurately financial development (Čihák et al., 2012; Svirydzenka, 2016). Among the indicators commonly used are domestic credit to private sector, M2/GDP ratio, share of commercial bank assets in the sum of commercial and central bank assets (Arora & Anand, 2021). However, the above indicators only reflect the depth of the financial system and do not consider other dimensions such as outreach, stability, efficiency, institutional capacity, regulation and supervision.
Finance and development
Although the finance–growth relationship has been extensively researched and is firmly established in the literature, this literature, however, does not consider the distributional and developmental implications of credit. However, in the real world the problems of transaction costs, asymmetric information and uncertainty about project outcomes limit access to financial services (Beck & de la Torre, 2006). Some of the issues considered in this literature relate to reduction of inequality and poverty (Jalilian & Kirkpatrick, Rashmi Arora
2005). Less-developed financial sectors can lead to increased inequalities, including increased regional disparities, impact on human capital development and increased poverty. Improved access to financial services and products for households also promotes financial development, contributes to economic growth, reduces income inequality and poverty, and has a positive effect on household incomes (Beck & de La Torre, 2006; Demirgüç-Kunt, Klapper & Singer, 2017). Absence of access to financial services, in contrast, results in deprivation of opportunities to the poor as they are unable to access credit markets due to lack of collateral, leading to a vicious circle of poor incomes, low or no investment in human capital development, poor health and poverty (Arora, 2012). Theoretically, a better functioning financial system allow innovative projects to take place, and status of inherent family wealth is not a constraint here. It also boosts economic growth by efficiently allocating capital irrespective of personal income. Beck, Demirgüç-Kunt and Levine (2007) find that financial development reduces income inequality and boosts the incomes of poor and reduces extreme poverty. Other studies which also find negative relationship between financial development and income inequality include Clarke, Xu and Zhao (2006) and Agnello et al. (2012), among others. These studies found that ‘finance exerts a disproportionately positive influence on lower income individuals’ (Levine, 2021). However, some studies, in contrast, find that financial development may not necessarily lead to reduction in inequality. Levine (2021) notes that different findings could be due to different measurements of inequality and financial development, and different methodologies, sample years and country samples. Literature also exists on the link between financial development, education and socio-economic environment. For instance, Levine and Rubinstein (2014) find that financial development leads to reduced high school dropout rates and increased college enrolment rates. Financial development also leads to reduction in crime rates (Garmaise and Moskowitz, 2006). In recent years the role of technology in the financial sector has also become important. Through technology (especially digital), financial services contribute to economic development through increased finan-
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cial inclusion, empowerment of women and improved occupational choices (Suri & Jack, 2016; Arora, 2020).
Determinants of financial development
Among the influential studies in the area of what determines financial development, institutional factors have been considered crucial. Within institutional factors a country’s legal origin is regarded as a significant factor. For instance, La Porta et al. (1997, 1998) argued that a country’s legal origin, whether British, French, German or Scandinavian, determined financial development. The study argued that creditor rights, shareholder rights and private property rights eventually determined a country’s level of bank and stock market development. Levine (1998, 1999) also suggested that the legal origin of financial development also influences a country’s economic growth. Religious and cultural factors also influence financial development. According to Beck et al. (2003a) the legal origin influences financial development through one of two channels – political or adaptability. Thus, under common law, private property rights are clearer and facilitate private ownership and influence financial development positively. On the other hand, civil law confers more power to the state vs. individual property owners, leading to adverse implications for financial development. The adaptability channel emphasizes that legal traditions which evolve more efficiently are more financial development friendly than those which are rigid. Beck et al. (2003b) by applying Acemoglu et al.’s (2001) settler mortality hypothesis or endowment theory as a determinant of financial development, found that countries with poor geographical endowments (or where mortality rates are high) tend to have lower financial development. Besides legal origin, other factors like credit information sharing such as credit bureaus, transparency, rights of creditors, quality of court systems, efficient enforcement of contracts and quality of collateral registries also matter for financial development (Beck, 2018). Macroeconomic factors such as trade openness, financial liberalization and inflation also drive financial development (Boyd, Levine & Smith, 2001; Burger and Warnock, 2006). The evidence on financial liberal-
ization has, however, remained mixed as financial liberalization has also led to ‘higher fragility and systemic banking distress’ when regulatory and supervisory standards are weak (Beck, 2018). Besides policy reforms, political factors also drive financial development. This includes the political economy of regulation, crisis resolution, conflict between public interest and private interest, and enforcement of market discipline. Cultural factors and societal norms such as assertiveness, individualism vs collectivism, risk taking, social capital and trust also influence financial development. Some studies have argued that religion too plays an important role in determining financial development. For instance, Stultz and Williamson (2003) show that in Catholic countries financial system tends to be less developed with less developed credit markets. In Protestant-dominated countries, on the other hand, creditor rights are more stressed. Beck (2018) argued that three major supply-oriented determinants of financial development are policies, including those targeting macroeconomic stability, contractual and information institutions, market structure and competition; political factors; and finally geographic endowments and historical factors that include evolution of legal systems, mode of colonization and availability of natural resources. Also, the study argued that these factors are not mutually exclusive.
Conclusion
This entry briefly discussed the role of financial sector in economic growth and development. Overall, the financial sector allows mobilization of savings and allocation of credit for various innovative projects and allows new projects to take place. Although a firm positive relationship has been observed between finance and economic growth, some recent studies have observed a non-linear relationship between the two. The literature has also acknowledged the role played by the financial sector in economic development, such as reduction in inequality (though some studies have argued otherwise) and poverty. Financial development also leads to improved educational opportunities and has even led to reduced crime rates. Digital finance has become important in recent years, and various studies have documented the crucial role being played by digital finance in Rashmi Arora
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enhancing financial inclusion and increased empowerment of women, among others. The role of finance has been well recognized as an enabler in the achievement of various Sustainable Development Goals too, including climate change. Rashmi Arora
Note 1.
For excellent literature reviews, see Popov (2018), Rousseau (2003), Levine (2005) and Beck (2008, 2012), among others.
References
Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S., & Robinson, J.A. (2001). The colonial origins of comparative development: an empirical investigation. American Economic Review, 91(5), 1369–401. Agnello, L., Mallick, S.K., & Sousa, R.M. (2012). Financial reforms and income inequality. Economics Letters, 116(3), 583–7. Arcand, J.L., Berkes, E., & Panizza, U. (2015). Too much finance? Journal of Economic Growth, 20(2), 105–48. Arora, R.U. (2012). Finance and inequality: a study of Indian states. Applied Economics, 44(34), 4527–38. Arora, R.U. (2020). Gender Bias and Digital Financial Services in South Asia: Obstacles and Opportunities on the Road to Equal Access. Bingley: Emerald. Arora, R.U., & Anand, P.B. (2021). Regional financial disparity in India: can it be measured? Journal of Institutional Economics, https://doi .org/10.1017/S1744137421000291. Bagehot, W. (1873). Lombard Street. Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin [1962 edition]. Beck, T. (2008). The econometrics of finance and growth. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Series No. 4608. Beck, T. (2012). Finance and growth: lessons from the literature and the recent crisis. Paper prepared for the LSE Growth Commission. Beck, T. (2018). What drives financial sector development? Policies, politics and history, in Beck, T. & Levine, R. (eds), Handbook of Finance & Development (pp. 448–76). Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Beck, T., & de la Torre, A. (2006). The basic analytics of access to financial services (English). Policy, Research Working Paper No. WPS 4026. World Bank, Washington, DC. Beck, T., Demirgüç-Kunt, A., & Levine, R. (2003a). Law and finance: why does legal origin matter? Journal of Comparative Economics, 31(4), 653–75.
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Beck, T., Demirgüç-Kunt, A., & Levine, R. (2003b). Law, endowment and finance. Journal of Financial Economics, 70, 37–81. Beck, T., Demirgüç-Kunt, A., & Levine, R. (2007). Finance, inequality and the poor. Journal of Economic Growth, 12(1), 27–49. Bencivenga, V.R. and Smith, B.D. (1991). Financial intermediation and endogenous growth. Review of Economics Studies, 58, 195–209. Bossone, B. (2000). What makes Banks special? A study on banking, finance and economic development, Working Paper No. 2408. World Bank, Washington, DC. Boyd, J.H., Levine, R., & Smith, B.D. (2001). The impact of inflation on financial sector performance. Journal of Monetary Economics, 47, 221–48. Burger, J.D., & Warnock, F.E. (2006). Local currency bond markets, IMF Staff Papers, 53, pp. 133–46. Cecchetti, S., & Kharroubi, E. (2012). Reassessing the impact of finance on growth. BIS Working Papers 381, Bank for International Settlements. Čihák, M., Demirgüç-Kunt, A., Feyen, E., & Levine, R. (2012). Benchmarking financial systems around the world. Policy Research Working Paper, World Bank. Clarke, G.R., Xu, L.C., & Zou, H.F. (2006). Finance and income inequality: what do the data tell us? Southern Economic Journal, 72(3), 578–96. Deidda, L., & Fattouh, B. (2002). Non-linearity between finance and growth. Economics Letters, 74(3), 339–45. Drake, P. (1980). Money, Finance and Development. New York: Wiley, Halstead Press. Demirgüç-Kunt, A., Klapper, L., & Singer, D. (2017). Financial inclusion and inclusive growth: a review of recent empirical evidence. Policy Research Working Paper No. 8040. World Bank, Washington, DC. https:// openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/ 26479. Ergungor, O.E. (2008). Financial system structure and economic growth: structure matters. International Review of Economics & Finance, 17(2), 292–305. Fisher, I. (1930). The Theory of Interest. New York: Macmillan. Garmaise, M., & Moskowitz, T. (2006). Bank mergers and crime: the real and social effects of credit market competition. Journal of Finance, 61(2), 495–538. Goldsmith, R.W. (1969). Financial Structure and Development. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Finance and development 245 Gurley, J.G., & Shaw, E.S. (1955). Financial aspects of economic development. American Economic Review, 45(4), 515–38. Huang, H.-C., & Lin, S.-C. (2009). Non-linear finance–growth nexus: a threshold with instrumental variable approach. Economics of Transition, 17(3), 439–66. Jalilian, H., & Kirkpatrick, C. (2005). Does financial development contribute to poverty reduction? Journal of Development Studies, 41(4), 636–56. King, R.G. and Levine, R. (1993a). Finance, entrepreneurship, and growth: theory and evidence, Journal of Monetary Economics, 32, 513–42. King, R.G. and Levine, R. (1993b). Finance and growth: Schumpeter might be right. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108, 717–37. La Porta, R., Lopez-de-Silanes, F., Lopez-de-Silanes, A. & Vishny, R.W. (1997). Legal determinants of external finance. Journal of Finance, 52(3), 1131–50. La Porta, R., Lopez-de-Silanes, F., Lopez-de-Silanes, A. & Vishny, R.W. (1998). Law and finance. Journal of Political Economy, 106, 1113–55. Law S.H., & Singh, N. (2014). Does too much finance harm economic growth? Journal of Banking & Finance, 41, 36–44. Levine, R. (1997). Financial development and economic growth: views and agenda. Journal of Economic Literature, 35(2), 688–726. Levine, R. (1998). The legal environment, banks, and long-run economic growth. Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, 30, 596–613. Levine, R. (1999). Law, finance, and economic growth. Journal of Financial Intermediation, 8, 36–67. Levine, R. (2005). Finance and growth: theory and evidence. In P. Aghion & S. Durlauf (eds), Handbook of Economic Growth, Volume 1 (pp. 865–934). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Levine, R. (2021). Finance, growth, and inequality. IMF Working Paper, WP/21/164, International Monetary Fund. Levine, R., & Rubinstein, Y. (2014). Liberty for more: finance and educational opportunities. Cato Papers on Public Policy, 3, 55–93.
Lucas, R.E. Jr. (1988). On the mechanics of economic development’ Journal of Monetary Economics, 22(1), 3–42. Popov, A. (2018). Evidence on finance and economic growth, in T. Beck & R. Levine (eds), Handbook of Finance and Development (pp. 63–105). Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Rioja, F., & Valev, N. (2004). Does one size fit all? A reexamination of the finance and growth relationship. Journal of Development Economics, 74(2), 429–47. Robinson, J. (1952). The generalization of the general theory, in The Rate of Interest and Other Essays. London: Macmillan. Rousseau, P. (2003). Historical perspectives on financial development and economic growth. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, 85(4), 81–106. Schumpeter, J.A. (1912). Theorie der Wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung. Leipzig: Dunker & Humblot [The Theory of Economic Development, translated by R. Opie. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934]. Schumpeter, J.A. (1934). The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest and the Business Cycle (translated from the German by Redvers Opie). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Shen, C., & Lee, C. (2006). Same financial development yet different economic growth: why? Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 38, 1907–44. Skaggs, N.T. (1999). Adam Smith on growth and credit: too weak a connection? Journal of Economic Studies, 26(6), 481–96. Stulz, R., & Williamson, R. (2003). Culture, openness, and finance. Journal of Financial Economics, 70, 313–49. Suri, T., & Jack, W. (2016). The long-run poverty and gender impacts of mobile finance. Science, 354(6317), 1288–92. Svirydzenka, K. (2016). Introducing a new broad-based index of financial development. IMF Working Paper WP/16/5, International Monetary Fund.
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Financial inclusion Financial inclusion refers to ensuring ease of access, availability and usage of the formal financial system by all members of a society. By analogy, financial exclusion indicates processes that hamper people’s access to the formal financial system. Barriers to financial inclusion are an important impediment towards poverty alleviation and economic development. Absence of an inclusive financial system causes difficulties in management of and access to the necessary financial services for productive purposes, consumption smoothing and management of economic shocks for financially excluded persons and households. An all-inclusive financial system, by providing various appropriate and affordable financial services to all, improves efficiency and welfare of the society at large. An inclusive financial system allows all economic agents to actively participate in the formal financial system irrespective of income levels, gender, social status and other such factors.
Financial inclusion is a form of social inclusion
Financial inclusion (exclusion) should be viewed in the context of a larger issue of social inclusion (exclusion) of certain people from the mainstream of the society. The growing literature has adequately documented that financial exclusion typically occurs to people who are at the margins of the society. These include people with low income, the unemployed, minority communities, the uneducated, rural people, female-headed families and so on (Leyshon and Thrift, 1995; Kempson and Whyley, 1999; Ghosh and Vinod, 2016; Yangdol and Sarma, 2019). Country-specific characteristics, such as levels of economic development, poverty and economic inequality play an important role in determining whether a country is likely to have an inclusive financial system, in addition to the levels of urbanization, physical and electronic connectivity, information availability, literacy rate and so on (Sarma and Pais, 2011). Thus, financial inclusion and social inclusion are inter-linked. Financial inclusion implies removing the processes that prevent vulnerable social groups and individuals from gaining access to the
formal financial systems. Exclusion from the formal financial systems may come about in various ways, for example through lack of access due to remoteness or the process of risk management by financial service providers (access exclusion), unreasonable or inappropriate conditions of financial services (condition exclusion), high cost of financial services (price exclusion), targeted marketing practices (marketing exclusion) and self-exclusion due to lack of understanding of financial products or in response to negative experiences and perceptions (self-exclusion). In addition, another form of exclusion is technology induced social and financial exclusion (digital exclusion).
Financial inclusion policies
While developing and less developed economies are home to large sections of financially excluded populations, financial exclusion is not a poor country’s problem alone, as, even in many high income countries, some segments of people are found to be financially excluded. In order to promote financial inclusion, many countries have initiated several policies and schemes. While financial inclusion itself is not a panacea, its potential to facilitate livelihood opportunities and poverty alleviation is widely acknowledged by policy makers and economists at large. Policies to promote inclusive financial systems occur in different forms, such as legislative measures from governments, regulatory interventions by financial regulators, voluntary actions by the banking industry and alternative financial products by non-banking agencies. Some examples of legislative measures include the Community Reinvestment Act (1977) of the United States that legally prohibits banks from targeting only rich neighbourhoods and the Law on Exclusion (1998) in France that emphasizes the right to a bank account. India’s priority sector lending policy that mandates banks to make certain proportion of their loanable funds available to certain marginalized sections of the population can also be considered as an attempt to build a more inclusive banking system. In addition to these, regulators in most countries have also intervened directly to induce banks and financial institutions to be more inclusive. For example, the Reserve Bank of India initiated a system of low-cost ‘no-frills’ bank accounts and credit cards specially meant for
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poor people, and commercial banks are mandated to provide such low-cost financial services. Initiatives from the banking industries towards enhancing financial inclusion have been noteworthy in many countries, such as the German Bankers’ Association’s voluntary code to provide for ‘everyman’ banking account (1996) to the financially excluded to facilitate basic banking transactions and the low-cost ‘Mzansi’ account offered by the South African Banking Association for financially excluded people in 2004. In many developing countries, alternate financial institutions such as microfinance institutions and ‘self-help groups’ have emerged to complement the mainstream financial system to provide small-value products to poor sections of the society. Non-conventional financial services based on technology, such as smart cards, internet banking, mobile banking, business correspondents and agents, postal-system delivery and so on have also been tried and tested. The most recent technological innovation is smart phone app-based financial service provisioning, also known as fintech. The various government policies and regulations for promotion of financial inclusion and the development of alternative modes of financial service provisioning have substantially enhanced the possibilities of financial inclusion for excluded persons. However, supply-driven policies alone are not likely to improve financial inclusion. It is argued that financial exclusion and social exclusion are two sides of the same coin as those who are financially excluded are also the most disadvantaged and underprivileged. Hence, policies to improve financial inclusion must be accompanied by policies that address poverty alleviation, enhance employment and education opportunities and mitigate gender and other forms of discrimination.
Financial inclusion is not microfinance or fintech
Alternative financial services such as those provided by microfinance institutions and app-based fintech products are being used to reach out to large segments of financially excluded people who have hitherto remained excluded from the mainstream banking systems. As a result of growing use of such non-mainstream products, financial
inclusion is sometimes used as synonymous with microfinance and fintech. However, microfinance and fintech are merely conduits for inclusiveness and should not be used as synonyms for financial inclusion.
Measuring financial inclusion
Measuring financial inclusion forms a substantial component of the financial inclusion literature. An appropriate and robust measure of financial inclusion is of utmost importance not only for monitoring success (or otherwise) of financial inclusion policies, but also for empirical understanding of the inter-linkages between financial inclusion, other forms of social inclusion, economic growth and development. A measure of financial inclusion depends on how precisely it is defined. While the conceptual definition of financial inclusion may be easy to understand, what may be more challenging to arrive at are functional and operational definitions that should be used. And this would be mainly due to difficulties of data availability. The most basic approach to measuring the level of financial inclusion in an economy is to count the number of individuals or households having an account with a formal financial institution. In this approach, accounts in formal financial institutions are seen as a gateway to receiving a range of formal financial services. Hence a measure of the inclusiveness, in this approach, is given by the proportion of individuals/households having an account in a formal financial institution (also known as banked individuals/households). This simple approach is, however, fraught with deficiencies as it ignores the multidimensionality of financial inclusion. It is to be noted that merely having an account need not imply financial inclusion if people do not make use of the accounts adequately. It is documented that often people with an account do not use them enough due to remoteness, cost of transactions, psychological barriers, financial illiteracy and so on. Unless financial services are widely available in the form of bank branches, ATMs and alternative forms of service outlets, and unless accounts are adequately used for saving, borrowing, remittances, payments and transactions by the users, the benefits of the financial system are not fully realized. Thus, financial inclusion is multidimensional. An inclusive financial system should not only have all Mandira Sarma
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members having accounts in a financial institution, it should also be widely available and adequately used. Thus, along with financial penetration, financial services availability and usage are also important dimensions of an inclusive financial system. A measure based on the proportion of adults with a bank account effectively quantifies only one aspect of inclusiveness (viz. financial penetration), and ignores other important aspects, such as availability, affordability, quality and usage of financial systems that together form an inclusive financial system. An alternate approach is to use a variety of indicators that reflect different aspects of financial inclusion. Some such indicators available from regulators based on banking sector data are number of bank accounts (per 1,000 adult persons), number of bank branches and ATMs (per million people), volume of bank credit and deposit as ratios of GDP and so on. Other examples coming from surveys of individuals/ households are the proportion of individuals/ households with an account with a financial institution, frequency of the usage of the account, amount of financial transactions by individuals/households and so on. These indicators do provide a fuller set of information than the single indicator approach. However, use of multiple indicators can potentially lead to misinterpretation on the aggregate level of financial inclusion, as an economy may be ahead in one indicator (dimension) of financial inclusion compared to another economy and behind in economy is more inclusive. To mitigate the challenges of multiplicity of indicators, an index based-measure has been suggested in the literature. The index-based measure aggregates various indicators measuring various dimensions of financial inclusion into a single number. Thus, contrary to the single indicator and multiple indicators approaches, the index-based approach incorporates multidimensionality of financial inclusion in a single number. The important issue here is to use an appropriate method for aggregation of the indicators, so that the resultant index is meaningful, intuitive, robust and amenable for comparison across economies and over time. A well-defined index of financial inclusion should satisfy some desirable mathematical properties, that is, (a) it should be a unit free; (b) it should have well-defined bounds, say in [0,1]; (c) it should be monotonous (i.e. higher Mandira Sarma
achievements in any given dimension, ceteris paribus, should give rise to higher measure of financial inclusion) (Sarma, 2016). In addition, the index should be such that it is amenable for comparison across economies and over time. One such measure is Sarma’s Index of Financial Inclusion (IFI) (Sarma, 2012, 2015, 2016). In the IFI measure, first, a country’s achievements in various dimensions of financial inclusion are normalized with respect to some pre-specified benchmarks which are then put together in a vector form. This vector of achievements is considered as a point in the Cartesian coordinate plane. In the coordinate plane, two reference points are identified, one indicating the worst level (zero achievement in all dimensions) and other indicating the best level (ideal achievement in all dimensions, given the benchmarks) of financial inclusion. The IFI is computed by using the Euclidean distance formula for the distance between a country’s achievement point and the worst level point, and the proximity (inverse distance) of the country’s achievement point from the best level. The farther the country’s achievement from the worst point of achievement, the more inclusive the country’s financial system is. The closer the country’s achievement point to the ideal point, the more inclusive the financial system is. An average of these two distances gives the IFI measure of a country. An illustration of this methodology, based on the available data for various countries, and the technical details of the methodology are presented in Sarma (2016).
Global initiatives for financial inclusion data
While country-level data on dimensions of financial indicators are generally available from their regulators, there have also been attempts at preparing global databases so as to make necessary and relevant data available for measuring financial inclusion in a comparable manner for all countries. An important global database for comparable cross-country data is the Financial Access Survey (FAS) database of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The FAS database is an outcome of the initiatives of ‘United Nations (UN) Advisors Group on Inclusive Financial Sectors’, established by the UN in 2006, which decided, in 2008, to involve IMF and the World Bank in collecting data
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on access to finance in order to support policy formulation and research. The initial funding for collection of the data was provided by the government of the Netherlands. In June 2010, the IMF released annual data on several indicators of access to finance on its web site. Another important initiative is the Global Findex database of the World Bank. This database is prepared after conducting periodical surveys of adult individuals in more than 148 countries, covering topics pertaining to financial inclusion at an individual level.
Conclusion
Financial inclusion is a process that ensures ease of access, availability and usage of the formal financial system. An inclusive financial system is an important conduit for achieving sustainable economic development. Financial exclusion is a manifestation of social exclusion and policies to address financial exclusion should be accompanied with those that address social exclusion. The definition of financial inclusion, conceptual as well as functional or operational, emphasizes that financial inclusion is a multi-dimensional phenomenon. The literature on measuring financial inclusion broadly accepts an index-based measure that incorporates multidimensionality and is amenable for comparison across economies and over time. With global data being available both at aggregate level and at individual level,
challenges of measuring financial inclusion are likely to be overcome. Mandira Sarma
References
Ghosh, S. and D. Vinod (2016). Furthering the financial inclusion agenda in India: How important is gender? Economic and Political Weekly, LI(12), 126–32. Kempson, E. and C. Whyley (1999). Kept out or opted out? Understanding and combating financial exclusion. Bristol: Policy Press. Leyshon A. and N. Thrift (1995). Geographies of financial exclusion: Financial abandonment in Britain and the United States. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, 20(3), 312–41. Sarma, M. (2012). Index of financial inclusion: A measure of financial sector inclusiveness, Working Paper No. 07/2012. Berlin Working Papers on Money, Finance, Trade and Development, Berlin. Sarma, M. (2015). Measuring financial inclusion. Economics Bulletin, 35(1), 604–11. Sarma, M. (2016). Measuring financial inclusion using multidimensional data. World Economics, 17(1), 15–40. Sarma, M. and J. Pais (2011). Financial inclusion and development. Journal of International Development, 23(5), 613–28. Yangdol, R. and M. Sarma (2019). Demand-side factors for financial inclusion: A cross-country empirical analysis. International Studies, 56, 163–85.
Mandira Sarma
Food regimes Introduction
The ‘food regime’ concept is a comparative world-historical construct designed to trace the changing geopolitical landscape of industrial agriculture and food provisioning on a world scale. It offers perspective on the rise and transformation of the international state system through the agri-food lens. Large-scale commodification of land, livestock, agricultural technologies, and food/ ingredients has blended social diets and differentiated food access across diverse cultural terrains. Successive food regime episodes are distinct, yet cumulative, each demarcating a special historical conjuncture in the political history of capital. Thus, food regime analysis is a methodological procedure focused on how sequential food regimes recast prior political-economic relations at the same time as they prefigure emerging relations (McMichael 2015). New conjunctures are triggered by developing regime tensions, resolved by reformulation of geopolitical/ economic relations. At this point in time, global food supply chain vulnerabilities reveal the fundamental tension in the food regime between private and public interests with respect to food security, public health, and global ecological stability, foreshadowing possible transformation.
Food regime analysis
Food regimes represent three phases of geo-political ordering of international food production and circulation, governed by singular world prices underwriting capital’s dependence on cheap food to lower wage-costs, and open new markets. The geo-political orders in question are periods of hegemony: British (1870s–1914), American (1940s–1970s), and corporate/financial or neoliberal hegemony (1980s–present). Such geo-political orders enter crisis and transition, conditioning reorganization of the agri-food relations underpinning an unfolding state system (McMichael 2013a). The British-centred food regime (1870–1930s) combined traditional colonial tropical imports with imported basic grains and livestock from settler ‘frontiers’ to source Britain’s ‘workshop of the world’. Following repeal of (protective) Corn Laws in 1846,
to reduce labour costs for a rising industrial class, Britain outsourced its staple food production in mid-nineteenth century to colonies of settlement, confiscating landscapes of rich soil in the New World to provide cheap food supplies for industrializing Europe. From 1859 to 1889, US wheat and corn production almost trebled, as farms nearly trebled in number (2 to 5.7 million) between 1860 and 1900 (Winders 2009, 327), and a single world wheat price emerged between 1870 and 1913 (O’Rourke 1997, 782). In turn, frontier agriculture anchored the new settler states, via integrated national farm/manufacturing ‘sectors’ to form putative national economies, which came to represent the idealized US model of national capitalist development (Friedmann and McMichael 1989; McMichael 1984; Halperin 2004). This model in turn framed the mid-twentieth century ‘development project’ (McMichael 1996), through which US hegemonic relations in the Cold War/post-colonial world contributed to nation building via economic, military and, significantly, food aid – enabled by post-war/depression commodity stabilization programmes encouraging exportable surpluses of cereal monocultures (wheat, corn, soy). These cereals, along with sugar and oils, sourced new international animal protein and durable foods complexes, as industrial food processing intensified capital accumulation (Friedmann 1994). The resulting transnational supply chains organized by multinational company investments and offshore banking led to financial deregulation in the 1970s and a neoliberal ‘globalization project’, by which states, formerly served by markets, now served global markets and (were subject to) capital mobility (McMichael 2013a). Food regime succession embodied these transforming geopolitical and economic relations: with the imperial state system yielding to a post-Second World War international order in which the organizing principle was the nation state, followed by a neoliberal global order with value relations as the organizing principle. This can be represented substantively in the following way: The British-centred food regime encouraged exports of cheap wheat and meat from the New World frontier (the Americas, Australasia) underwriting metropolitan industrialization; the US-centred food regime pivoted on American public food aid programme sales of food surpluses as wage foods
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at concessional prices to underwrite industrialization in (Cold War) strategic Third World countries (e.g. South Korea, India, Pakistan, Israel, Egypt, Colombia), complemented with subsidized green revolution technologies for urban wage foods; and the corporate food regime intensified US and EU export of food surpluses to the global South via WTO liberalization of world trading and investment in the name of ‘feeding the world’ – world food prices reaching their lowest level in 150 years at century’s end (FAO 2003). In this era of financialization, agribusiness conglomeration accompanied the universalization of export agriculture and an accelerated displacement of small-scale producers. The corporate food regime began with structural adjustment policies mandated by the World Bank and IMF from the 1980s, requiring indebted Southern states to dismantle farm sector protections and expand agro-exports to defray debt. In the 1990s multilateral trade agreements (notably NAFTA and WTO) instituted liberalization measures to universalize freedom of agricultural investment and trade. The WTO promotion of transnational agribusiness represented a neoliberal claim for a global ‘food security’ policy. US and EU (hidden) subsidies for corporate food producers artificially cheapened foodstuffs for dumping in world markets at the expense of now unprotected Southern farmers, and agro-export estates expanded in the global South to provide Northern consumers with high-value fruit, vegetables, and seafood. This international division of agricultural labour deepened Southern food dependency and a global process of ‘de-peasantization’ (Araghi 2009). In sum, food regime structuring across this long (industrial) century has resulted in the displacement of local food systems. This process has proceeded from annexation of indigenous lands and capture of colonial food reserves (via taxation and monetization), through deployment of concessional food aid and green revolution techno-politics in marginalizing post-colonial food producers, to the universalization of export agriculture and associated dispossession of small farmers by land confiscation/concentration and food dumping. These three moments correspond with the three food regime episodes.
Corporate food regime restructuring
While land enclosure has been a constant across capitalism’s longue dureé, it has taken a new turn in the twenty-first century, contributing to the deepening of the corporate food regime. Recent ‘land grabs’ have been enabled by financialization and incorporation of agro-food futures into commodity index funds, outbidding oil and metal commodities, and encouraging speculation on the evidently ‘natural’ limits of the food regime. As a new financial asset, land attracted not simply wealthy investors and large financial houses and pension funds, but also conglomerates in traditional sectors like oil, auto, chemicals and agribusiness, eager to capitalize on enclosure given the global investment recession in conventional sectors. Such financialization renders land and crops fungible (food, feed, fuel, biomass) according to short-term profitability considerations rather long-term socio-ecological needs (McMichael 2012). Similarly, land grabbing via sovereign wealth funds and state enterprise has intensified as certain food-and fuel-dependent countries, concerned with the rash of food export bans and food riots during the height of inflation, have practiced ‘agro-security mercantilism’ (McMichael 2013b). Here land is acquired offshore to secure food supplies for their own populations – thereby bypassing ‘free market’ access via WTO rules. Such state-driven land grabbing is a late-developer phenomenon. While Northern states depend on a substantial network of corporate food supply chains (e.g. France’s global retailer Carrefour has 15,600 across 34 countries), East Asian and Middle East and North African states depend more on sovereign wealth funds and state firms to commandeer land offshore. In these ways the institutional architecture of the corporate food regime has been significantly compromised, alongside a new belt of agro-export powers (Brazil, Argentina, Chile, South East Asia, South Africa, Russia, Ukraine) weakening US/European oligopolistic power via a multi-polar food order. Meanwhile, in 2008, food crisis and a World Food Conference in Rome shifted attention to small-scale producers as a new domain of increased food productivity (McMichael 2009). Here, public, private, and philanthropic investment in infrastructural and credit support refocused on incorporating Philip McMichael
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small producers into value chains of upstream supplies of commercial agro-inputs, and downstream industrial processing and global market outlets. The financial nexus associated with the spread of such contracts chains producers to value relations beyond their control. This entails ‘value grabbing’ by reorienting production towards corporate-controlled markets (deepening local food insecurity), monopolizing agricultural knowledge, reducing farmers to labourers, and creating a class of indebted farmers, some of whom surrender land for corporate consolidation (McMichael 2013c). Under these conditions, small-scale producers have resisted by reducing commercial inputs and investing in their farm’s ecological wealth – restoring farming knowledge, biodiversity, and soil health. Such farmer/nature co-production is termed ‘re-peasantization’, where ‘ecological capital’ represents an alternative ‘valorization’ as the core of the farming enterprise (Van der Ploeg 2008; Da Vía 2012; Levidow 2015; Altieri and Toledo 2011). It is a practice widespread in Europe and Latin America, parts of South Asia and Africa, and emergent in North America (Hylton 2012; Philpott 2020). India’s Zero Budget Natural Farming programme exemplifies this strategy. Beginning in the state of Karnataka with 100,000 farms, when farmer suicides were on the rise, it spread to southern states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala via millions of farmers, with substantial improvement in yields, soil conservation, food security, and income (Rosset and Altieri 2017; Khadse et al., 2018). Not unique to ‘peasant’ agriculture, these strategies reflect a key tension in the food regime’s sponsorship of ‘agriculture without farmers’ (La Vía Campesina 2009). ‘Decommodification’ rejects debt relations spawned by agribusiness conglomeration and value chain capture, and the ecocide associated with industrial agriculture’s ‘biophysical override’ (Weis 2007). It signals a palpable tension internal to the food regime that allows/anticipates the possibility of a widespread restorative agriculture working with living eco-systems.
Food regime countermovement
Whereas previous food regime tensions centred on national versus imperial state structuring, and transnational commodity cirPhilip McMichael
culation versus economic nationalism, the corporate food regime’s assault on farming cultures across the world precipitates protective responses ranging from ‘re-peasantization’ through nested marketing to trans-scale food sovereignty politics (Van der Ploeg 2008; Da Vía 2012; Desmarais 2007). As a different kind of geo-political intervention (revaluing territorialism in a globalizing conjuncture) the international ‘peasant’ coalition (small and medium farmers, landless rural labourers, artisanal fishers, pastoralists, and forest dwellers) advocates territorial farming systems over de-territorializing enclosures and investments in global supply chains anchored in ‘world farms’. ‘Food sovereignty’ is the unifying political strategy now of a broad range of anti-corporate agri-food activists (McKeon 2015; Claeys 2015; Duncan 2015; Schiavoni 2017). This term framed the challenge by La Vía Campesina (LVC) – a peasant coalition of 160 chapters from more than 82 countries, representing over 200 million small producers and landless peasants (Mann 2014) – of neoliberal claims for global ‘food security’, to be delivered by transnational corporations, at the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome. Thus: ‘Food sovereignty was … a story of solidarity against adversity, of cooperation against competition. The trade negotiators wanted their farmers to compete. Instead, rallying behind the new slogan, the peasants of the world decided to unite’ (Olivier De Schutter, quoted in Gaarde 2017, xvi). LVC deployed ‘peasant’ nomenclature as a provocation (to capitalist modernity) modeling a process of consolidating autonomous and democratic rural cultures based in cooperation, territorial control, and stewardship of eco-systems, represented as the ‘peasant way’ (Gaarde 2017, 33).1 In 2000, LVC joined 51 other civil society organizations to form the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, with the goal of gaining access to the UN’s Committee on World Food Security. This materialized in 2009 following the legitimacy crisis of sharp global food price inflation in 2008, and food riots in 30 countries, from Haiti to Italy (Patel and McMichael 2009). A civil society mechanism (CSM) was established to give voice to producers and workers on food system front lines – but not votes, as the agrarian movements wanted to hold governments accountable (McKeon 2009). In
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this way, the farmer voice was institutionalized as a counterforce in the corporate food regime, invoking protection of land rights and reform/redistribution, tenure guidelines (notably security for women farmers), seed sovereignty, market access, financial regulation, agro-ecology, and so forth (Gaarde 2017). This vision represents a central oppositional reflex to the corporate food regime’s model of ‘agriculture without farmers’, privileging large-scale food corporations – ‘commanding billions more in infrastructure [beyond] multibillion-dollar markets for their goods’ (Philpott 2020, 180–81), and massively privileged, with $540 billion annually in global subsidies, 90 per cent of which damage people and planet, according to the UN (Carrington 2021) – over small-scale farming systems, viewed as pre-modern and inefficient, even as they produce most of the world’s food (GRAIN 2022). At a time when the former model is steadily degrading eco-systems, contributing approximately a third of greenhouse gases,2 exploiting and/ or displacing largely invisible and often racialized rural labour, feeding only global consumers with purchasing power, and poisoning public health, the food sovereignty movement demands land redistribution and domestic food system support to restore and stabilize localized eco-farming systems. Here the COVID-19 pandemic’s disruption of global supply chains has given greater credence to renewing territorial food provisioning systems. The ‘food sovereignty’ intervention by the peasant movement in the late twentieth century has come full circle: not just about democratic control of localized farming systems, but also about national state sovereignty in supporting and advancing on-shore and resilient agri-food sectors. Just as previous food regimes juxtaposed national and international vectors, so the corporate food regime’s central tension pivots on the territorial question. And this question includes ‘agrarian citizenship’ issues regarding environmental stewardship in all its forms (Wittman 2009). In this sense, the peasant movement inspires a distinctive ontology, substituting a socio-ecological calculus for a financial calculus, to reproduce sustainable environments and healthy citizens and other species. Advocating ‘the peasant way’ is not about
preserving a(n impoverished) peasant society (Soper 2021); rather, it is about eliminating market rule and recovering public responsibilities (Trauger et al., 2017), including reversing the flow of subsidies from agribusiness to small-scale farming systems. The food sovereignty vision offers socio-ecological possibilities resonating beyond farming communities per se. In this sense, beyond the orthodox focus on capital/labour relations, it marks a turning point in recognition of capitalism’s so-called ‘second contradiction’ (O’Connor 1998).
Food regime futures
As the third decade of the twenty-first century unfolds, two developments with opposing geopolitical dimensions are underway. China’s growing involvement in the food regime is reorganizing geographies of food production and circulation, in the name of multilateral ‘mutual benefit’ and ‘development cooperation’ (Scoones et al., 2016). Meanwhile, the corporate sector has been mobilizing to capture global food governance from the UN, on grounds that multilateralism is spent (McMichael 2021), thereby fortifying the corporate food regime from mushrooming counter-hegemonic social movements. China is now the largest farm produce importer at 10 per cent of global farm produce trade, including bulk agricultural products such as grains, edible oils, sugar, meat, and milk (Xinhuanet 2018; FAO 2019). And it is also the third largest exporter of agricultural commodities in the world by value (Zhang 2019, 51), with its food exports concentrated in fish, fruits, vegetables, and processed foods. Since it has only 9 per cent of the world’s arable land to feed 20 per cent of the world’s population, access to resources requires stable bilateral relations to replace the instability of finance-driven, globally mobile private capital. The PRC’s No. 1 Central Document (2014) stated: ‘China must be more active in utilizing international food market and agricultural resources to effectively coordinate and supplement domestic supply’ (cited in Zhang 2019, 46). Here, China’s new Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), connecting with Europe and Africa, includes infrastructural investments in ‘modernizing’ South East Asian and Central and West Asian agricultures, and cultivating Africa as an agricultural incubator, with its long-standing Philip McMichael
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practices of intensive small-scale farming (McMichael 2020). And the BRI looks to realign the global wheat trade into Asia, establishing a grain futures market with Kazakhstan, Russia, and other post-Soviet states, with China’s substantial state-owned enterprise, COFCO, as a significant buyer (Kanao and Bisenov 2017). Perhaps most significant is President Xi Jinping’s current goal of ‘rural revitalization’. This complements the BRI, as global engagement, to secure an integrated national economy, via his concept of ‘dual circulation’. Such a centralized state-capitalist development model includes a substantially protected peasant sector (Van der Ploeg and Ye 2016). The state encourages both Western-style agro-technologies and a regulated organic agriculture sector. Retention of a (‘modernizing’) peasant sector, containing networks of self-organizing organic farmers (with participatory monitoring) offers an alternative path to food system de-territorialization associated with the corporate food regime. Meanwhile, the UN participated in buttressing the regime in a Faustian bargain with the World Economic Forum (WEF) – staging a Food Systems Summit in 2021 geared to ‘corporate capture’ of global food governance, via a ‘Great Reset’ (Schwab and Malleret 2020). The WEF underscored China’s rivalry to its world vision and Western development model, and, in claiming multilateralism ineffective, the WEF’s goal was to realize ‘private corporations as trustees of society’ (Schwab 2019). The Summit was the mechanism by which (corporate-dominated) ‘stakeholder’ power to shape world food policy could substitute for the multilateral principle of state responsibilities the UN ‘social contract’, including human rights and civil society protections. Notably absent from initial stakeholder invitations were small farmers and their CSIPM representatives,3 alongside override of the CFS. In effect, the UN’s most inclusive agency, the CFS, and its High-Level Panel of Experts, would likely be replaced by corporate administration and private-driven science policy governance, absent grassroots farming knowledges and practices (McMichael 2021). In food regime terms, this Summit invoked a possible new conjuncture in a last-ditch effort by the corporate world to seal its global Philip McMichael
power, even as the pandemic revealed rising food insecurity from broken food supply chains, alongside intensifying ecological uncertainties. The smokescreen style of the Summit triggered a massive global resistance, drawing attention to simmering regime tension, marked by corporate unaccountability and public complicity, and climate emergency. Resolution of this fundamental food regime tension has fundamental significance for public and planetary health (IPES-Food and ETC Group 2021).
Conclusion
In sum, the food regime traces the political history of capital as a set of changing geo-political, geo-economic, and geo-ecological relations. It is by no means a linear development process; rather, it is an accumulation of intensifying contradictions. Despite claims of peasant redundancy in the modern world, the international peasant movement, as the unique material and epistemic target of capitalist dispossession by accumulation, identified the central tension with its late twentieth-century challenge to market rule. Here, as a financial calculus gains traction, pricing consolidates capital’s power, further conditioning policymaking, the dissipation of public authority, and management of a questionable future. A financial calculus is not simply about profit, but long-term control via a so-called final enclosure. It is the power relations, the hegemonic claims, and the consequences of this trajectory that the movement contests – from grassroots mobilizations to protect the right to produce food and agroecological practices, to sustained advocacy for human rights and recognition of the importance of the re-embedding of social and ecological relations. Commodification of land (and ‘ecosystem services’) and the techno-politics of land use (agro-inputs, intellectual property regimes, digital futures) constitute a fundamental social alienation from nature: from ‘agriculture without farmers’ to ‘agriculture without humans’. The front-line peasant movement identifies such forms of enclosure as foreclosing ecological knowledge essential to human/planetary survival/health. This is an urgent vector of resistance to corporate food regime violence, but also, in underlining the
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current institutionalized ecological crisis, it foreshadows a way out. Philip McMichael
Notes 1.
2. 3.
Note here that the omnibus term ‘peasant’ refers to a political movement, concerned with regenerating broad agro-ecological farming, at the territorial level, rather than a ‘peasant solution’ as such. ETC (2017, 42) estimates between 44 per cent and 57 per cent of GHG emissions. The initial CSM of 2010 is now the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism (CSIPM).
References
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Friedmann, H. (1994). ‘Distance and durability: shaky foundations of the world food economy’. In McMichael, P. (ed.), The Global Restructuring of Agro-Food Systems, pp. 258–76. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Friedmann, H. and McMichael, P. (1989). ‘Agriculture and the state system: the rise and fall of national agricultures, 1870 to the present’. Sociologia Ruralis, 29(2), pp. 93–117. https:// people.duke.edu/~rcd2/Dissertation/Friedmann %20and%20mcmichael%201989.pdf. Gaarde, I. (2017). Peasants Negotiating a Global Policy Space: La Via Campesina in the Committee on World Food Security. London: Earthscan. GRAIN (2022). ‘Peasants still feed the world, even if FAO claims otherwise’. https:// grain .org/en/article/6790-peasants-still-feed-the -world-even-if-fao-claims-otherwise. Halperin, S. (2004). War and Social Change in Modern Europe: The Great Transformation Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hylton, W.S. (2012). ‘Broken heartland: the looming collapse of agriculture on the Great e360 Plains’. Harpers Magazine, July. http:// .yale.edu/features/where-corn-is-king-the -stirrings-of-a-small-grain-renaissance. IPES-Food and ETC Group [International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems and ETC Group] (2021). The Long Food Movement: Transforming Food Systems by 2045. http:// www.ipes-food.org. Kanao, H. and Bisenov, N. (2017). ‘China’s Belt and Road sparks battle of the breadbaskets’. Nikkei Asian Review, 30 November. https:// asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Asia-Insight/China -s-Belt-and-Road-sparks-a-battle-of-the -breadbaskets. Khadse, A., Rosset, P., Morales, H. and Ferguson, B.G. (2018). ‘Taking agroecology to scale: the zero budget natural farming peasant movement in Karnataka, India’. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 45(1), pp. 192–219. https://doi.org/10 .1080/03066150.2016.1276450. La Vía Campesina (2009). ‘A G8 on agriculture without farmers = more hunger and poverty’. https://viacampesina.org/en/a-g8-on-agriculture -without-farmers-more-hunger-and-poverty/. Levidow, L. (2015). ‘European transitions towards a corporate-environmental food regime: agroecological incorporation of contestation?’ Journal of Rural Studies, 40, pp. 76–89. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2015.06.001. Mann, A. (2014). Global Activism in Food Politics. Power Shift. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
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256 Elgar encyclopedia of development McKeon, N. (2009). United Nations and Civil Society: Legitimating Global Governance – Whose Voice? London: Zed Books. McKeon, N. (2015). Food Security Governance: Empowering Communities, Regulating Corporations. London & New York: Routledge. McMichael, P. (1984). Settlers and the Agrarian Question: Foundations of Capitalism in Colonial Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McMichael, P. (1996). Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press. McMichael, P. (2009). ‘Banking on agriculture: a review of the World Development Report (2008)’. Journal of Agrarian Change, 9(2), pp. 235–46. https://doi.org/10.1111/j .1471–0366.2009.00203.x. McMichael, P. (2012). ‘The land grab and corporate food regime restructuring’. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(3–4), pp. 681–701. https:// doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2012.661369. McMichael, P. (2013a). Food Regimes and Agrarian Questions. Halifax: Fernwood Press. https://practicalactionpublishing.com/book/ 770/food-regimes-and-agrarian-questions. McMichael, P. (2013b). ‘Land grabbing as security mercantilism in international relations’. doi Globalizations, 10(1), pp. 47–64. https:// .org/10.1080/14747731.2013.760925. McMichael, P. (2013c). ‘Value-chain agriculture and debt relations: contradictory outcomes’. Third World Quarterly, 34(4), pp. 671–90. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2013 .786290. McMichael, P. (2015). ‘Value theory and food regime temporalities’. REVIEW (FernandBraudelCenter), 38(4), pp. 307–28. https://resolver.scholarsportal.info/resolve/ 01479032/v38i0004/307_vtafrt.xml. McMichael, P. (2020). ‘Does China’s going out strategy prefigure a new food regime?’ The Journal of Peasant Studies, 47(1), pp. 116–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2019 .1693368. McMichael, P. (2021). ‘Shock and awe in the UNFSS’. Development. https://doi.org/10 .1057/s41301–021–00304–1. O’Connor, J. (1998). Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism. New York & London: The Guilford Press. O’Rourke, K. (1997). ‘The European grain invasion, 1870–1913’. Journal of Economic www .tcd History, 57, pp. 775–801. https:// .ie/Economics/staff/orourkek/offprints/JEH %201997%20printed%20version.pdf. Patel, R. and McMichael, P. (2009). ‘A political economy of the food riot’. REVIEW (Fernand Braudel Center), XXXII(1), pp. 9–36. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105024.
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Philpott, T. (2020). Precarious Bounty: The Looming Collapse of American Farming. New York: Bloomsbury. Rosset, P. and Altieri, M. (2017). Agroecology: Science and Politics. Halifax: Fernwood. Schiavoni, C. (2017). ‘The contested terrain of food sovereignty construction: towards a historical, relational, and interactive approach’. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44(1), pp. 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2016 .1234455. Schwab, K. (2019). ‘Why we need the “Davos Manifesto” for a better kind of capitalism’. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/ why-we-need-the-davos-manifesto-for-better -kind-of-capitalism/. Schwab, K. and Malleret, T. (2020). Covid-19: The Great Reset. New York: Forum Publishing. http://reparti.free.fr/schwab2020.pdf. Scoones, I., Amanor, K., Favareto, A. and Gubo, Q. (2016). ‘A new politics of development cooperation? Chinese and Brazilian engagements in African agriculture’. World Development, 81, pp. 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev .2015.11.020. Soper, R. (2021). ‘From protecting peasant livelihoods to essentializing peasant agriculture: problematic trends in food sovereignty discourse’. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 42(2), pp. 265–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150 .2018.1543274. Trauger, A., Claeys, P. and Desmarais, A. (2017). ‘Can the revolution be institutionalized?’ In Desmarais, A., Claeys, P. and Trauger, A. (eds), Public Policies for Food Sovereignty: Social Movements and the State, pp. 1–16. London and New York: Routledge. Van der Ploeg, J.D. (2008). The New Peasantries: Struggles for Autonomy and Sustainability in an Era of Empire and Globalization. London: Earthscan. Van der Ploeg, J.D. and Ye, J. (eds) (2016). China’s Peasant Agriculture and Rural Society: Changing Paradigms of Farming. London and New York: Routledge. Weis, T. (2007). The Global Food Economy: The Battle for the Future of Farming. London: Zed Books. Winders, B. (2009). The Politics of Food Supply: US Agricultural Policy in the World Economy. New Haven: Yale University Press. Wittman, H. (2009). ‘Reworking the metabolic rift: La Vía Campesina, agrarian citizenship and food sovereignty’. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 36(4), pp. 805–26. https:// doi .org/ 10 .1080/03066150903353991. Xinhuanet (2018). ‘Economic watch: China increases agricultural imports to benefit itself, the world’. http://wwwxinhuanet.com/english/ 2018–05/24/c_137203328.htm.
Food regimes 257 Zhang, H. (2019). Securing the ‘Rice Bowl’: China and Global Food Security. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Food security Food security seems like such a simple concept. If someone has enough food to eat to lead an active and healthy life, they are food secure. The complexities arise when the definition becomes concrete enough to permit careful measurement of who is and who is not food secure; when aggregates of individuals are considered to allow sampling techniques to be used to measure outcomes in a statistically accurate manner; when geographic coverage extends from households to regions, countries and the entire globe; and when governments (or private charitable organizations) seek instruments to improve the level of food security. The complexities extend one step further: food security is a concept based on how expectations are formed about the future availability of food. Thus understanding food security requires an understanding of the behavioural foundations of decision-making and household choices (Timmer, 2012). The geographical dimensions of food security are especially important because they encompass the degree of aggregation of data needed to measure the extent of food insecurity. Nearly all assessments of food security start at the household level. But these ‘micro’ data are usually aggregated to larger geographic levels. For analytical purposes, almost any degree of aggregation can be useful, but for policy purposes, the most relevant level is to the national, or ‘macro’ level. At this level, policymakers can begin to match up levels of food insecurity with various policy tools that might plausibly lower those levels. A vast array of such tools is available for this purpose, which significantly complicates the task of addressing unsatisfactory levels of food security. At the household and national levels, trade in food is a natural and common method of procuring food that is not produced ‘at home’. Such trade is not possible, however, when considering food security at the global level. Global food supplies must match global food demand over extended periods of time. From year to year, however, a divergence between global food production and global food consumption can be accommodated by changes in food stocks. As it turns out, understanding changes in food stocks, and who owns them, is the key to providing food
security at the national level in the short run (Timmer, 2014b). Thus, food security has three quite distinct, but interconnected, levels. The starting point for measuring food security is the individual or household level. These household data are then aggregated to the level of policy relevance, usually to national-level analysts and policymakers. The aggregation of national levels to the global level completes the process of seeing the ‘big picture’. But as already noted, the policy instruments, even the forms of analytical inquiry, vary substantially from micro to macro to global. No understanding of food security and the various measures that can address it is complete without an understanding of these interconnections.
Conceptual issues: three pillars and two platforms
Modern analyses of food security list five essential components that encompass three traditional pillars and two ‘supporting’ platforms. The pillars are: (1) availability of food on farms and in markets, (2) access to that food by all households (urban and rural), and (3) effective utilization of the food within the household (a function of food safety, nutritional status and health). The two platforms, which are more recent additions to the modern definition of food security, include (1) the sustainability of the food system that delivers these components, and (2) the stability of that food system (Timmer, 2012). This definition stresses the elements that individuals and households require to be food secure, but food security is also an important objective at the national level, where political leaders can be held responsible for failures and successes in maintaining accessible supplies of staple foods at stable prices, especially in major urban markets where many consumers, often a sizable majority, procure their food. Urban food security is almost always a political priority. At the global level, considerable attention is focused on the balance between food production and food consumption. Rising food prices suggest the production race is being lost to rapid gains in food consumption – a ‘Malthusian’ world where population growth and higher incomes cause food demand to outstrip the resource base for food production, and hence the availability of food. Falling food prices, on the other
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hand, suggest that expanded agricultural land, better water control and improved technologies are generating food surpluses. In this ‘Sen-ian’ world, access becomes the limiting factor for household food security, not availability (Sen, 1981). In both worlds, food prices are a key signal about what is happening to food security. Two dimensions of food prices are important: their average level and their volatility. Price spikes and collapses can create risks and poverty for consumers and farmers even when average prices are affordable to the poor and create adequate incentives for farmers (Timmer, 2000). Highly unstable food prices have serious negative consequences at the micro level for household decision-makers. But food price instability also has a deeper and more insidious impact: it slows down economic growth and the structural transformation that is the pathway out of rural poverty (Timmer, 2015b). Food price instability thus hurts the poor in both the short run and the long run.
The role of government policy in food security
To see this, consider a very simple model of food security that focuses on the short run versus the long run, and on the macro level (of policymakers) versus the micro level (of household decision-makers) (Figure 1). When
an economy is reasonably stable, and when food prices are well-behaved, policymakers at the national level can concentrate their political and financial capital on the process of long-run, inclusive growth. Keeping the poor from falling into irreversible poverty traps is easier and less costly in a world of stable food prices, and the poor are able to use their own resources and entrepreneurial abilities to connect (via the small horizontal arrow) to long-run, sustainable food security for themselves. If the food economy is highly unstable, constantly in crisis, policymakers spend all of their time and budget resources in the upper left box, trying to stabilize food prices and provide safety nets for the poor. During food crises, vulnerable households often deplete their human and financial capital just to stay alive. This is the world of poverty traps and enduring food insecurity. We are also trapped in short-run crisis management, both macro and humanitarian. Donors such as USAID and the World Bank can be trapped in crisis mode as well as governments, and end up spending their human and financial resources on emergency relief rather than longer-run development strategies and investments. With success in achieving the objectives in the upper right and lower left boxes, market forces gradually – over decades – bring the poor above a threshold of vulnerability and into sustained food security (connecting
Source: Timmer (2014a), which expands on the story here (see Timmer, 2015a, 2015b for the full story).
Figure 1
Basic framework for understanding food security issues
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macro to micro and short run to long run). The goal is to get to the lower right box where households have sustainable access to food in the long run. That is, they are food secure. To reach this result, analytical and policy flexibility is needed to cope with market instability. Such flexibility is not a natural feature of domestic policymaking, in the food sector or elsewhere, and providing the analytical tools for understanding how to create flexible responses to both high and low price environments is a real challenge. The starting point is usually to understand the food marketing system, which physically transforms commodities in a farmer’s field in time, place and form, into food on the table. It is impossible to understand the challenges facing efforts to eliminate hunger without understanding the role of markets and the food marketing system (Timmer, Falcon and Pearson, 1983). The goal of effective food policies is rapid and sustained poverty reduction. To achieve this, analysis of the ‘food price dilemma’ is required, an explicit recognition that a single market-clearing food price cannot satisfy simultaneously all the objectives of food policy – a ‘pure’ market solution does not work. Additional policy instruments are needed, but they all need to operate compatibly with market prices. The most important lesson is the centrality of food prices – and the signals they send to farmers, traders, consumers and finance ministers. The behaviour of these decision-making agents dictates market outcomes, but that behaviour also responds to those market outcomes. The ‘macro’ food system encompasses micro behaviour on the farm and in the household; market-level behaviour by traders, processors and retailers; and macroeconomic responses by policymakers. Two major roles for markets provide market economies their distinguishing strengths (and often harsh outcomes). First is the role of markets in price discovery – what is a commodity (or service) ‘worth’ in monetary terms? These terms dictate the rate of exchange and determine such important values as the price of rice or of wages for unskilled labour. Price discovery is about scarcity, the distribution of incomes, and who gets what. But markets also serve as the arena for allocating society’s scarce resources to meet the virtually unlimited needs and desires of conC. Peter Timmer
sumers. This allocation process, when joined to reasonably efficient price formation, is the reason market economies have outperformed other forms of economic organization over the long haul. Efficiency in resource allocations is simply critical to raising economic output in a sustainable fashion, and thus to reducing poverty and hunger. That said, simply ‘getting prices right’ in markets will not solve the problem of hunger (Timmer, 1986). But it is also not possible to ‘plan’ our way out of hunger by making markets do our will. The trick, and only a few countries (mostly in East and South East Asia) have managed it smoothly before becoming rich, is for government policy and markets to work together to bring poor households into a growing economy that is based on a productive, sustainable and stable food system. Only then can we end hunger, and keep it ended (Timmer, 2015a). From this policy perspective, food security as a global issue presents an enormous paradox. At one level, steady progress has been made since the end of the Second World War in bringing much of the world’s population out of poverty and hunger. Measured by the key determinants of food security – improved availability, access, utilization and stability – food security has been improving. Large pockets of food-insecure populations remain, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, but because of rapid economic growth, aggressive efforts to stabilize food prices and/or safety net programmes that deliver food to the poor, the rest of Asia and Latin American countries were coping reasonably well with their food security challenges until the Covid-19 pandemic. Current thinking suggests the sharp increase in food insecurity among many communities hit by Covid-19 will be temporary, but it is also clear that permanent damage is being done (IFPRI, 2021). Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, food security strategies and policies were in almost total disarray. A fundamental disconnect exists between what most countries say their food security strategies are and what policies they are actually pursuing. The disconnect is most manifest with rice policy in Asia, where high prices for rice farmers are implemented to ‘reduce poverty’, when in fact most of the poor and hungry in the region are net rice buyers, and thus suffer greater hunger and poverty from high rice prices.
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But many countries do not have coherent strategies to improve their food security. An important reason for this disconnect is a basic misunderstanding in the political arena of the interconnected role of markets and government policies in providing sustainable food security.
the only source of increased output until new agricultural technologies are developed. The high cost of fertilizer and water for irrigation are an impediment to this approach. New technologies, however, are unlikely to be commercially important before the late 2020s.
The way forward
Managing demand: population, incomes and bio-fuels Malthus had the obvious answer for managing demand for food that was growing faster than food supplies – famine. Since that answer was proposed in the early nineteenth century, food supplies have actually grown faster than food demand. This demand has been driven largely by population growth and by increases in incomes per capita, which translate into demand for higher quality foods, especially livestock products. Population growth has slowed dramatically since the 1970s, but income growth has accelerated in precisely those parts of the world that want (and need) more animal protein in their diets. If demand for livestock feed, and its attendant call on agricultural resources to produce it, is going to be slowed, meat consumption in rich countries will need to decline. Most economists think any slowing of demand for meat products is highly unlikely, but health specialists are beginning to make progress with a message that resonates with the educated, wealthier parts of rich countries that now consume the great bulk of livestock products: reduced consumption of red meat will lead to longer and healthier lives, with less environmental stress. It is certainly possible that reduced meat intake in rich countries can free up enough feed resources to permit significant gains in consumption of livestock products in low- and medium-income countries. The balance going forward is likely to be tenuous, but the dietary diversification underway in transition countries does not seem to be a threat to global food security. That leaves demand for bio-fuels as a potential disruptor to global food security. The potential devastating effects of bio-fuels are easy to conceptualize. The income elasticity of demand for starchy staples (cereals and root crops for direct human consumption) is less than 0.2 on average, and falling with higher incomes – it is already negative in much of Asia. Adding in the indirect demand
The policy approaches to improving food security that will be most successful depend on which global food price regime is likely to drive policy formation in the coming quarter century. The historical path of structural transformation with falling food prices, leading to a ‘world without agriculture’ is an obvious possibility (Timmer, 2015b). But continued financial instability, coupled with the impact of climate change, could lead to a new and uncertain path of rising real costs for food, with a reversal of structural transformation (Timmer and Akkus, 2008). Management of food policy, and the outlook for sustained poverty reduction, will be radically different depending on which of these global price regimes plays out. No matter what, improving agricultural productivity and managing increases in food demand will be critical. Improving the supply outlook There are many dimensions to increasing agricultural output and food supply. The long-run issue is whether supply responses can meet the outlook for rapid growth in demand, especially at the global level. In the past, when food prices spiked and talk of an impending Malthusian crisis arose, output responded to bring food prices in world markets back to their long-run downward trend, though with a lag. Now, such a benign output response may not be forthcoming as a long-run response, for three basic reasons: limited land available for expanding area, stagnant yields and high-cost inputs. There is little high-quality, unutilized agricultural land now available for farming. Further, yields at research stations of existing agricultural technologies have essentially been unchanged for decades because of the paucity of investment in agricultural research during this time. Thus raising yields from actual farmer practices to the present technology potential – closing the yield gap – is
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from grain-fed livestock products brings the average income elasticity to about 0.5, and this is holding steady in the face of rapid economic growth in India and China. Potential growth in supply of grain seems capable of managing these sources of growth in demand. But the demand for bio-fuels is almost insatiable in relation to the base of production of staple foods. If policymakers, or markets, encourage farmers to grow the raw materials for bio-fuels to meet this insatiable demand, the structural transformation will be reversed as more and more labour and land will be needed for agricultural production. A reversal of the structural transformation as the regular path to economic development and reduced poverty will be a historical event, countering the patterns generated by market forces over the past several centuries. Such an event is likely to have stark political consequences, as populations do not face the sustained prospect of lower living standards with equanimity (Timmer, 2015b). It is possible, of course, that new technologies – wind and solar, in particular – will come on-stream and lower energy costs across the board and thus allow the bio-fuel dilemma to disappear quietly. But it looks like a rocky couple of decades before that happens. In the long run, there are important opportunities for agriculture to help cope with climate change without resorting to bio-fuels. Converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into usable agricultural commodities via photosynthesis remains the most cost-effective way of sustaining life on the planet. Climate change might make this process both riskier and more expensive for agriculturalists, but markets will respond by making food commodities more valuable. Higher food prices will be a challenge to global food security, but they might well be a boon to smallholder farmers the world over, and thus ameliorate much of the world’s current food insecurity. C. Peter Timmer
C. Peter Timmer
References
IFPRI [International Food Policy Research Institute]. 2021. 2021 Global Food Policy Report: Transforming Food Systems after COVID-19. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. Sen, Amartya. 1981. Poverty and Famines: An Essay in Entitlements and Deprivation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Timmer, C. Peter. 1986. Getting Prices Right: The Scope and Limits of Agricultural Price Policy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Timmer, C. Peter. 2000. ‘The Macro Dimensions of Food Security: Economic Growth, Equitable Distribution, and Food Price Stability’. Food Policy, vol. 25, no. 4 (August), pp. 283–95. Timmer, C. Peter. 2012. ‘Behavioral Dimensions of Food Security’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Agricultural Development and Nutrition Security Special Feature, 31 July, Vol. 109, No. 31, pp. 12315–20. Timmer, C. Peter. 2014a. ‘Food Security, Market Processes, and the Role of Government Policy’. In Neal Van Alfen, editor-in-chief, Encyclopedia of Agriculture and Food Systems, Vol. 3, San Diego: Elsevier, pp. 324–37. Timmer, C. Peter. 2014b. ‘What Are Grain Reserves Worth? A Generalized Political Economy Framework’. Chapter 13 in Prema-chandra Athukorala, Arianto A. Patunru and Budy P. Resosudarno, eds, Trade, Development, and Political Economy in East Asia: Essays in Honour of Hal Hill. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), pp. 235–48. Timmer, C. Peter. 2015a. Food Security and Scarcity: Why Ending Hunger Is So Hard. University of Pennsylvania Press and the Center for Global Development. Timmer, C. Peter. 2015b. Managing Structural Transformation: A Political Economy Approach, 18th Annual WIDER Lecture. Helsinki, Finland. Timmer, C. Peter and Selvin Akkus. 2008. ‘The Structural Transformation as a Pathway out of Poverty: Analytics, Empirics and Politics’. Working Paper 150. Washington, DC: Center for Global Development. Timmer, C. Peter, Walter P. Falcon and Scott R. Pearson. 1983. Food Policy Analysis. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press for the World Bank.
Forced migration Decade of displacement
The problem of forced displacement is one of the most daunting global challenges, lacking in easy solutions. From the mid-1990s until around 2010, the number of displaced people in the world remained relatively stable; new influxes were generally balanced out by forced migrants who eventually returned home, or built permanent homes in their host communities, or resettled in third countries (UNHCR 2020). The 2010s, however, saw a significant change. The number of forcibly displaced people worldwide has more than doubled from 41.1 million in 2010 to 82.4 million in 2020, breaking the world record (UNHCR 2021). In fact, the United Nations for High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has called the 2010s ‘the decade of displacement’. Forced migration is a complex phenomenon. The International Organization for Migration broadly defines forced migration as ‘migratory movement in which an element of coercion exists whether arising from natural or man-made causes’ (IOM 2012). As this definition indicates, people flee for various reasons, including persecution, the ravages of war, violence, human rights violations, or famine. One way to break down the complexity of forced migration is to look at the different categories used to describe displaced populations. UNHCR typically uses three main terms – refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced persons (IDPs) – when referring to different types of forced migrants. In this entry, I briefly discuss their main features. However, it is important to keep in mind that such categories are not divided by clear boundaries; there are many displaced people around the world who do not neatly fit within formal definitions or who may have multiple experiences and motivations for migration throughout their lives.
Refugees and asylum seekers
‘Refugee’ is one of the most widely recognized terms describing forced migrants. According to the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is someone who, ‘owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, reli-
gion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country’. An asylum-seeker is someone whose request for refugee status has yet to be processed. Over the last decade, the number of refugees has more than doubled from about 15 million in 2010 to some 30 million in 2020 (UNHCR 2021). As of 2020, the number of asylum seekers worldwide is approximately 4.1 million. The top five refugee-producing countries are Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar. Although there is a lot of media focus on the arrival of refugees to countries in Europe and North America, the overwhelming majority of refugees in the world live in developing regions. Developing countries – such as Turkey, Colombia, and Pakistan – host 86 per cent of the world’s refugees, with the Least Developed Countries accommodating 27 per cent of the total. One of the biggest concerns with the world’s current refugee crisis is the prolonged nature of displacement. In theory, the situation of being a refugee should be only temporary. However, the vast majority of the world’s refugees remain in exile long after the initial emergency phase of a crisis is over; the average duration of displacement is now estimated to be more than two decades. This phenomenon of long-term exile is referred to as ‘protracted displacement’, defined as a situation in which refugees remain without a solution for five or more years. UNHCR estimates that more than three-quarters of refugees are now in a protracted situation (UNHCR 2021). The frequency of prolonged displacement in turn points to the limitations of UNHCR’s three durable solutions, which are: (1) voluntary repatriation to a refugee’s country of origin; (2) local integration of a refugee in the asylum country; or (3) resettlement of a refugee into a third-country, usually industrialized states. UNHCR’s core mandate is to facilitate durable solutions for refugees since its foundation in 1950. Nevertheless, these traditional solutions, which were devised for refugees in Europe post-Second World War, are no longer suitable in the contemporary world in which both the complexity of displacement and the numbers of forced
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migrants worldwide are growing rapidly (Bloch 2020). Finally, it is worth noting that the definition of a refugee in the 1951 Convention has come under increasing scrutiny in past decades for failing to capture the more dynamic and diverse nature of human mobility in contemporary societies. For example, it is widely acknowledged and discussed that a number of people have been displaced across the international border by environmental stress and climate changes. However, they are not considered refugees and there are no international legal instruments that deal specifically with the protection of the rights of these environmentally displaced people (Zetter and Morrissey 2014).
Internally displaced persons
According to The 1998 Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, internally displaced persons are defined as: ‘persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized state border’. While the coercive nature of migration is similar to refugees, the key difference between refugees and internally displaced persons is whether they remain within the territory of their origin country after their displacement. Compared to ‘refugee’, the term ‘internally displaced person’ (IDP) might be less familiar to the general public. Yet, in terms of population size, the number of IDPs is much larger than that of refugees. The global figure of IDPs has more than tripled during the 2010s, and is currently estimated to be around 48 million, accounting for almost 60 per cent of forced migrants worldwide (UNHCR 2021). As of 2020, the top five countries with largest IDPs are Colombia, Syria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Yemen, and Somalia. Refugees and IDPs alike experience the perils of flight and find themselves in a new, often difficult environment. From a legal perspective, however, IDPs and refugees are fundamentally different. Unlike refugees, who flee their own country and fall under the protection of the international community, IDPs remain under the sovereignty of their Naohiko Omata
country of origin, and so essentially retain the same rights and legal status as prior to their displacement (Walter 2014). However, in reality, the boundary between refugees and IDPs is often nebulous. Indeed, many forced migrants might move between these two categories even in their day-to-day lives. For example, in my own research conducted with Somali refugees living in camps located close to the Ethiopian–Somali border, the refugees frequently travelled back and forth across the border into Somalia, despite formal restrictions on their movement (Betts et al. 2021). Reasons for such border crossing might include meeting family members who remain in Somalia, taking care of livestock and farmlands in their home villages, and participating in cross-border trade activities. These mobile Somalis who move between labels of ‘refugees’ and ‘IDPs’ pose a challenge to static categories based on national borders and also illustrate the complexity and fluidity of human movement.
Forced migration as a development agenda?
One of the most important trends in the international refugee regime is a growing emphasis on development-led approaches for forcibly displaced people in the recent years. While forced migration has traditionally been treated as a humanitarian issue, many actors argue that refugees can and should be considered in terms of economic development as well. UNHCR and other key stakeholders highlight that refugees can become economically independent and also can boost aggregate productive capacity and the development trajectory of their hosting countries (Zetter 2023). The growing importance of development-oriented approaches to refugees is largely driven by the significant scale of displacement and increased frequency of protracted refugee situations, which are discussed above. In protracted displacement situations, traditional humanitarian aid such as provision of food, shelter and medicines are often in short supply. Instead, developmental support that is designed to strengthen refugees’ economic capacities is more instrumental and relevant to their circumstances. Moreover, as refugee situations become protracted, there is a corresponding tendency for the levels of international relief to be sig-
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nificantly reduced – often due to the pressure on UNHCR and donor communities to focus on high-profile refugee crises (Omata 2017). With declining financial commitment of donor states for long-term refugees, the international refugee regime has been required to find a remedy for refugees trapped in exile; one solution is to embrace refugees as economic actors who are able to meet their own needs – often referred to as achieving ‘self-reliance’ – and to be able to contribute to development of hosting countries. Recent high-level policy documents, including the Global Compact on Refugees and the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework – both of which represent the latest thinking on refugee protection – place clear emphasis on the significance of developmental support for forced migrants. Alongside this trend, the involvement of development agencies, particularly the World Bank, has become increasingly influential within forced migration policy. For instance, in 2016, the World Bank alongside other actors launched the Global Concessional Financing Facility to offer concessional financing to developing countries hosting large numbers of refugees. In its flagship report, the World Bank (2017) emphasizes the importance of the socioeconomic perspective in supporting refugees and IDPs. Under such initiatives, aid organizations have shifted their focus accordingly, most typically through market-based livelihood interventions that aim to promote entrepreneurial activities of individuals and their economic autonomy (Easton-Calabria and Omata 2018). This turn towards development-focused assistance has had both positive and negative impacts for refugee protection. Amongst global refugee policymakers, such initiatives are unequivocally viewed as a dignified and productive way to unleash the development potential of displaced people and to promote their active market participation while in exile. Yet, many refugees in the global South face a number of restrictions on their right to work and to move freely in their hosting countries, all of which significantly limit their pursuit of livelihoods and self-reliance. A further challenge, as noted above, is that the vast majority of the world’s refugees reside in developing countries, where even citizens struggle to access adequate economic oppor-
tunities. Therefore, careful scrutiny and monitoring are needed to continue to examine the efficacy of development-oriented approaches for enhancing the protection of displaced populations and contributing positively to their hosting communities and countries.
Conclusion
The landscape of forced migration has changed considerably in recent decades. While it is difficult to predict future trends for global forced displacement, unfortunately there are few indications that size and scale of the crisis will diminish in the near future. Although there are some promising developments – such as the announcement of the US government to expand the numbers of resettled refugees accepted annually – the international refugee regime remains concerned with ongoing conflict and political instability in many countries and regions, including Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, the Sahel region, and Afghanistan, for instance. In addition, climate change and natural disasters continue to pose significant threats that force people to flee, either within their country or across international borders. At the time of this writing in 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic has had significant direct and indirect impacts on forcibly displaced people all over the world. The closure of borders and restrictions on movement are making it considerably harder for people fleeing conflict, persecution, and natural disasters to access safety and protection. Emerging evidence indicates that in some cases, COVID-19 may also be a key factor in triggering new movements of people, as observed in Yemen (UNHCR 2021). Meanwhile, as shown above, the underlying causes that lead to and perpetuate forced migration are only increasing in complexity. It is essential that traditional definitions and existing approaches to assisting forced migrants should be radically reimagined moving forward. Naohiko Omata
References
Betts, A., Omata, N. and Sterck, O. (2021) ‘Transnational blindness: international institutions and refugees’ cross-border activities’, Review of International Studies, 47, 5, 714–42.
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266 Elgar encyclopedia of development Bloch, A. (2020) ‘Reflections and directions for World Bank (2017) Forcibly Displaced: Toward research in refugee studies’, Ethnic and Racial a Development Approach Supporting Refugees, Studies, 43, 3, 436–59. the Internally Displaced, and Their Hosts. Easton-Calabria, E. and Omata, N. (2018) Washington, DC: World Bank. ‘Panacea for the refugee crisis? Rethinking Zetter, R. (2023) ‘Theorizing the refugee the promotion of “self-reliance” for refugees’, humanitarian-development nexus: Third World Quarterly, 39, 8, 1458–74. a political-economy analysis’, Journal of IOM [International Organization for Migration] Refugee Studies, 34, 2, 1766–1786. (2012). ‘Key migration terms’, https://albania Zetter, R. and Morrissey, J. (2014) ‘The .iom.int/key-migration-terms (accessed 10 environment-mobility nexus: reconceptualizing August 2021). the links between environmental stress, (im) Omata, N. (2017) The Myth of Self-Reliance: mobility, and power’, in Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., Economic Lives inside a Liberian Refugee Loescher, G., Long, K. and Sigona, N. (eds), Camp. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books. The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced UNHCR (2020) Global Trends: Forced Migration Studies (pp. 342–54). Oxford: Displacement in 2019. UNHCR, Geneva. Oxford University Press. UNHCR (2021) Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2020. UNHCR, Geneva. Walter, K. (2014) ‘Internal displacement’, in Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., Loescher, G., Long, K. and Sigona, N. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (pp. 163–75). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Naohiko Omata
Foreign direct investment A working definition
Foreign direct investment (FDI) is formally defined as a type of cross-border investment made by a resident in one economy with the objective of establishing a lasting interest in an enterprise that is resident in another economy. The investor may be an individual or an enterprise. A multinational enterprise (MNE) is an enterprise that engages in value-adding activities in more than one country. Different from a portfolio investor, the direct investor seeks the control or, at least, a significant degree of influence on the management of the invested enterprise. The OECD (2008) and the IMF (2009) consider that 10 per cent voting power in the invested enterprise is the minimum required to characterize such lasting interest. However, in practice, a 50 per cent benchmark is used by some countries. FDI must not be confused with investment. While the latter is a national accounts concept that means additions to the fixed capital stock, FDI is a financial flow registered in the balance of payments that may have various possible ends: it can be used to increase a company’s working capital, to repay a loan, to acquire existing assets or firms and, eventually, to create a new establishment or company from scratch. FDI statistics, usually produced by national statistical offices or central banks, tell the story of directional flows over given periods and portray the FDI stocks (or positions) at specific points in time. These statistics compute not only equity investment but also the debt relationships between the investor and the invested company as well as the latter’s earnings, which can be transferred to the investor or reinvested. FDI stocks vary due to new flows but also because of changes in the market value of existing assets and liabilities.
The multinational enterprise
Lack of adequate understanding of the nature of the MNE prevented the emergence of a fruitful debate on the development impact of FDI until the late 1970s. Nonetheless, seminal contributions by Hymer (1976 [1960]), Buckley and Casson (1976), Dunning (1977, 1981), Hennart (1982), and Rugman (1982) paved the way for a better comprehension
of FDI-assisted development. The eclectic paradigm of international production, originally proposed by Dunning (1981), aims to explain why, where, and how a firm performs activities overseas. According to this framework, which combines a bunch of previous theoretical contributions, FDI makes sense – and is more likely to be successful – when the following three conditions are met: (a) the investing firm must own some kind of proprietary assets capable to yield extraordinary rents as a means to overcome the cost disadvantages of being an outsider (ownership advantage); (b) there must be an advantage in performing a value-adding activity in the chosen location, otherwise the firm would produce and export from home country (location advantage); (c) there must be a reason for carrying out the activity within the firm, instead of relying on a market transaction such as the licensing of a brand or technology (internalization advantage). The eclectic paradigm and internalization theory are the dominant explanations for MNE activity, and are built along similar principles (Narula, Asmussen, Chi and Kundu 2019). From the investor’s point of view, FDI is driven by four basic motivations (Cuervo-Cazurra, Narula and Un 2015): sell more (through a better insertion in the markets); buy better (accessing inputs such as raw materials or labour at lower costs as compared to its home country); upgrade (accessing assets such as technologies and brands that are deemed important to improve the MNE’s global competitiveness); and escape (from adverse conditions in home country in a number of areas, from taxation to property rights protection). The structure of international production evolved over time. Until the 1970s, most MNEs tended to replicate, in their subsidiaries, the same value-added activities performed in the home country. This configuration was influenced, in part, by protectionist policies, and resulted in subsidiaries that targeted the domestic market, with high degree of operational autonomy, but were largely importers of technology. The centralization of innovation in the headquarters is highlighted by the product-cycle explanation of the MNE put forth by Vernon (1966), based on the experience of the American MNEs. From the 1980s, the network organization, in which each subsidiary specializes in some products, including intermediate goods, became increasingly
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common. This configuration, increasingly feasible due to declining trade costs and the lifting of trade barriers, gives prominence to a global strategy, instead of a multi-domestic strategy, in which each value-adding activity, including the innovative ones, is performed in the location with comparative advantages (Pearce 2001; Narula 2014). These two types of configurations are referred to, in the economics literature, as horizontal (Markusen 1984) and vertical (Helpman 1984) FDI, respectively.
The scale of FDI
Measuring the international engagement of an enterprise is challenging. Though it is relatively straightforward to identify equity investment or exports in balance sheets or administrative data, the control of complex cross-border value chains can be exerted without any investment in physical assets abroad, and this is prone to intensify with the increasing digitalization of the economy. Therefore, FDI statistics based on administrative data paint a rather incomplete picture of the actual extension of international engagement of MNEs. Even with these important limitations, FDI statistics reflect the deepening of the globalization phenomenon over the last three decades. FDI stocks, as a share of the world GDP, jumped from 9.6 per cent in 1990, to 22.4 per cent in 2000, 30.1 per cent in 2010, and 41.8 per cent by the end of 2019, thus more than quadrupling within thirty years (UNCTAD 2021). During this period, the geographical distribution of FDI went through considerable change. It became less of a rich-country game. Indeed, developing countries’ shares in FDI flows increased substantially over the last three decades. Particularly dramatic has been the rise of China, first as a destination, but since the mid-2000s increasingly as a source of FDI.
FDI and development
Apart from formal definitions, what makes FDI important is its role for socio-economic development. FDI is a vehicle of technological diffusion across countries as it is, at the same time, both a driving force and a leading indicator of globalization, a process in which the MNE is the key actor (Narula and Dunning 2010). MNEs often bring state-of-art technolRajneesh Narula and André Pineli
ogies, know-how, and management practices that help the host economy to get closer to the technological frontier, thus facilitating the catching up process of backward economies. Foreign MNEs tend to differ from domestic firms in several aspects. They are usually larger, more capital-intensive, have better access to international financial markets, and, due to their transnationality, are able to arbitrate in a handful of areas, from interest rates to labour rights and environmental regulations. General equilibrium effects of their presence in host economies include improved allocation of production factors and the creation of new industries through backward and forward linkages. Furthermore, FDI may accelerate structural change in developing economies, creating demand for labour and other production factors that may be underutilized in informal activities (Pineli, Narula and Belderbos 2021). There is a widespread belief – often used by government officials to justify the concession of subsidies to FDI – that, besides the direct effects, the presence of MNEs benefits host economies through spillover effects that impact positively the domestic firms, in terms of enhanced productivity and higher survival rates (Narula and Pineli 2019). These effects would materialize through four main channels: (a) competition effect – the sum of negative factors, such as lower economies of scale for local competitors and higher competition for specialized workers, and positive factors, such as the ‘pressure’ to innovate and to reduce costs; the net effect tends to be negative. (b) demonstration/imitation effect – local firms observe and imitate superior production techniques and management practices brought in by the MNEs. (c) labour turnover effect – former employees, expatriated or hired in the domestic labour market, leave the MNEs and start new businesses or move to existing local firms, taking with them the accumulated managerial and technical know-how. (d) backward and forward linkages – the entry of an MNE increases demand in upstream sectors, leading to higher specialization and increasing returns to scale, which, at the end, benefit all the domestic firms that use the
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inputs produced by the upstream firms (Rodriguez-Clare 1996). Empirical single-country research suggests that domestic firms are, indeed, impacted by the presence of MNEs, but the effect tends to be economically relevant only when the MNEs are present in downstream sectors (Havranek and Irsova 2011). This regularity shown by empirical studies suggest that a large part of what is accounted for as spillovers actually results from intentional links established by MNEs with their local suppliers through which they transfer knowledge and provide technical assistance (Lall 1978). Additionally, part of the effects is, in fact, pecuniary externalities – like those induced by a larger market for local producers – and, thus, cannot be considered true spillovers. Thus, most of the real spillovers arguably come from the demonstration/imitation channel. FDI plays no special role within the neoclassical growth model (Solow 1956), but its distinctive feature of spreader of technologies is recognized by some endogenous growth models. Romer (1993, p. 543), for example, emphasizes that ‘nations are poor because their citizens do not have access to the ideas that are used in industrial nations to generate economic value’. Thus, if MNEs bring more efficient technologies than those in use in host countries, the impact of their investments on growth will be higher than the impact of equivalent investments made by domestic firms. Cross-country empirical studies indicate that FDI correlates positively with economic growth, especially in developing countries, but such association tends to be confined to host countries that have reached a minimum level of human capital (Borensztein et al. 1998) and of financial development (Alfaro et al. 2004). It is assumed that both factors affect particularly the ability of domestic firms to internalize the spillovers of MNEs presence, since they require costly investments to enhance those firms’ absorptive capacity. In addition, the macroeconomic effect of FDI is likely to depend on the sector/industry it goes to (Pineli, Narula and Belderbos 2021), but this is rarely accounted for in empirical studies, which usually employ an aggregate measure of FDI when estimating the effect on GDP growth.
Policies towards FDI have changed dramatically over the last few decades. Nowadays, FDI is viewed as a means of breaking the vicious circle of underdevelopment, characterized by low savings and investment ratios, poor allocation of production factors, and inefficient production methods and technologies (Narula and Pineli 2019). However, it has not always been so uncontroversial. On the contrary, until the 1970s, MNEs were viewed with great suspicion in developing countries, often portrayed as agents of imperialism whose (mostly) exploitative activity was one of the causes of persistent underdevelopment. Things began to change after the debt crises of the early 1980s as the structural adjustment programmes supported by multilateral institutions imposed the abandonment of inward-oriented import-substitution policies and the adoption of market-friendly policies, including the removal of restrictions on trade and FDI. Since the early 1990s, with the spread of the Washington Consensus policies, governments became increasingly eager to attract FDI, offering generous incentive packages in their competition with other potential host economies. FDI is currently viewed by almost every government as a source of capital investment, jobs, and tax revenues, among others (Narula and Pineli 2019). Nonetheless, there is growing concern about the role MNEs and FDI play in increasing inequalities, although evidence about this is still largely anecdotal (Narula 2019; Narula and van der Straaten 2021). Rajneesh Narula and André Pineli
References
Alfaro, L., Chanda, A., Kalemli-Ozcan, S., & Sayek, S. (2004). FDI and economic growth: the role of local financial markets. Journal of International Economics, 64: 89–112. Borensztein, E., De Gregorio, J., & Lee, J. (1998). How does foreign direct investment affect economic growth? Journal of International Economics, 45: 115–35. Buckley, P., & Casson, M. (1976). The future of the multinational enterprise. London: Macmillan. Cuervo-Cazurra, A., Narula, R., & Un, C. (2015). Internationalization motives: sell more, buy better, upgrade and escape. Multinational Business Review, 23(1): 25–35. Dunning, J. (1977). Trade, location of economic activity, and the multinational enterprise: a search for an eclectic approach. In Hesselborn, P., Ohlin, B., & Wijkman, P. (eds), The interna-
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270 Elgar encyclopedia of development tional allocation of economic activity. London: Macmillan. Dunning, J. (1981). International production and the multinational enterprise. London: Allen and Unwin. Havranek, T., & Irsova, Z. (2011). Estimating vertical spillovers from FDI: why results vary and what the true effect is. Journal of International Economics, 85(2): 234–44. Helpman, E. (1984). A simple theory of trade with multinational corporations. Journal of Political Economy, 92: 451–71. Hennart, J. (1982). A theory of the multinational enterprise. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Hymer, S. (1976 [1960]). The international operations of national firms: a study of direct investment. Cambridge, MA: MIT (PhD thesis). IMF [International Monetary Fund] (2009). Balance of payments and international investment position manual, sixth edition. Washington, DC: IMF. Lall, S. (1978). Transnationals, domestic enterprises, and industrial structure in host LDCs: a survey. Oxford Economic Papers, 30(2): 217–48. Markusen, J. (1984). Multinationals, multi-plant economies, and the gains from trade. Journal of International Economics, 16: 205–26. Narula, R. (2014). Exploring the paradox of competence-creating subsidiaries: balancing bandwidth and dispersion in MNEs. Long Range Planning, 47(1–2): 4–15. Narula, R. (2019). Enforcing higher labor standards within developing country value chains: consequences for MNEs and informal actors in a dual economy. Journal of International Business Studies, 50(9): 1622–35. Narula, R., Asmussen, Chi, T., & Kundu, S.K. (2019). Applying and advancing internalization theory: the multinational enterprise in the twenty-first century. Journal of International Business Studies, 50(8): 1231–52. Narula, R., & Dunning, J.H. (2010). Multinational enterprises, development and globalization: some clarifications and a research agenda. Oxford Development Studies, 38(3): 263–87.
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Narula, R., & Pineli, A. (2019). Improving the developmental impact of multinational enterprises: policy and research challenges. Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, 46(1): 1–24. Narula, R., & van der Straaten, K. (2021). A comment on the multifaceted relationship between multinational enterprises and within-country inequality. Critical Perspectives on International Business, 17(1): 32–50. OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] (2008). OECD benchmark definition of foreign direct investment, fourth edition. Paris: OECD Publishing. Pearce, R. (2001). Multinationals and industrialisation: the bases of inward investment policy. International Journal of the Economics of Business, 8(1): 51–73. Pineli, A., Narula, R., & Belderbos, R. (2021). FDI, multinationals and structural change in developing countries. In Foster-McGregor, N., Alcorta, L., Szirmai, A., & Verspagen, B. (eds), New perspectives on structural change: causes and consequences of structural change in the global economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rodriguez-Clare, A. (1996). Multinationals, linkages, and economic development. American Economic Review, 86(4): 852–73. Romer, P. (1993). Idea gaps and object gaps in economic development. Journal of Monetary Economics, 32: 543–73. Rugman, A. (1982). New theories of the multinational enterprise. London: Croom Helm. Solow, R. (1956). A contribution to the theory of economic growth. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 70(1): 65–94. UNCTAD [United Nations Conference on Trade and Development] (2021). World investment report 2021: investing in sustainable recovery. New York and Geneva: United Nations. Vernon, R. (1966). International investment and international trade in the product cycle. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 80(2): 190–207.
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Gender and development Two decades into the twenty-first century, the concept of ‘gender’ has been transformed from its original binary of women and men to a fluid spectrum where people take on the identity that they are most comfortable with in that continuum. Much has had to happen for us to arrive at this stage. To explain the process through which we have moved, this entry traces the history of the concept of gender over the last couple of centuries. It then goes on to explain the different approaches to gender and development over the last hundred years. The next section details how gender issues influenced global development policy and practice, with the United Nations taking a lead role. We finally look at some of the shifts that feminism has been seen to take as it was put into practice around the world.
The concept of gender
Even today, when a child is born, it is usually declared a girl or a boy based on its physical characteristics. The birth of a boy leads to much celebration in some of the most populated regions of the world. This begins the process of socialization that classifies a person as a woman or a man. Based on their biology, they are expected to have certain attributes and behave in a certain way so as to play out specific roles in the society they are born in. ‘… it is quite difficult to establish what is natural and what is socially constructed, because as soon as a child is born, families and society begin the process of gendering’ (Bhasin, 2003). The classic definition for ‘gender’ is that it is a social construct. The society into which people are born attributes masculinity or femininity to their behaviour. These attributes are then stereotyped as female or male and a value is attached to them. ‘That people
are male or female can usually (not always) be judged by referring to biological evidence. That they are masculine or feminine cannot be judged in the same way; the criteria are cultural, differing with time and place’ (Oakley, 1985). It was assumed that sex is constant globally. However, today we know that it is no longer true everywhere. Judith Butler argues that gender is performative and that both sex and gender are social constructs based on social norms (Butler 1990). Based on the roles assigned to women and men, work is also differentiated as what women do and what men do. As production became more market oriented in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, men began to interact with the market and the public sphere, while women found themselves increasingly limited to the home and the private sphere. This led the work that men do, and the attributes associated with that work (usually outside the home), labelled as ‘male’, valued highly and almost always paid. In contrast, women were confined within the home, their work valued less, and the attributes associated with that work labelled as ‘female’. Even today, women do most of the unpaid work globally. As economies became more monetized, it was men who took control over property, assets and money and took decisions about their assets. ‘Women are indeed equipped with a uterus and a pair of breasts but they have no extra equipment for caring, cleaning or looking after; therefore it is not “natural” for them to be looking after everyone. And, let us not forget that men manage to sweep and clean and wash and cook when these activities are paid for…’ (Bhasin, 2003). One example of this can be seen in India; in western India weaving is done by men and it is considered taboo for a woman to even touch the loom. The woven carpets and fabric are made for the market. In eastern India, weaving is done by women, mainly for home consumption, on small looms. It is not con-
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sidered proper for a man to take to weaving. This clearly shows that the roles assigned are based on the local cultural context. Over time, the power structure has tilted towards the male and was then supported by both women and men who stood to gain from such a social system and worked towards its perpetuation. This is the structure of patriarchy. ‘Women, more than any other group, have collaborated in their own subordination through their acceptance of the sex-gender system. They have internalised the values that subordinate them to such an extent that they voluntarily pass them on to their children’ (Lerner, 1986). Today, we understand gender to go beyond the binary to a fluid spectrum where individuals can choose to take on the gender identity that they are most comfortable with. While the structural oppression of cis women continues, there is a greater recognition of various gender and sexual identities. The power imbalance between cis men and cis women is still marked. However, we can no longer ignore the intersectionalities that emerge as our understanding of gender goes beyond the binary, while discussing gender today (Meenu Vadera 2021).
Development approaches
The progression of development discourse and planning needs to be seen in the context that the same power structures that are present in society are reflected in the organizations implementing development programmes. This is equally true for gender biases in programme strategies and approaches leading to seeing women (regardless of age, ability, caste, class, ethnicity, race, religion, sexuality, etc.) as beneficiaries or a means to an end rather than being change agents in their own lives, in their families and in their communities. Through much of the twentieth century, development programmes have considered men to be household heads and productive agents. Mainstream development resources for market-oriented products were targeted at men. Women were treated as housewives, mothers and at-risk reproducers and it was assumed that benefits would eventually trickle down to them. However, as the development indicators continued to show that women lag behind men, development programmes were planned for women in the Gouthami
‘Women in Development’ (WID) approach (Kabeer, 1994). In the 1960s and 1970s, the discourse was about poverty alleviation and meeting ‘basic needs’. Women were seen as efficient managers of limited resources to meet the family’s basic needs. The ‘Women and Development’ (WAD) approach included women in economic activities that reinforced the stereotypes about what women could and could not do in the attempt to bring women into the development process (Kabeer, 1994). For example, while women are active in agriculture, horticulture and animal husbandry, the related training programmes, extension activities and credit are offered to men with locations and times totally unsuitable for women. So not only are women’s roles stereotyped, but these interventions were often carried out by an external entity whose understanding of gender norms in that context is minimal. Welfare assistance programmes were usually targeted at women. To the extent that it could positively impact population growth, women were encouraged to be educated and be a part of the labour force. In the social development sector, women were initially considered as a homogenous target group in an effort to ensure healthy children and families as they are usually in charge of the kitchen but not as beneficiaries themselves. These programmes saw women as the ideal targets for this because of their supposed altruistic nature and the role that they played within families and communities. This was an instrumentalist view of women’s development. In social development, we understand that one of the contributing factors to poverty is the lack of power. This is doubly so for women, and those with an identity beyond the binary, as in addition to their powerlessness in society, they are also powerless, for the most part, within their family as well. Any development intervention needs to take this into account to enable sustainable change. ‘It is to challenge this duality (that of the private and the public) that the feminist movement coined and popularised the slogan, “The personal is the political”’ (Bhasin, 2003). It was only in the 1990s that the word ‘empowerment’ was used along with the word ‘women’ and even then to ensure faster social progress (i.e. as a means to an end rather than as an end in itself). Towards the end of the twentieth century we find that development was
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thought of in terms of capabilities rather than just basic needs. Amartya Sen took his concept a step further by talking about ‘Development as Freedom’. It took almost three decades to move from a WID to WAD approach before Gender and Development (GAD) was accepted as the approach that would lead to long-lasting and sustainable changes within communities so that they could work towards alleviating their own problems with solutions applied in their specific contexts. A GAD approach would mean that development addressed the power inequalities in communities so that power is shared equitably, with women and men (and people of all genders) owning and controlling all resources equitably. Since the power structure is tilted in favour of men, there is a need to work with women to ensure that they understand the situation and are willing and able to take the needed steps to gender equality. Development programmes find it easier to address the day-to-day needs or practical needs of women – such as closer water points or toilets. This focuses on making their lives easier, without changing their roles or power structures (Wieringa, 1994). However, to bring about sustainable change, their strategic needs need to be addressed such as bringing them together in a group, helping them to analyse power equations in their society, supporting them in leadership positions, ensuring that assets are in their name, putting an end to violence against women and so on (Wieringa, 1994). These processes would include a greater sharing of women’s roles within the family and community so that they are able to realize their own full potential. While international and national development agencies worked with different approaches on gender and development, the United Nations brought together countries from around the world to discuss and agree on gender and development policies.
of 1975–85 was declared as the Decade of Women. Many governments agreed to provide annual reports to the UN Commission on the Status of Women on progress made by them towards gender equality. By 1985, 90 per cent of member countries had established an institutional body or system for promoting the status of women (Bhasin, 2003). In 1985, the World Conference to Review and Appraise the UN Decade for Women was held in Nairobi with 157 member countries participating. They adopted the Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women, which detailed ways to achieve gender equality at the national level and to promote women’s participation in peace and development efforts (UN, n.d.). In 1995, the Fourth World Conference on Women was held in Beijing and attended by 189 countries. This conference is considered a significant turning point for the global agenda for gender equality. The Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action, adopted unanimously, is an agenda for women’s empowerment and is the key global policy document on gender equality. It is the base document against which the world measures its progress on gender equality. Each World Conference and the CSW side events was attended by thousands of vibrant feminists, who then took the discussions back to their countries and regions to share and implement. The thinking and understanding on gender and development evolved over the last century, building on the exchanges fostered by these international networks and grounded in the local contexts where feminists worked. The issues that were at the forefront of the women’s movement reflect the times in which they were thrown up and the response of various stakeholders to them. Thus the women’s movement has been likened to waves that ebb and flow. In the next section, we will look at some of the ‘waves’ in the women’s movement.
Global forums
Waves of feminism
The Commission for the Status of Women (CSW) of the United Nations organized the first major global conference on Women and Development in 1975, which was declared as the International Year of Women – 133 countries attended this conference in Mexico, at the end of which the following decade
‘Feminism is an interdisciplinary approach to issues of equality and equity based on gender, gender expression, gender identity, sex, and sexuality as understood through social theories and political activism. Historically, feminism has evolved from the critical examination of inequality between the sexes to Gouthami
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a more nuanced focus on the social and performative constructions of gender and sexuality’ (Day, 2016). Academic literature in English refers to three waves of feminism in the twentieth century. The first wave of feminism (Feminist Philosophy, n.d.) refers to women’s fight for equality in the nineteenth century and the early parts of the twentieth century. The broad focus was on women’s education, property rights and women’s right to vote. The first wave of feminism was elitist and concerned middle-class and upper-class, white women. Women’s right to vote could be seen to be a particular problem of the global North. As many countries of the global South were gaining independence in the 1940s and 1950s, women’s right to vote was embedded in their freedom struggle and not a matter of debate. However, women’s access to and control over property still remains an issue in several parts of the world. While legal rights to property have been granted in many countries, socially, since women themselves are treated as property, there is limited recognition of these legal rights. The second wave of feminism (Lear, 1968) is said to have started in the 1960s in North America, the UK and Europe. Over the next two decades, it built on the work done in the first wave, to focus on issues related to discrimination within the family, at the workplace, women’s reproductive rights, violence against women and marital rape. Much of academic literature is in English and from the global North. The second wave did little to cut across race, age, class and caste lines. It completely ignored the issues of those with differing gender identities or sexual orientations amongst women. The importance of the second wave of feminism is that it highlighted the issue of violence forcing open the private sphere of the home and family. ‘The role of a good wife and an effective boss are difficult to combine. No such demand is made on men, to combine the role of a good husband and an effective boss’ (Bhasin, 2003). The third wave took up from where the second wave left off with Rebecca Walker’s angry, ‘I am the third wave’ (Walker, 2007) call to feminists to channel their anger towards bringing real equality for all women (for more details, see the entry on gender and intersectionality in this Encyclopedia). Feminists of all hues began to work together to ensure empowerment of all women and Gouthami
people of other gender identities. Women stood up as individuals to represent the subordination that all women suffered. The growth of the internet in the 1990s helped the third wave of feminism to be more inclusive of women under varied layers of oppression. The concept of ‘intersectionality’ captured the multiple identities that women struggled with and led to an improved understanding of how each identity reinforces the powerlessness of women. If a person is a woman, black and lesbian, then the impact on her is multiplicative of the three identities rather than additive (Crenshaw, 1989). Increasingly, as the concept of family is being reinterpreted, feminism struggles with concepts of fluid gender identities, sexual preferences and child rearing. We are now in perhaps the fourth wave of feminism – one that is increasingly online, thus excluding those who do not have access to technology or are unable to access it. A key highlight of the 2010s was the #MeToo movement that gathered force around the world and then got entangled in the legal systems of most countries. The movement divided feminists by their understanding of violence, harassment, personal space, and so on. Meanwhile, in several parts of the world women continue to struggle with everyday violence, at the home, on the streets or at their workplace. In South Asia, the girl child is killed before she is born, at birth or before she is 5 years old. There are an estimated 100 million women missing in Asia and North Africa. While the core issues appear the same, their manifestation changes across the globe with race, class, caste, age, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, ability, and so on.
Conclusion
The Covid-19 pandemic that swept the world in early 2020, and continues to impact normal life globally, has perhaps reversed several of the gains that feminists have struggled for over decades. During lockdowns, with families being forced to live in close proximity, the shadow pandemic of violence was ever present. As Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations said, ‘COVID-19 has been likened to an x-ray, revealing fractures in the fragile skeleton of the societies we have built. It is exposing fallacies and falsehoods everywhere: The
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lie that free markets can deliver healthcare for all; The fiction that unpaid care work is not work; The delusion that we live in a post-racist world; The myth that we are all in the same boat. While we are all floating on the same sea, it’s clear that some are in super yachts, while others are clinging to the drifting debris.’ The pandemic has revealed fault lines in communities around the world and none more clearly than those within the home. Gouthami
References
Bhasin, Kamla (2003). Understanding Gender, New Delhi: Women Unlimited. Butler, Judith (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge. Crenshaw, Kimberle (1989). Demarginalising the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Anti-discrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, The University of Chicago Legal Forum.
Feminist Philosophy (n.d.). Posts tagged ‘First Wave Feminism’. https://bccfeministphilosophy .wordpress.com/tag/first-wave-feminism/. Kabeer, Naila (1994). Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development Thought, London & New York: Verso. Lear, Martha (1968). The second feminist wave: what do these women want?, New York Times Magazine, March. Lerner, Gerda (1986). The Creation of Patriarchy, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Oakley, Ann (1985). Sex, Gender and Society, Aldershot: Gower Publishing Company. UN (n.d.). World conferences on women. https://www.unwomen.org/en/how-we-work/ intergovernmental-support/world-conferences -on-women. Walker, Rebecca (2007). Becoming the third heathengrrl wave by Rebecca Walker. http:// .blogspot.com/2007/02/becoming-third-wave -by-rebecca-walker.html. Wieringa, Saskia (1994). Women’s interest and empowerment: gender planning reconsidered, Development and Change, 25(4): 829–48.
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Gender and intersectionality Origins of the concept
it focuses attention much more on individual experiences than on the social structures that produce disadvantage. More recently, some research has also used intersectionality to address the analysis of privilege.
Intersectionality was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a feminist legal scholar, in 1989, although the approach has a much longer history (see Bastia et al. 2023). By introducing this new term, Crenshaw aimed to highlight the double discrimination that black women faced in the US legal system: they were discriminated against on the basis of their colour and because they were women. However, under the legal system at the time, they could only claim discrimination on the basis of either race or gender. Crenshaw argued that this did not provide a just system and that it was only by taking into account the double discrimination they faced, that the legal system could provide the basis for redressing the injustices that black women faced. The fundamental problem that Crenshaw aimed at redressing is one of framing: a problem is often not seen and will remain invisible, unless the right framing is used. Intersectionality was aimed at providing such framing, so that the intersections of multiple discriminations could become visible and seen, and therefore had the opportunity of finding redress (Crenshaw 1989, 1991). Since its introduction, intersectionality became popular in feminist research, first in the US during the 1990s and more recently since the turn of the century in Europe. Intersectionality has been taken up in most social science disciplines, from sociology, politics, to geography and psychology. In some disciplines, there has been more emphasis on policy, such as in politics (Squires 2008; Yuval-Davis 2006). Other disciplines place more emphasis on understanding people’s lived experiences, such as in geography (Valentine 2007). With the greater uptake of intersectionality in so many disciplines, also came a proliferation of the types of disadvantages taken into consideration. From the original focus on gender and race, today studies of intersectionality include religion, sexuality, disability, ethnicity, and class. Some may argue that such proliferation weakens the original intention of the term. Others may argue that once multiple discriminations are included,
Intersectionality in development studies and policy
Development studies and policy has been slow in taking up the challenges proposed by intersectionality (Bastia 2014). The most fruitful sub-field in development studies for the uptake of intersectionality can be found in gender and development debates. One could argue that the early Southern feminist critiques of Western feminism as being too obsessed with the experiences of white, middle-class women, at the expense of understanding the lived experiences of women in the global South, were intersectional interventions, except that they did not use the term intersectionality. Mohanty (1988) argued that white, Western feminist researchers reproduced stereotypes of women in lower-income countries as passive victims. Sen and Grown (1987) raised the importance of class in understanding the lives of women in the majority world. Many grassroots women’s movements made important interventions in global feminist debates during the 1970s, highlighting how women are differentiated by class and ethnicity. These critiques paved the way for the later enthusiastic uptake of intersectionality in feminist circles during the 1990s. However, the greater circulation of the concept of intersectionality (mid to late 1990s) coincided with the weakening of gender and development field at the turn of the century, when gender and development agenda was being ‘mainstreamed’. While mainstreaming in itself was initially welcomed, in practice, it led to the depoliticization of the gender and development agenda, with gender broken down into indicators or subsumed into a broader ‘diversity’ agenda (Pearson 2005). In addition, development studies as a research field has shied away from facing its colonial past and addressing race and ethnicity (see Kothari 2002, 2006; Wilson 2012 for exceptions). Intersectionality, therefore, never became centre stage either in development studies or in development policy. However, international organizations have more recently embraced intersectionality as
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their aim to ‘leave no-one behind’. While a focus on ‘the poorest of the poor’ might be welcomed by some, lasting transformation can only be achieved through systemic changes which tackle the more structural basis on which advantage and disadvantage are built in everyday lives. A true intersectional approach, one that is faithful to its origins, would include feminist politics at its basis as well as a historical perspective that aims to understand the root causes of how societies are organized in particular ways. This is sometimes lost in attempts to institutionalize approaches such as intersectionality, when political objectives are reduced to individual indicators.
Conclusion
At the moment, there is significant momentum in the decolonizing agenda at many institutions and learned societies. Intersectionality is often included in attempts to decolonize curricula and educational practices. Crenshaw herself argued that the pushback experienced following the Black Lives Matter movement is a positive sign, indicating that real changes are happening moving societies towards greater racial equality (Mohdin 2020). As mentioned above, development studies has been slow in the uptake of race equality or its colonial past as a subject of interest, but given greater pressure from both societal change as well as student demands, the discipline will have to embrace this challenge in the years to come. Tanja Bastia
References
Bastia, T., 2014, Intersectionality, migration and development, Progress in Development Studies, 14(3), 237–48. Bastia, T., K. Datta, K. Hujo, N. Piper and M. Walsham, 2023, Reflections on intersectionality: a journey through the worlds of migration research, policy and advocacy, Gender, Place & Culture, 30:3, 460–483. https://doi.org/10 .1080/0966369X.2022.2126826. Crenshaw, K., 1989, Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1, 139–67. Crenshaw, K., 1991, Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color, Stanford Law Review, 43, 1241–99. Kothari, U., 2002, Feminist and postcolonial challenges to development, in U. Kothari and M. Minogue (eds), Development theory and practice: Critical perspectives, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 35–51. Kothari, U., 2006, Critiquing ‘race’ and racism in development discourse and practice, Progress in Development Studies, 6, 1–7. Mohanty, C.T., 1988, Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses, Feminist Review, 30, 61–88. Mohdin, A., 2020, Kimberlé Crenshaw: the woman who revolutionised feminism – and landed at the heart of the culture wars, The Guardian, 12 November, https://www.theguardian.com/ society/2020/nov/12/kimberle-crenshaw-the -woman-who-revolutionised-feminism-and -landed-at-the-heart-of-the-culture-wars. Pearson, R., 2005, The rise and rise of gender and development, in U. Kothari (ed.), A radical history of development studies: Individuals, institutions and ideologies, London and New York, Zed Books, 157–79. Sen, G. and C. Grown, 1987, Development crises and alternative visions: Third World women’s perspectives, New York, New Feminist Library, Monthly Review Press. Squires, J., 2008, Intersecting inequalities: Reflecting on the subjects and objects of equality, The Political Quarterly, 79, 53–61. Valentine, G., 2007, Theorizing and researching intersectionality: A challenge for feminist geography, The Professional Geographer, 59, 10–21. Wilson, K., 2012, Race, racism and development: Interrogating history, discourse and practice, London: Zed Books. Yuval-Davis, N., 2006, Intersectionality and feminist politics, European Journal of Women’s Studies, 13, 193–209.
Tanja Bastia
Geography and the world’s development divides Disparities in the level of development between groups of people have been a permanent feature of human society for millennia (indeed, predating the Agricultural Revolution; Solarz, 2016). Their existence has led to the emergence and persistence of developmental boundaries, to territories characterized by diverse levels of development, and, within discourse concerning the world, to concepts designating areas which are homogeneous in terms of the level of development achieved (developmental choronyms). The resulting challenge for geography is how to represent these development disparities and divides on maps. This challenge is posed continually, because development itself, along with its stages, disparities and divides, is a living process (albeit with varying dynamics at different points in history). In order for development divides to be identified, interpreted and presented (including on maps), a series of philosophical, axiological, methodological and cartographic questions need to be answered. Not without significance for the shape of the answers given are such matters as the education, knowledge, experience, geographical origin and social background of those who formulate them. Worldwide interest in the themes of development and underdevelopment increased steadily from the 1940s onward. One of the consequences of this was the emergence of specific geographical terminology used in various academic disciplines which were addressing international development issues. Among the most popular spatial terms which began to filter into the vocabulary of broadly defined development discourse in the decade or so following the Second World War were Third World, developing countries, South, along with terms for their developmental opposites – First World, North. Looked at impartially, these concepts have identical geographical and semantic referents on the respective sides of the divide, but their biographies are different, which affects the way they are interpreted, understood and used (Solarz, 2016). They unquestionably belong to the category of geographical terms known as choronyms, that is, a group of designations
of regions and countries, although of a special type, as they refer to regions whose boundaries are highly subjective and fluid in time. Developmental choronyms remain controversial both geographically (how many regions are there which differ according to levels of development, and what are their boundaries?) and semantically (what is development, and what are its manifestations and levels?). Their contested reception is also due to their evaluative character. Developmental choronyms are part of the language of international politics. They are politically charged ‘wake-up call’ concepts, and those which refer to countries characterized by low development are frequently used as shaming terms to stigmatize certain situations in international relations and within individual countries, even developed ones. This also complicates their translation into the language of maps. The problem of delimiting developmental boundaries is both difficult and multilayered (Solarz, 2018, 2020). In order to achieve this task with any success, we must first define what we understand by development and its stages (high vs. low development, etc.). Therefore, the first step towards a map depicting the developmental variations in the international community is the adoption of a philosophy and axiology of development. This in turn requires us to make certain choices, and to answer certain questions, such as our most general definition of development, the highest point and limits of development so defined, and how to evaluate these based on a given system of ethics and morality, and so on. These choices and answers are fundamental and absolutely determinative, for when translated into the language of maps different philosophies and axiologies of development lead to completely different development divides (Solarz, 2020). Next, other important choices have to be made: the criteria by which the international community is to be divided up [how many criteria? which particular ones? economic, social, political, other? Are these objective and/or subjective (e.g. based on public opinion)] and what would the indicators for these criteria be? (Also, how many? Which ones? Simple or complex? A separate problem area is the imperfection of existing indicators, as well as their limited availability and the patchy spatial coverage of the data which either constitute the indicators or form the basis of their calculation.) As a result, every step
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closer to our goal of delimiting ‘the world’s worlds’ means a reduction in the value and objectivity of the delineated development division. A further important question to answer at the beginning of the undertaking is the number of categories into which the international community should be divided. The simplest possible division is dichotomous, for example, global North vs. global South. Dividing the world into just two categories has been strongly criticized on the basis that it oversimplifies reality. The validity of this objection cannot be denied, as it applies to every simple division of a complex and diverse whole made up of multiple elements. The value of a dichotomous approach (and every other simple division) is that it draws attention to the most important (essential) properties of the divided-up entity – in relation to a development division this means development and underdevelopment, high and low development. Despite the fact that such dichotomous categories simplify reality, we use them because they are practical and allow us to quickly and easily find our bearings in, and navigate through, a complex world. It is, of course, possible to divide up the international community into more than two categories, but an increase in the number of categories is inevitably accompanied by a decrease in the intelligibility and usefulness of the divisions they represent. However paradoxical this may seem to critics of simple divisions, as divisions become increasingly complex, they also become increasingly difficult to delimit. For example, when there is a dichotomous division, it is only necessary to determine one dividing line, but when three categories are involved, we need two dividing lines, four categories require three lines, and so on. Thus, we multiply categories, as demanded by critics of simple development divisions, in order to more accurately reflect the world’s complexity, but this in turn complicates the process of delimitation without increasing the objectivity of how our maps depict the developmental diversity within the international community. This last fact becomes clearer when we recognize that there are, in fact, no ‘development gap(s)’ in the international community (at least not on a permanent basis rather than just episodically/periodically), since the world’s countries are in a continuum on the scale of development, moving
freely along it in both directions. Therefore, each developmental boundary is more or less arbitrary. Another significant problem connected with delineating and comparing development divisions arises from changes in our understanding of development and underdevelopment over time – the content of these concepts is very different today than, for example, 100 years ago (i.e. quality of life and industrial power, respectively). The creation of development maps is also hampered by the fact that development disparities exist on many levels – from global to local, and international to regional. Purely cartographical questions, such as the choice of map projection, can also significantly impact the perception of reality conveyed by development maps, and the reception of the maps themselves. For example, the Arno Peters projection (the North–South division depicted on the cover of the 1980 Brandt Report, i.e. the first visualization of the Brandt Line, is shown on a map based on this projection), although without cartographic merit, became popular in the 1970s due to its ideological message. On maps drawn according to the Peters projection, the intertropical regions were enlarged in relation to areas located in temperate zones, and the global South grew in physical size on the map at the expense of the global North, which – according to some – better reflected the true shape of international reality (Blacksell, 2006). The Peters projection was intended to be an important step away from the hitherto prevailing Eurocentric geographical and cultural concept of the world (Brandt, 1980, 1983; Solarz, 2016). The study of development divisions should always lead in the end to their cartographical representation. After all, terms such as ‘Third World’, ‘global South’, ‘global North’ and other developmental choronyms have a spatial dimension, and concepts like ‘development divide’ or ‘developmental boundary’ cannot be referred to and considered in serious academic discourse without addressing their spatiality, which ultimately should come down to their expression on a map. However, when we reflect on development research conducted to date, we are forced to the surprising conclusion that the geographical conceptualization of development division(s) is by no means frequent, or Marcin Wojciech Solarz
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maybe even expected. Furthermore, despite the explosion of worldwide interest in development and underdevelopment in the 1940s, and the birth in 1952 of ‘Third World’, the first ‘great’ developmental choronym to be used on a global scale, it was not until 1980, over a generation later, that the first planetary development division with global recognition (the North–South line, also known as the Brandt Line) was drawn on the map. Unfortunately, not only was its geographical shape questionable and unclear from its inception (Brandt, 1980; Solarz, 2016, 2020), but also the criteria by which it was determined were enigmatic or even non-existent. From the very beginning, the Brandt Line was misleading as a developmental boundary and it was strongly determined by political considerations. Therefore, it should be seen rather as a political line (Solarz, 2020). The lateness of any broad attempt to geographically conceptualize the global developmental divide, though surprising, is explicable by the unstable shape of the international community in the period to 1980 due to turbulent decolonization (Solarz, 2020). However, what is equally surprising (and less easily explicable) is the absence of a genuinely passionate geographical debate around the question of development disparities, which would presumably have borne fruit in the form of numerous new development maps, or at least the attempts to popularize globally certain, inevitably imperfect, delimitations of the developed and underdeveloped worlds which already existed before 1980 (Figure 1). The global problem of development inequalities was crucial in a social, political, economic, civilizational and moral sense for the globalized world of that time, and its inhabitants, and therefore the geographical conceptualization of global development disparities and divides was arguably hampered not by its felt lack of importance, but rather by the fluidity and complexity of the concept of development, the uncertainty of development boundaries and the instability of political borders in the post-1945 world, as well as the political character and impact of the process of designating developmental boundaries, and the dominance of the West– East perspective in 1945–89. In the pre-1990 world, the World Bank’s country economic classifications by income level, correlating with the level of a country’s development, may perhaps also have contributed to the Marcin Wojciech Solarz
abandonment of attempts to draw new or refine old development boundaries. Another surprise is the post-1989 stagnation of the Brandt Line, as manifested by its continuing reproduction in the same basic shape as in 1980 (Figure 2), and yet the world of that time was completely different from the modern world (e.g. the USSR still existed, as did the Cold War, Germany was divided, there was no European Union, and China was only on the threshold of its rapid developmental acceleration, etc.). Just as the whole international community had done, the line designating the global development divide also needed to evolve. The most serious challenge to the 1980 Brandt Line in the post-Cold War world arguably came with the publication of the first Human Development Report in 1990, which set out a division of the world according to the UNDP concept of human development, first into three worlds (countries with low, medium and high human development) and then, with the 2009 edition, four worlds (countries with low, medium, high and very high human development). Another problem relating to the geographical conceptualization of global development disparities and divides grows out of the contrasting historical experiences and cultural perspectives of the ‘old’ West (the pre-2004 EU, EFTA, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), the ‘new’ West (post-communist and post-Soviet EU countries) and the heterogeneous Rest, including the ‘new’ North and ‘old’ South, that is, the centre–periphery clash in the academic discourse on development. Development is an integral phenomenon, which means that it includes all the dimensions of the life of societies – economic, social, political, cultural, moral and so on – and it should be balanced and just. However, in research and broadly defined discourse relating to development, there is a conflict, often unconscious and unrecognized, between what we may call true universalism (relating to human equality, i.e. what all people have a right to by virtue of being human), false universalism (the de facto hegemony of certain states or regions, e.g. countries of the ‘old’ West, which, in line with their interests and dominant ideologies, take advantage of their position in international relations and impose on others their own understanding of development and its levels), true particularism (relating to the sense of well-being of a particular group of
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Figure 1
Selected Cold War delimitations of development/underdevelopment divisions
people, i.e. what they consider necessary to be happy and fulfilled, including in the context of development and its stages), and authoritarian (false) particularism (conveniently justifying inequalities and injustices by civilizational or cultural differences, which
frequently comes from and/or results in passivity concerning the internal situation of some global South countries). Therefore, when seeking to determine the accuracy and merits of a proposed or analysed development division, it is vital to also investigate its Marcin Wojciech Solarz
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Figure 2
The Brandt Line and its post-Cold War variants
location within the space between the vertices of the square described above. In summary, many boundaries and divides of varying degrees of complexity can be identified in relation to development in the contemporary world. These differ in imporMarcin Wojciech Solarz
tance and cognitive value. A precondition for obtaining the most accurate developmental dividing line (or lines) possible is to take a broad spectrum of the major challenges and problems confronting humanity into account when attempting to make a delimitation. All
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Figure 3
The North–South divide in the contemporary world
developmental dividing lines are variable and relative (i.e. soft), but this emphatically does not mean that there are no genuinely distinct and substantial boundaries among them (i.e. hard dividing lines). This also applies to the international community’s dichotomous division into a global North and a global South,
which, though completely valid in principle, cannot be represented by a single continuous line and using just one method, delimitation factor or depiction (Figure 3) (Solarz, 2020). The world’s development picture is a constantly changing reality. The development map of the world, especially as seen in light Marcin Wojciech Solarz
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of Braudel’s concept of long duration, is most aptly characterized by Heraclitus’ aphorism that all is flux, even if certain countries or regions of the world (currently this relates in particular to Africa, but in the past to e.g. Europe or China; see Kennedy, 1988; see also maps in Solarz, 2020) seem to be permanently characterized by stagnation and stand out negatively from the rest of the international community as they remain trapped in a parking lane on the development highway (Solarz, 2020).
Acknowledgments
Figures prepared by Jarosław Talacha. Translation from Polish by Mark Znidericz. Figures 1 and 2 reproduced by permission of the Taylor & Francis Group. Translation and map preparation financed by the Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland. Marcin Wojciech Solarz
Marcin Wojciech Solarz
References
Blacksell, M. (2006). Political Geography. Routledge. Brandt, W. (1980). North–South: A Programme for Survival: The Report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues under the Chairmanship of Willy Brandt, Pan Books. Brandt, W. (1983) Common Crisis. North–South: Cooperation for World Recovery. Pan Books. Kennedy, P. (1988). The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. Unwin Hyman. Solarz, M.W. (2016). The Language of Global Development: A Misleading Geography. Routledge. Solarz, M.W. (2018). Many worlds, one planet: ambiguous geographies of the contemporary international community. In M.W. Solarz (ed.), New Geographies of the Globalized World (pp. 54–76). Routledge. Solarz, M.W. (2020). The Global North–South Atlas: Mapping Global Change. Routledge.
Global governance Global and governance
Humans communicate, make decisions, and organize within and between their identifying groups to meet their individual, community, and environmental needs and/or interests. In making political, economic, and social decisions about how they live in the world, humans engage in governance. When humans work together across political borders and geographic or cultural barriers to address shared threats or achieve shared goals, they engage in global governance. What is more, such decisions and collaborations may be formal (organizations, rules, or laws) or informal (norms, institutions, and patterns of behaviour or ideas that mould and change interactions and conceptions of what is appropriate) (see, e.g. Rosenau 1995; Weiss 2011). Global governance is necessary because of the lack of a supranational authority in the world (Weiss and Thakur 2010).
Global governance: historical and political foundations
Global governance is inextricably connected with the processes of globalization. Globalization – as the increase in interactions between and consciousness of other people groups and spaces – necessitates global governance. The creation and expansion of empires represent the expansive thinking and practices related to global governance and globalization: empires sometimes sought to conquer, destroy, and set up their own governing structures over new peoples and new territories (as with the Athenians and Spartans). Other empire expansions allowed for integration of the cultural traditions and epistemologies of conquered people groups, utilizing the political structures already in place to gain and maintain control over new resources and human capital (as with the Romans) (on globalization, see Steger 2020). European powers expanded their control and influence across the globe from the fifteenth to twentieth centuries, setting up colonial global governance institutions. Colonial governance came to be challenged as humans consolidated the nation state system and liberal democratic government structures. Changes to human collective political
structures led to internationalizing norms of self-determination, sovereignty, territoriality, nationalism, and democracy: norms now crucial to how humans conceptualize and govern themselves. Such liberal ideals were enshrined in treaties and laws, and an international rules-based system came into existence. The three treaties oft referenced as the foundation of nation state sovereignty became known as the Peace of Westphalia treaties that ended the violent religious wars of Europe in 1648. Sovereignty – that each governing entity has the right to control its territory and people how it sees fit without outside intervention – developed as the guiding principle of state interaction in the subsequent centuries (for more on the development of the nation state and nationalism, see, e.g. Anderson 1983). Liberal internationalism is the term for the kind of global governance thinking that has dominated the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As an ideology liberal internationalism covers a wide range of topics explaining state interaction and highlighting cooperation and coordination between states as a priority in international affairs in order to protect liberal democracy (Ikenberry 2020). The resistance to colonial control along with the consolidation of sovereignty, territoriality, and self-determination as guiding principles in international relations solidified at the end of two of the most violent wars in the history of the world, aptly named the First World War and the Second World War. International organizations like the UN were set up to facilitate coordination at the international level and to ensure that states would not resort to war to solve disputes. Thus, more than control, global governance practice recognizes states as sovereign entities who need to work in collaboration and coordination to address shared threats and achieve shared goals.
Who governs globally?
Various actors are responsible for global governance yet states still dominate international relations discussions and actions. The designation of a state is that of a sovereign political human collective with a government, a population, a territory, and a means to control the population and territory, as per Max Weber (Gerth and Mills 1946) and as outlined in customary international law (see
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the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States 1933). Yet state governments must find ways to communicate and coordinate to address shared threats and achieve shared goals, and they do this with the support of international organizations. International organizations (IOs) – also intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) – pursue a contemporary vision of global governance facilitating policy cooperation and coordination between states (see, e.g. Barnett and Finnemore 2004). Global governance in this arena means coordinating domestic and foreign policies on, to name a few major global challenges, reducing carbon emissions (e.g. the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and 2015 Paris Agreement), updating and addressing migration and refugee status (e.g. the 1951 Convention and Protocol Relating the Status of Refugees and the 2018 Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration), and coordinating on responding to global economic crises (e.g. through the Group of 7 or Group of 20 – semi-structured groups of states that meet regularly to coordinate on economic affairs). To respond to specific economic global governance challenges, 44 countries who were allied together to end the Second World War, met at a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944 to create IGOs, collectively called the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWIs). The negotiations occurred while the Second World War was still being fought; the hosts recognized the moment as crucial to create institutions that would solidify the ideological norms and rule-based principles of international global governance and liberal internationalism. Two IGOs and one ad hoc system were created at Bretton Woods: one to rule international finance and currency exchange (the International Monetary Fund or IMF), one to rule international reconstruction, development, and redistribution (the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, now the World Bank), and one to rule trade interactions (the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, now the World Trade Organization or WTO). The IMF–World Bank–WTO trifecta provided the solution to the problems of coordination and cooperation on specific economic global challenges. The global IGO to oversee them all, the one that would coordinate member state collective response to threats to international peace and Roni Kay M. O’Dell
security – a collective security organization that would consider a threat to one as a threat to all – was negotiated the following year in 1945 while the Second World War was in its final throes: the United Nations (UN). The UN was many years in the making, its predecessors being the Concert of Europe and the League of Nations. The Concert of Europe loosely supported monarchical and feudal governance coordination in Europe during the nineteenth century after the Napoleonic wars wreaked havoc amongst people groups from France to Russia. Its demise in the late nineteenth century is attributed to the use of realpolitik and realist political machinations of the leaders of the time period. The next attempt at a global governance IGO was with the League of Nations. Liberal internationalist Woodrow Wilson conceived of the League and promoted it after the First World War as a collective security organization and part of the Versailles Treaty to end the war, but if foundered because of the lack of support from the US Senate along with the League’s inability to hold state governments accountable for rule breaking. Negotiators of the UN – its founding fathers and mothers who met at the San Francisco Conference from May to June 1945 – set out to create an institution that would be stronger and more able to provide the functional practice of global governance to the world (Schlesinger 2005). Understanding how the UN is set up gives insight into the ideals, impacts, implications, and possible future of global governance. It was created with six organs to facilitate coordination: the UN Security Council (UNSC), the UN General Assembly (UNGA), the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Secretariat, and the now defunct Trusteeship Council. The five major powers who won the war (the United States, United Kingdom, Russia (then the USSR), France, and China) made sure they had the ability to guide policy on what they perceived would be the most important global governance matter: responding to global threats. Next to the UNSC, the UNGA has the most power and influence in terms of its role in supporting states to engage in international cooperation and coordination, and in people’s awareness of its existence. The most crucial role played by the UNGA may be as a sounding board for state leaders to present their visions of global governance in speeches once a year in
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meetings at UN Headquarters in New York City. What is more, thousands of state delegates make the annual pilgrimage and meet in dozens of committees to discuss how they might coordinate their government policies on a plethora of issues. While the resolutions that come out of the UNGA are not binding on member states, they do guide policy, encourage cooperation, indicate shared ideals or grievances, and initiate and guide the work of the UN Secretariat, ECOSOC, and hundreds of UN departments and programmes. Almost eight decased after its founding the UN still functions as the world’s preeminent global governance institution, but it is not alone. Other IGOs fulfilling the same function on similar roles may even have more impact on global governance at any given time and place. Consider other regional collective security organizations like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that has functioned since the end of the Second World War. In addition, regional development organizations – such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – seek to support infrastructure building and poverty reduction in ways that overlap with the practices of the UN and its specialized agencies. And we cannot forget the impact on global governance of thousands of multinational companies/corporations (MNCs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and civil society organizations (CSOs), and even that of thousands of individuals who influence human thinking and behaviour through social media or other worldwide information-sharing platforms. For their part, MNCs function in the world to produce goods and services within and across state borders, seeking profits. MNCs are not held accountable by global rules or limits, leaving them the ability to choose where and how to function. Even so, norms based on reputation and consumer advocacy may challenge MNCs and hold them accountable for their behaviour (consider the Fair Trade or Corporate Social Responsibility movements). NGOs likewise have grown in numbers and influence from the 1940s (in which a few hundred were registered) to thousands functioning and growing each day. NGOs both challenge governments to hold them accountable and address societal problems that governments cannot, will not, or should not solve. Weiss, Carayannis, and
Jolly (2009) coined this group of NGO and other actors who influence global governance as the ‘third UN’.
Responding to shared threats
The United Nations was originally created as a collective security organization to coordinate member state responses to shared threats. In the 1940s, collective security concerns were more limited to state behaviour and the fear of state aggression, that is, a state invading another state to take its territory or control its people. But almost immediately after the UN was formed the world saw an entirely different threat to collective security: nuclear weapon proliferation. Likewise, terrorism as a global threat has slowly increased in activity and impact particularly in the 1990s and early 2000s with the major event that shocked the United States on 11 September 2001. Also consider global threats to human security (civil wars, small weapons proliferation), to human health (pandemics), and to the environment (climate change). Another aspect and challenge of global governance is associated with the increase in human population and the associated effects on the Earth’s ecosystems, biodiversity, and sustainability. Human population has risen from roughly 629 million in 1750 to over seven billion in 2019, rising to estimates of eleven billion in 2100 (UN 2019, 5; US Census Bureau 2018). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, environmental NGOs and activists have become crucial in governance of environmental challenges and issues related to climate change. As the dangers and impacts of the rising average global temperatures have become more evident and linked to human activity (see the International Panel on Climate Change reports) the number of people who wish to do something about climate change has risen. Their vision: to impact the way that humans interact with their environment, to raise awareness and understanding about how all living beings are connected on this rare and fragile planet, and to support government policies that protect the environment by limiting destructive human behaviour (particularly through reducing carbon emissions and recycling or finding biodegradable resources to use in production of goods to be sold in the marketplace). Consider the impact of environmenRoni Kay M. O’Dell
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tal activist Greta Thunberg’s call to address climate change.
Achieving shared goals
One of the most prominent examples of the attempt by states to achieve shared goals in the twenty-first century is in the creation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In the 1990s, the UNGA requested the Secretariat to craft a set of goals that would allow for states to coordinate on development projects and planning and also address inefficiencies and failures in development funding, coordination, and implementation. Secretary General Kofi Annan and his team carefully selected a group of people who worked in committees to create the eight MDGs to be achieved by 2015 (UN Millennium Declaration 2000). The SDGs updated and replaced the MDGs in 2015 with a list of 17 goals and 169 associated targets to be achieved by 2030 (UN 2015). The MDGs and SDGs included specific targets and indicators to measure achievement with collaboration and coordination amongst states spilling over to include many other actors in the global and local environments. The extent to which the current global governance framework supports the achievement of the SDGs is an important question and requires us to reimagine what global governance ideology or networks offer for achieving shared goals (Monkelbaan 2019). Most notably, both the MDGs and SDGs start with a goal to reduce poverty, a recurring theme in global governance discussions (MDG 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger; SDG 1: End Poverty in All its Forms Everywhere). International development work has long been concerned with poverty reduction as exemplified in US President Truman’s speeches on the topic that pointed to the challenges of poverty and argued that all people should be able to access goods and resources to live dignified lives (Truman 1949). The UN and World Bank report that the percentage of people living in poverty worldwide has reduced from 1990 levels, though there are still roughly 700 million people living in extreme poverty in 2021 and millions more living in varying degrees of deprivation (World Bank 2021; UN 2020). Poverty remains with us to this day and the MDGs and SDGs are meant as Roni Kay M. O’Dell
practical global governance tools to engage states, MNCs, NGOs, and others to achieve the shared goal of reducing and eliminating poverty wherever it exists.
The future of global governance
The challenges facing global governance today are not the same as they were in 1945 at the founding of the United Nations, and they will not be the same in the next century. But the core of the problem remains the same: how do humans coordinate their lives and use of the Earth’s resources so as to meet their needs without destroying the planet and each other? Weiss and Thakur (2010, 7–23) problematized the challenge in a potent way: in the absence of world government how can states coordinate, particularly where global governance institutions cannot fill the knowledge, normative, policy, institutional, or compliance gaps. Human political and economic organization and coordination to address shared threats or achieve shared goals must constantly change and update to meet the needs of the present and the future. Historical practices can give insight into specific successes and failures and can provide the impetus for new ideas and ways of responding to threats. But relying on the past can also limit our ability to respond to current threats that may need creative solutions. If humans are to survive, thrive, and protect the Earth’s resources for the present and the future, they must respond adequately to current global threats and be ready for challenges of a completely different nature in the centuries to come. Roni Kay M. O’Dell
References
Anderson, Benedict (1983). Imagined Communities. London: Verso [revised and updated 2006]. Barnett, Michael N. and Martha Finnemore (2004). Rules for the World: International Organizations in Global Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Gerth, H.H. and C. Wright Mills (eds) (1946). ‘Politics as a Vocation’, in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, pp. 77–128. New York: Oxford University Press. Ikenberry, G. John (2020). A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism and the Crises of Global Order: Politics and Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Global governance 289 Monkelbaan, Joachim (2019). Governance for the Sustainable Development Goals: Exploring an Integrative Framework of Theories, Tools, and Competencies. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Singapore: Springer. Rosenau, James N. (1995). Governance in the Twenty-First Century. Global Governance 1(1), 13–43. Schlesinger, Stephen C. (2005). Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations. A Story of Superpowers, Secret Agents, Wartime Allies and Enemies, and Their Quest for a Peaceful World. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Steger, Manfred (2020). Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Truman, Harry S. (1949). Inaugural Address. Delivered in person at the US Capitol (20 January). Accessed 24 April 2023 at https:// www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/public-papers/ 19/inaugural-address. UN (2015). Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 25 September. United Nations, Dept. of Public Information. UN [Department of Economic and Social Affairs] (2019). World Population Prospects 2019; Highlights. United Nations. ST/ESA/ SER.A/423.
UN (2020). Human Development Report 2020: The Next Frontier Human Development and the Anthropocene. United Nations. UN Millennium Declaration (2000). United Nations, Dept. of Public Information. 18 September. https://www.ohchr.org/en/ instruments-mechanisms/instruments/united -nations-millennium-declaration. US Census Bureau (2018). Historical Estimates of World Population. https://www.census.gov/ data/tables/time-series/demo/international -programs/historical-est-worldpop.html. Weiss, Thomas G. (2011). Governance, Good Governance, and Global Governance: Conceptual and Actual Challenges. In Thinking about Global Governance: Why People and Ideas Matter, pp. 168–89. London and New York: Routledge. Weiss, Thomas G., Tatiana Carayannis, and Richard Jolly. “The ‘Third’ United Nations.” Global Governance 15, no. 1 (2009): 123–42 Weiss, Thomas G. and Ramesh Thakur (2010). Global Governance at the UN: An Unfinished Journey. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. World Bank (2021). World Development Report 2021: Data for Better Lives. Washington, DC: World Bank Group.
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Global North–South The term ‘North–South’ denotes a metaphor generally used to describe the political, economic, and social relations between ‘developed countries’ (those of Europe, North America, Oceania, and Japan) and ‘developing countries’ (those of Africa, Asia, and Latin America). In addition to emphasizing the inequality in the international distribution of wealth, the North–South metaphor draws attention to the idea that development is a global process. In social sciences, what makes the North–South framework particularly significant is that it permeates a wide range of issues and literatures related to development and geopolitics. While for a long time the dominant discourse has tended to naturalize the North– South dichotomy, it has become easier in recent years to see that this representation of the world is in fact a social construction, and that it entails, as such, persistent political conflicts. Through a brief history of North–South interactions, this entry highlights a paradox of the contemporary world order: that while the North–South divide is increasingly seen as obsolete by some, it nonetheless remains for many others a major feature of global politics.
The North–South consensus
The intellectual roots of the North–South worldview can be traced back to the work on imperialism carried out at the beginning of the twentieth century by liberal theorists of the left and by Marxists (Hobson [1902] 1938; Lenin [1917] 1939). These authors were the first to systematically analyse the development of the international economy in terms of the polarization of interests between a minority of rich colonial powers and a majority of poor colonies. The expression ‘North–South’ itself was coined by a British diplomat in the late 1950s, a few years before the gap between the rich nations and the poor became a widely recognized component of international diplomacy (Head 1991, 14). The 1964 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is often viewed as ‘the first major forum of North– South politics’ (Mortimer 1984, 16). Not only did this conference give birth to the G77 – which now includes 134 developing
countries – but it also identified the struggle against poverty and underdevelopment as an issue of critical concern for the international community. In his landmark report, Raul Prebisch, the first secretary-general of UNCTAD, wrote that ‘practical action in the field of trade and development is second to no other responsibility which the United Nations, established to maintain peace, must face in the 1960s’ (UNCTAD 1964, 4). Pope Paul VI summarized the spirit of the times when he later declared that ‘the new name for peace [was] development’ (1967, 51). Emboldened by the decolonization movement, the developing countries spared no effort to convince their counterparts in the developed world that ‘[w]hat the countries of the South have in common transcends their differences’ (South Commission 1990, 1). To be sure, the question of how best to close the gap between the two groups of countries has been an object of perennial political controversy. But by the late 1960s, the South had largely succeeded in drawing attention to the potential threat to world security and prosperity posed by the global ‘poverty curtain’ (Haq 1976). Throughout the 1970s, North–South relations were given pride of place on the international agenda (Jones 1983; Krasner 1985). In 1974, the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted the Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order, and in 1980 the report of the Brandt Commission provided the most articulate plea yet for the start of ‘global’ North– South negotiations. During these years, as the Brandt Commission noted, “‘North’ and ‘South’ [became] broadly synonymous with ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ ‘developed’ and ‘developing’” (Brandt 1980, 31). And yet, the Brandt report also made clear that ‘North–South’ was never anything more than a ‘simplified view’ of the international economic system (31). Consider, for instance, the simple fact that Australia is categorized as a northern country! Given the North–South concept’s lack of precision, one can legitimately ask why it was so readily absorbed into diplomatic and academic discourse. At least two reasons seem to have been decisive in this regard. First, the expression ‘North–South’ offered the most concise designation for one of the principal sub-systems of the larger international order. Second, it supplied a useful intellectual com-
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plement to the idea of ‘East–West’, which, after 1945, represented the most important international cleavage. For three decades, the North–South world view enjoyed great influence as the main intellectual framework for addressing the problem of Third World development. Despite their many differences, the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, the GATT (now WTO), the OECD, the G77, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), all national governments, and most civil society actors agreed that there was a relatively clear dividing line between the developed and the developing worlds. In academic circles, the notions of ‘North– South conflict’ and ‘North–South dialogue’ were the focus of many studies, most notably on international aid, trade, and finance. Although, admittedly, these efforts produced little in the way of consensus, for many years the metaphor of a planet divided along a North–South fault line provided a shared reference point in discussions of international political economy.
The end of the North–South consensus
From the 1990s onwards, the North–South (or ‘developed–developing’) distinction was called into question by the disintegration of the Soviet empire and the acceleration of globalization (Berger 1994; Payne 2005). The impact of the USSR’s collapse on the North–South dynamic was especially pronounced, for two reasons. First, from an economic point of view, the fall of communism gave credence to the claim that capitalism was the only development model that worked, and that the kind of international interventionism demanded by the South was a dead end. Rather than talking about the differences between North and South, it was argued that all states should unite behind a common objective: the promotion of properly functioning markets. Second, from a semantic point of view, the disappearance of the Eastern Bloc meant that the concept of the North was increasingly out of step with geopolitical and economic realities, as it became clear that the USSR and the Western countries enjoyed very different levels of development. Incidentally, as a response to this situation, a number of analysts began to speak of the division between the ‘West’ and
the ‘Rest’ rather than between the ‘North’ and the ‘South’ (Huntington 1996). Meanwhile, northern governments claimed that middle-income countries, which had tended to benefit from the expansion of global trade, should not have the same rights as low-income countries. They thus put forward the principle of graduation, according to which richer developing states should gradually assume greater international responsibilities. More broadly, developed countries criticized the antagonism inherent in the North–South binary, while arguing for the need to rethink development in terms of interdependence and mutual interests (Thérien 1999). In parallel with struggles on the diplomatic front, many analysts emphasized the growing heterogeneity of Third World countries. Indeed, it became more and more difficult to account for the experience of all countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America by way of a single explanatory model. Some authors also noted that the traditional North– South framework offers an increasingly distorted picture of the international distribution of wealth, as there also exists a ‘South’ within the North and a ‘North’ within the South (de Haan and Maxwell 1998). Crucially, under this approach, the geographical dimension of the term ‘North–South’ was completely disregarded in favour of a more political definition.
A new North–South dynamic
Since the beginning of the 2000s, the rise of emerging countries – primarily China – and the increasing urgency of the climate crisis have resulted in even greater scepticism as to the relevance of the North–South division. This was particularly notable after the 2005 Paris Declaration and the development of two trends in the global aid regime: the socialization of new donors to OECD discipline, and the increased accountability of aid recipients. Although the concrete effects of these two trends remain ambiguous, they were clearly a result of the developed countries’ desire to minimize the importance of the old North– South divide (Atwood 2012; Mawdsley 2019). Beyond the evolution of aid, the North–South framework has been challenged in several other ways. For example, in 2008, it was recognized at the first meeting of G20 leaders that the financial crisis had resulted in a new convergence of interests between Jean-Philippe Thérien
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developed and developing countries (Cooper and Thakur 2013). In 2015, the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement was touted as a significant move toward the implementation of a universal development agenda addressing both rich and poor countries (Thérien and Pouliot 2020). In 2016, the World Bank’s annual World Development Indicators suggested, surprisingly, that the distinction between developing and developed countries was no longer relevant (World Bank 2016). And in 2019, in an effort to better protect itself from competition from emerging countries, the US government summoned the WTO to revise its definition of developing countries (Kwa and Lunenborg 2019). Echoing these policy shifts, some experts have criticized the oversimplistic view of world politics implicit in the notion of a North–South dichotomy while seeking to redefine development from a less polarizing and more global perspective (Horner 2020; Kaul 2017). Instead of reducing international development to a permanent struggle between rich and poor countries, these scholars argue that it would be more appropriate to focus on the similar challenges facing all nations, whether poverty, inequality, competitiveness, or the environment. In the face of such an avalanche of criticism, one might have thought that the North–South metaphor – and its dual vision of the world – would have long ago been abandoned. Yet it is remarkable that efforts to reconceptualize development in universal terms, mounted with increasing vigour by the governments of developed countries, are facing strong resistance from states on the periphery. Although this resistance is blurred by the absence of objective criteria by which to define what a developing country is, it is nevertheless firmly rooted in a shared identity and a set of mutual interests. Indeed, southern states (including emerging countries) insist on the salience of a wide range of collective economic, social, and cultural affinities (Farias 2019; G77 2019). Shaped by the history of the NAM and the G77, and sometimes associated with an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983), these affinities have been nurtured by the unprecedented expansion of bilateral and multilateral South–South cooperation programmes since 2000. This expansion, by the way, is firmly supported by the most powerful developing countries as well as by Jean-Philippe Thérien
UN agencies (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Daley 2019; UN 2019). Moreover, it is important to note that beyond its identity-based roots, developing countries’ resistance also stems from self-interest. Indeed, by maintaining its ‘developing’ status, a country can benefit from the special rights embedded in the global aid, trade, and climate regimes. Looking ahead, the future of North–South relations will depend largely on the role China plays in the ongoing reconfiguration of the world order. Many governments in the North believe that China’s status as a developing country is simply no longer tenable. From their perspective, it makes no sense to treat the world’s second-largest economy as a poor state in trade or environmental negotiations. However, the Chinese government itself categorically rejects this analysis. In fact, Chinese officials regularly point out that China is the largest developing state; the country has been a historical leader of the Third World and continues to see itself as such (People’s Republic of China 2021). Beyond the myriad commercial, financial, or technological indicators that testify to China’s rise, the fact is that China associates its political status with that of other developing countries, with whom it shares the narrative of having been excluded when the rules of the contemporary liberal international order were established. As long as China’s foreign policy does not change, the notion of a global South is likely to continue to shape world affairs. Finally, alongside the many uncertainties that now surround the politics of ‘development’, it is worth noting that the North–South divide has also received ample expression in the field of international studies. In 2012, for example, the field’s largest academic association – the International Studies Association – created a Global South Caucus. More fundamentally, a growing number of scholars denounce the Western-centric nature of international studies, both in its empirical applications and in its theoretical approaches. Critics argue that the discipline’s mainstream has systematically marginalized the history of African, Asian, and Latin American peoples while falsely assuming that knowledge produced in the North is universal. Taking into account the structuring effects of colonialism and imperialism, a number of analysts have thus emphasized the questions of ‘why and how the South experiences the international differently’ (Smith and Tickner 2020, 11).
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In addition to encouraging a pluralizing of international relations theory, recent developments in international studies show that it is difficult to think globally without due attention to the North–South divide.
Conclusion
The North–South metaphor owes its popularity to the fact that it offers a heuristic shortcut by which to understand an important aspect of the contemporary world order. Admittedly, the North–South framework carries implicit assumptions that are increasingly contested. The term is rejected by many who think that the South is simply too heterogeneous to be referred to in the singular, and by others who believe that ‘the West’ is a much stronger identity marker than ‘the North’. Moreover, as a historically situated social construct, one can predict that the term ‘North–South’ will one day end up in the dustbin of history. But for now, the North–South distinction remains a powerful mobilizing force for many governments, diplomats, intellectuals, and activists, especially in the developing world. Simply put, the global South represents a rallying cry for peoples who feel oppressed and excluded. In this context, the North–South rhetoric is likely to inform global politics for many years to come. Jean-Philippe Thérien
References
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Atwood, J. Brian. 2012. Creating a Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation. Washington, DC: Center for Global Development. Berger, Mark T. 1994. ‘The End of the “Third World”?’ Third World Quarterly 15 (2): 257–75. Brandt, Willy. 1980. North–South: A Programme for Survival. Report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues (under the Chairmanship of Willy Brandt). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cooper, Andrew F., and Ramesh Thakur. 2013. The Group of Twenty (G20). London: Routledge. de Haan, Arjan, and Simon Maxwell. 1998. ‘Poverty and Social Exclusion in North and South’. IDS Bulletin 29 (1): 1–9. Farias, Déborah B.L. 2019. ‘Outlook for the “Developing Country” Category: A Paradox of Demise and Continuity’. Third World Quarterly 40 (4): 668–87.
Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Elena, and Patricia Daley, eds. 2019. Routledge Handbook of South-South Relations. New York: Routledge. G77. 2019. Joint Declaration at the Occasion of the Fifty-fifth Anniversary of the Group of 77. New York: United Nations. Haq, Mahbub ul. 1976. The Poverty Curtain: Choices for the Third World. New York: Columbia University Press. Head, Ivan L. 1991. On a Hinge of History: The Mutual Vulnerability of South and North. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Hobson, John A. (1902) 1938. Imperialism: A Study, 3rd edn. London: Allen and Unwin. Horner, Rory. 2020. ‘Towards a New Paradigm in Global Development? Beyond the Limits of International Development’. Progress in Human Geography 44 (3): 415–36. Huntington, Samuel P. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster. Jones, Charles A. 1983. The North–South Dialogue: A Brief History. New York: St Martin’s Press. Kaul, Inge. 2017. ‘Making the Case for a New Global Development Research Agenda’. Forum for Development Studies 44 (1): 141–8. Krasner, Stephen D. 1985. Structural Conflict: The Third World against Global Liberalism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kwa, Aileen, and Peter Lunenborg. 2019. Why the US Proposals on Development Will Affect All Developing Countries and Undermine WTO. Policy Brief 58. Geneva: South Centre. Lenin, Vladimir I. (1917) 1939. Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline. New York: International Publishers. Mawdsley, Emma. 2019. ‘Southern Leaders, Northern Followers: Who Has “Socialized” Whom in International Development?’ In Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Patricia Daley, eds, The Routledge Handbook of South-South Relations, 191–204. New York: Routledge. Mortimer, Robert A. 1984. The Third World Coalition in International Politics, 2nd edn. Boulder, CO: Westview. Payne, Anthony. 2005. The Global Politics of Unequal Development. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. People’s Republic of China. 2021. China’s International Development Cooperation in the New Era. Beijing: State Council Information Office. Pope Paul VI. 1967. On the Development of Peoples: Populorum Progressio. Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Pope Paul VI. Vatican City: Vatican Polyglot Press. Smith, Karen, and Arlene Tickner. 2020. ‘Introduction’. In Arlene Tickner and Karen Smith, eds, International Relations from the Global South: Worlds of Difference, 1–14. New York: Routledge.
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294 Elgar encyclopedia of development South Commission. 1990. The Challenge to the South: The Report of the South Commission. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thérien, Jean-Philippe. 1999. ‘Beyond the North– South Divide: The Two Tales of World Poverty’. Third World Quarterly 20 (4): 723–42. Thérien, Jean-Philippe, and Vincent Pouliot. 2020. ‘Global Governance as Patchwork: The Making of the Sustainable Development Goals’. Review of International Political Economy 27 (3): 612–36.
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UN (United Nations). 2019. State of South-South Cooperation: Report of the Secretary-General. New York: United Nations. UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development). 1964. ‘Toward a New Trade Policy for Development’. Report by the Secretary-General of the Conference, in Proceedings of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, vol. 2. New York: United Nations. World Bank. 2016. World Development Indicators. Washington, DC: World Bank.
Global value chains and economic development A key development in the modern era of globalization has been the emergence of Global Value Chains (GVCs). Traditionally, international trade consisted of a product produced in one country, consumed in another. Trade enabled countries to export the items that they had in abundance and to import ones that they lacked. GVCs opened up new trading opportunities by breaking up the production process into a series of discrete steps and intermediate products. GVC trade crosses at least two borders during the production process, and often many more. GVC trade now accounts for about two-thirds of world trade. Widely traded products such as autos and electronics often have hundreds if not thousands of components, which can now be produced in different countries (Baldwin 2016). The emergence of GVCs has had a major effect on development opportunities by making it easier for developing countries to participate in manufacturing GVCs. Under traditional trade, developing countries tended to export primary products that they had in abundance – oil, minerals, and agricultural products. It was difficult to break into manufactures because this involved producing a complete good, with design, technology, different types of inputs, and branding and marketing. With GVCs, on the other hand, it is possible for a developing country to specialize in certain activities along the production chain, without having to produce a complete product. The decade of the 2000s, in particular, was a time in which GVCs expanded; the number of discrete steps in almost all production chains increased; and developing countries became a key locus of manufacturing production. In 1985, developing country manufactures exports were less than 1 per cent of world GDP; by 2008 that share had increased more than five-fold (World Bank 2021). This period was one of particularly rapid GDP and employment growth for developing countries, with a concomitant fall in absolute poverty. The exact shape of production chains varies by product, but many goods from garments to electronics evidence a characteristic ‘smile curve’ in their GVCs. Early in
the production process there are high-value inputs of R&D, design, financing, and management; these activities tend to be concentrated in advanced economies. There are also some hi-tech components that tend to come from the advanced economies or intermediate economies such as Taiwan and South Korea. More standardized components and final assembly then takes place in low-wage developing countries. Closer to the consumer is transportation, marketing, and after-care – high-value activities that tend to take place in Europe or the USA, where much of the output is sold (Dollar et al. 2017). Together with the expansion of GVCs has come the ‘servicification’ of production. Traditionally, most internationally traded products were manufactured goods; direct trade of services only accounted for about 20 per cent of trade. But when we examine the value added in contemporary trade, about one-half comes from service sectors. Management of GVCs requires more services input in the form of telecom, shipping, travel, and finance/insurance. Also, the software content of many manufactured products has been on the rise (e.g. autos, electronics, even appliances). While the break-up of the production process has opened up manufacturing activities to developing countries, it has also led advanced economies to concentrate more on services. In almost all advanced economies the manufacturing share of the labour force has been in decline, and this has been a factor in rising inequality and a hollowing out of the middle class. With rising anti-globalization sentiment in advanced economies, the expansion of GVCs slowed significantly in the 2010s.
Developing country concerns
While developing countries have largely benefited from the expansion of GVCs, and the modern era of globalization has seen unprecedented poverty reduction, aspects of GVCs raise concerns. First, while globalization creates opportunities, there is a lot of homework that needs to be done to capitalize on these opportunities. To participate in GVCs, developing countries need to open up their economies to foreign investment and trade. But beyond that, they need a host of complementary policies: macroeconomic stability; good infrastructure in power, telecom, transport, and logistics; and an educated labour
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force and good human capital. Many poor countries are simply not deeply involved in GVCs because they lack some or all of these fundamentals. Compounding this problem is the fact that there are efficiencies in having manufacturing plants cluster together. When China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 it had the ingredients in place to attract GVCs, including the fundamentals noted above (macro stability, infrastructure, and human capital). Foreign investment came pouring in, especially into a few coastal provinces (Guangdong around Hong Kong and the Yangzi Delta around Shanghai). These locations benefited from the economies of scale in infrastructure construction as well as the economies of scope inherent in having large clusters of firms close together. Given China’s position as the ‘factory of the world’, now producing about 30 per cent of global manufacturing value added, it has been difficult for other developing countries to get a start in GVC production. Still, rising wages in China have created opportunities for other countries in the most labour-intensive activities. In the 2010s, while GVCs overall were expanding slowly, GVC exports from countries such as Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Cambodia increased significantly. Their success shows that the export-oriented development path, via GVCs, is still relevant. Another concern of developing countries is that they may get locked into the low value-added activities at the bottom of the smile curve. However, some of the earliest economies to pursue GVC-led development, such as Taiwan and South Korea, have moved very successfully up the value chain. A large number of key patents in semi-conductors and electronics are held by firms from these countries. China now is following in their footsteps with its own brands, R&D, and patents. This transition from low-value assembler to high-value innovator is not simple. It requires a large investment in tertiary education to provide the necessary hi-tech labour force. It also requires a strong institutional underpinning of intellectual property rights protection and financial sector development.
Shocks and resilience of GVCs
The past few years have witnessed unprecedented shocks to global trade, including GVCs. First came the geopolitical shock of David Dollar
the US–China trade war, followed shortly thereafter by the COVID-19 pandemic. There have also been increasing environmental disasters of typhoons, floods, heat spells, and deep freezes, many related to climate change. In general, GVCs have held up well in the face of these shocks; still, the vast majority of firms involved are looking for ways to increase resilience in the expectation that similar shocks lie ahead. The US–China trade war has disrupted GVCs via tariffs and sanctions. The Trump administration was unhappy with Chinese trade practices such as technology theft, protection of key markets, and subsidies to state enterprises. In response, it levied a 25 per cent import tariff on about one-half of what the US imports from China. Many of these products were intermediate parts used by American firms, so this was quite disruptive for many value chains. Still, after a brief downturn, US imports from China continued to rise, despite the tariffs. Imports tended to shift into the areas not taxed, such as computers, smart phones, and medical equipment. The pandemic increased American demand for many of these goods. Some of the value chains affected shifted in predictable ways. Pre-trade-war, the US imported most Christmas lights from China. This was one of the products hit with the 25 per cent tariff. Final assembly of these lights shifted to Cambodia to avoid the tax. China supplied a lot of input to these value chains, a kind of indirect export to the US via Cambodia. Given the ongoing tariff, and the unlikelihood that the Biden administration will shift policy significantly, many global firms are diversifying production with investments in countries such as Vietnam or Bangladesh. China is still the number one destination for foreign investment going to the developing world because (1) China’s exports to the US are still growing despite the trade war; (2) China has other important markets in Europe and Asia; and (3) increasingly international firms produce in China to sell to the China market. A 2021 survey of US firms in China found that 87 per cent had not moved any part of their supply chain out of China in the previous year, primarily for this last reason: they are in China to sell domestically so reshoring to the US would make no sense (US–CBC 2021). Of those that have adjusted supply chains, just 2 per cent moved one or more segments to the United
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States, while 12 per cent moved elsewhere. Many of the foreign firms that export from China are developing a ‘China + 1’ strategy; that is, keeping much of their value chain in China but adding one other location such as Vietnam or Bangladesh to enable them to deal with the geopolitical risk and also provide more resilience in the face of other types of shocks. The main lesson from environmental shocks is that they occur all over the world and that it is hence risky to rely on one location for any key input. Some of the environmental shocks that have disrupted value chains include the tsunami and nuclear disaster at Fukushima; flooding in Thailand, China, and Germany in recent years; wildfires in the American West; and the deep freeze in Texas. If a firm is dependent on an input from a single location, then it is at risk. So, firms are building more redundancy into their
production chains. The growing awareness of these different shocks and risks has slowed the expansion of GVCs, but so far there is no evidence of any significant reversal. David Dollar
References
Baldwin, R. 2016. The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Dollar, D. et al. 2017. Global Value Chain Development Report: Measuring and Analyzing the Impact of GVCs on Economic Development. Washington, DC: World Bank. US–CBC [China Business Council]. 2021. Member Survey. Washington, DC: US–CBC. World Bank. 2021. World Development Indicators. https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world -development-indicators.
David Dollar
Globalization and development Globalization and development are both multidimensional concepts and processes. Globalization relates to the increased interactions of many kinds among the countries of the world, including economic, cultural, technological, and political elements. Development relates to growth, structural change, and hoped-for improvements in human well-being. Therefore, the subject of globalization and development is the complex product of two multidimensional realms. Consequently, any simple statements about the relationship between globalization and development are bound to be incomplete. We tend to consider globalization as a relatively new phenomenon, but in fact, it is quite ancient. For example, Findlay and O’Rourke (2007, table 2.1) provide a summary of established, global trade patterns for the year 1,000 ce. They also describe how, during the Pax Mongolica of 1250–1350 ce, the Old World economy involved trade in goods and migration from Iceland and the British Isles to China, Japan, and Indonesia. Globalization has been part of the human experience for millennia. Nonetheless, there is a recognition that more recent time periods displayed both quantitative and qualitative increases in global integration. For example, as analysed by O’Rourke and Williamson (1999) and others, the period from 1870 to 1914 was an initial apex of modern globalization, particularly from the point of view of migration and (British) capital flows. Global integration in this era was facilitated by advances in rail and ship transportation, in telegraph communication, and by expanded European colonial systems. A second modern stage of globalization began at the end of the Second World War and involved the development of a set of multilateral institutions (the ‘Bretton Woods system’) that supported trade liberalization and the advance of US-based multinational enterprises (MNEs). Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) received mixed benefits from this multilateral system in that export products of interest to them (agriculture, textiles, and clothing) remained highly protected in high-income countries.
Further, some LMICs pursued import substitution industrialization with their own trade barriers. These developments, along with the Cold War, suppressed the integration of many LMICs into the world economy. A third modern stage of globalization began in the late 1970s. This stage followed the demise of Bretton Woods monetary relationships and involved the emergence of the newly industrialized countries of East Asia. Rapid technological progress, particularly in transportation (including container shipping) and information and communication technologies, began to dramatically lower the costs of moving goods, services, and capital internationally. Flexible manufacturing systems and newly evolving global value chains (GVCs) began to affect patterns of trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). The end of the Cold War, the entry of China into the world economy, and a general reduction of trade barriers in many LMICs accelerated global integration during this phase. Economic globalization processes were punctuated by the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. In both cases, there were significant downturns of economic activity and retreats of global economic integration. Further, economic nationalism as an ideology was revived in new forms (Hesse, 2020).
Dimensions of globalization
As previously stated, globalization processes are multidimensional. Within international trade, for example, there is trade in goods, trade in services, and the protection of ‘trade-related intellectual property’. As described in Reinert (2017), trade in goods involves the exchange of tangible and storable items among the countries of the world in both inter-industry and intra-industry variants, the latter in horizontal and vertical forms. In some instances, patterns of trade in goods reflect path-dependent, colonial histories (primary commodities), and in these cases, the role of trade in goods in development processes has been often called into question (e.g. Carmignani and Avom, 2010). As described by Chanda (2017), trade in services is becoming increasingly important over time and accounts for an increasing share of foreign direct investment (FDI). She emphasizes the ‘servicification’ of manufacturing and the ongoing fragmentation of pro-
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duction processes that separates out service functions. The globalization of services trade involves challenges for governments and international institutions regarding regulatory reforms, international negotiating strategies, and the balancing of commercial interests with public policy objectives. As described by Forsyth (2017), intellectual property is one of the most controversial aspects of globalization and development, particularly as it relates to the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) and the ‘TRIPS-Plus’ provisions of many preferential trade agreements. Key issues in intellectual property and development field include access to medicines (Abbott and Reichman, 2007), food security (Oguamanam, 2006), bio-piracy and cultural misappropriation (Hamilton, 2006), and the open-source/ open-access movement (Chiarolla, 2014). This is an area of legal investigation with important impact on how knowledge is developed and utilized in the global economy. Within international production there are processes of FDI, international contractual relationships, and evolving GVCs. Regarding FDI, Anyanwu (2017) states that it ‘is crucial to the attainment of sustained growth and development, especially in the developing nations of the world’ (p. 131). Since hosting FDI invariably involves both costs and benefits, the issue of FDI incentives and policies is ever present, and empirical research (e.g. Bénassy-Quéré, Coupet and Mayer, 2007) has shown that institutional quality has a positive effect on FDI inflows. As described by Gupta (2017), the conceptual history of GVCs began with the notion of commodity chains (e.g. Gereffi, 1996) and evolved to the subsequent notions of GVCs (e.g. Gereffi, Humphrey and Sturgeon, 2005) and global production networks (GPNs) (e.g. Henderson et al., 2002). Two of many relevant issues are the distribution of value added along GVCs (e.g. Banga, 2014) and the role of services within them (e.g. Lanz and Maurer, 2015). As described by Taglioni and Winkler (2016), the ongoing development of GVCs is a critical aspect of the global economy, and the roles of LMICS within GVCs have important implications for ways that international production impacts development.
As emphasized by Goldin and Reinert (2012, chapter 4), to gain an understanding of the role of capital flows in globalization and development requires disaggregating them into FDI, equity portfolio investment, portfolio bond finance, and commercial bank lending. Each of these involves different types of assets traded in different markets, with each behaving differently from the other. To summarize: ● Because it is for productive purposes, FDI is the least volatile of all capital flows (e.g. Pagliari and Hannon, 2017) and, as previously stated, plays an important role in GVCs. ● Because it is motivated by portfolio considerations, equity investment tends to have shorter time horizons than FDI. Further, as emphasized by Kodongo and Ojah (2017), potential volatility requires a cautious approach to equity market liberalization. ● Portfolio bond investment is also motivated by portfolio considerations and can therefore be somewhat volatile, particularly when securitization concentrates certain types of risks as in the GFC (e.g. Acharya and Schnabl, 2010). ● Commercial bank lending generally does not involve a tradeable asset. It tends to be quite volatile (e.g. Pagliari and Hannon, 2017), and large inflows of commercial bank lending can often be a leading indicator of financial crises. There are many empirical issues to be investigated when it comes to global capital flows, including net versus gross flows (e.g. Guichard, 2017) and flow determinants (e.g. Byrne and Fiess, 2016). Research in this important aspect of globalization is, in a sense, just beginning. International migration is an ancient form of globalization that has been suppressed in the modern era with the rise of the nation state. Nonetheless, approximately 3.5 per cent of the world’s population are international migrants. Types of migration include low-skilled migration (e.g. Pritchett, 2006), high-skilled migration (e.g. Kone and Özden, 2017), political and climate refugees, and trafficked persons. Migration can be legal or irregular (illegal). Migration patterns can affect the shape of global production systems at both the high- and low-skilled ends of the Kenneth A. Reinert
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spectrum and has many impacts on human well-being, both good and ill (e.g. Goldin and Reinert, 2012, chapter 6).
Dimensions of development
Development is also a multidimensional concept related to growth, structural transformations of many kinds, increased engagements with the global economy, and hoped-for improvement in human well-being. The human development aspects of development involve improvements in health and education, declines in fertility rates, increased gender equity, and increases in agency (e.g. World Bank, 2011). While growth and structural transformations are undeniably central to development processes, it is difficult to provide a single pattern of ‘development’ that applies always and everywhere. Rather, development proceeds in ways somewhat idiosyncratic to both time and place. The many other entries in this Encyclopedia consider various ways of conceptualizing development. These include growth, the capabilities and human development approach, and the basic needs approach. Assessing the impacts of globalization on development depends on how we conceive of development. For example, hosting FDI in resource sectors might boost growth but do little for human development and basic needs satisfaction. This adds a degree of healthy ambiguity to how we conceive of the interplay between globalization and development. Because the processes involved are complex, intellectual honesty and the avoidance of exaggerated claims are important. Claims to have found development ‘factor X’ (Adelman, 2001) in a particular globalization process such as exports or hosting FDI are not realistic.
Globalization for development?
From some viewpoints (e.g. Wolf, 2004), globalization ‘works’ for development. Other such as Goldin and Reinert (2012) advocate a more agnostic position in which the effects of globalization on development processes depends both on the aspect of globalization being considered and on the policy regime in which the globalization process takes place. In the latter case, policy reform is a critical part of the globalization and development agenda, particularly reforms that support the development of human capital in the form Kenneth A. Reinert
of health and education, both of which have been shown to positively affect growth processes (Barro, 2013; Cohen and Soto, 2007). In the area of trade, Goldin and Reinert (2012) state that ‘trade can contribute to poverty alleviation by expanding markets, creating jobs, promoting competition, raising productivity, and providing new ideas and technologies’ (p. 45). Dasgupta et al. (2007) provide evidence for the market and employment expansion effects of trade, and Goldar and Aggarwal (2005) provide evidence of the pro-competitive effects of trade. Wacziarg and Welch (2008) provide evidence of trade supporting growth, albeit with ‘considerable heterogeneity’. That said, the expansion of trade policy agreements into the realm of intellectual property has been flagged as potentially detrimental to development processes, and Goldin and Reinert (2012) call for a moratorium on such agendas. In the area of international production, Anyanwu’s (2017) review suggests that ‘FDI can play an important role in the development efforts of developing nations’ (p. 132). Goldin and Reinert (2012) largely agree, stating that ‘foreign direct investment can have positive effects on poverty alleviation by creating employment, improving technology and human capital, and promoting competition’ (p. 94). There is also a very large literature on the positive spillover effects of FDI (summarized in Reinert, 2021, table 12.2). Goldin and Reinert (2012) emphasize that none of these positive impacts are automatic, and they caution that FDI ‘may adversely affect certain dimensions of poverty through unsafe working conditions, environmental destruction, and increased corruption’ (p. 94). Consequently, the development impacts of FDI are best evaluated on a case-by-case basis. In the case of GVCs, the review of Taglioni and Winker (2016) suggests that ‘the new characteristic of GVCs from a development perspective is that factories in LMICs have become fully-fledged participants in international production networks, and this fact can present important development prospects’ (p. 1). These authors suggest that the very specific nature of GVCs calls for what they term a ‘task-based development strategy’ (p. 147) also promoted by Baldwin (2016). In the area of non-FDI capital flows, the evidence is much more mixed, even negative in some instances. In a review of the large
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research literature on the subject, Guichard (2017) states the following: There is now a wide consensus that these flows can bring both good and bad. On the one hand, they support long-term growth through better international allocation of saving and investment; when taking the form of foreign direct investments, they can also induce technology and management improvements; and, when taking the form of portfolio investments, they can enhance transparency and corporate governance by exposing recipients to international investors. On the other hand, they complicate macroeconomic management of recipient countries, increase financial vulnerabilities, and can lead to financial crises and sudden stops with negative implications for growth. (pp. 1–2)
For this reason, a great deal of attention has recently been given to market-friendly capital controls (e.g. Magud, Reinhart and Rogoff, 2018), and these deserve continued attention. Regarding the process of migration, there is an increasing recognition that, despite the political obstacles, migration can support development in both origin and destination countries (e.g. World Bank, 2018) and that remittance flows can help in origin countries (e.g. Sirkeci, Cohen and Ratha, 2012). An important exception to this is medical brain drain from LMICs (e.g. Bhargava and Docquier, 2008). The field of migration and development will be one of continued and important development.
Summary
The research and policy area of globalization and development involves some of the most important issues facing humankind. It is a large area of empirical research and policy discussion that deserves continued attention from both international economists and development policy practitioners. It is a field of inquiry that will be relevant for the foreseeable future but one that requires fine-grain investigation rather than broad-brush claims. Kenneth A. Reinert
References
Abbott, F.M. and J.H. Reichman (2007), ‘The Doha Round’s public health legacy: Strategies for the production and diffusion of patented medicines under the amended TRIPS provi-
sions’, Journal of International Economic Law, 10 (4), 921–87. Acharya, V.V. and P. Schnabl (2010), ‘Do global banks spread global imbalances? Asset-backed commercial paper during the financial crisis of 2007–2009’, IMF Economic Review, 58 (1), 37–73. Adelman, I. (2001), ‘Fallacies in development theory and their implications for policy’, in G.M. Meier and J.E. Stiglitz (eds), Frontiers of Development Economics: The Future in Perspective, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 103–34. Anyanwu, J.C. (2017), ‘Foreign direct investment’, in K.A. Reinert (ed.), Handbook of Globalisation and Development, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 131–52. Baldwin, R. (2016), The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Banga, R. (2014), ‘Linking into global value chains is not sufficient: Do you export value added contents?’ Journal of Economic Integration, 29 (2), 267–97. Barro, R.J. (2013), ‘Health and economic growth’, Annals of Economics and Finance, 14 (2), 329–66. Bénassy-Quéré, A., M. Coupet and T. Mayer (2007), ‘Institutional determinants of foreign direct investment’, World Economy, 30 (5), 764–82. Bhargava, A. and F. Docquier (2008), ‘HIV pandemic, medical brain drain, and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa’, World Bank Economic Review, 22 (2), 345–66. Byrne, J.P. and N. Fiess (2016), ‘International capital flows to emerging markets: National and global determinants’, Journal of International Money and Finance, 61, 82–100. Carmignani, F. and D. Avom (2010), ‘The social development effects of primary commodity export dependence’, Ecological Economics, 70 (2), 317–30. Chanda, R. (2017), ‘Trade in services’, in K.A. Reinert (ed.), Handbook of Globalisation and Development, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 36–58. Chiarolla, C. (2014), ‘Intellectual property rights and benefit sharing from marine genetic resources in areas beyond national jurisdiction: Current discussions and regulatory options’, Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property, 4 (3), 171–94. Cohen, D. and M. Soto (2007), ‘Growth and human capital: Good data, good results’, Journal of Economic Growth, 12 (1), 51–76. Dasgupta, D., M.K. Nabli, C. Pissarides and A. Varoudakis (2007), ‘Making trade work for jobs: International evidence and lessons for MENA’, in M.K. Nabli (ed.), Breaking the
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302 Elgar encyclopedia of development Barriers to Higher Economic Growth: Better Governance and Deeper Reforms in the Middle East and North Africa, Washington, DC: World Bank, pp. 329–54. Findlay, R. and K.H. O’Rourke (2007), Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Forsyth, M. (2017), ‘Intellectual property’, in K.A. Reinert (ed.), Handbook of Globalisation and Development, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 83–99. Gereffi, G. (1996), ‘Global commodity chains: New forms of coordination and control among nations and firms in international industries’, Competition and Change, 1, 427–39. Gereffi, G., J. Humphrey and T. Sturgeon (2005), ‘The governance of global value chains’, Review of International Political Economy, 12(1), 78–104. Goldar, B. and S.C. Aggarwal (2005), ‘Trade liberalization and price-cost margin in Indian industries’, The Developing Economies, 43 (3), 346–73. Goldin, I. and K.A. Reinert (2012), Globalization for Development: Meeting New Challenges, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Guichard, S. (2017), ‘10 years after the Global Financial Crisis: What have we learnt about international capital flows?’ Journal of International Commerce, Economics and Policy, 8 (3), 1750017. Gupta, P. (2017), ‘Global production networks’, in K.A. Reinert (ed.), Handbook of Globalisation and Development, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 153–68. Hamilton, C. (2006), ‘Biodiversity, biopiracy and benefits: What allegations of biopiracy tell us about intellectual property’, Developing World Bioethics, 6 (3), 158–73. Henderson, J., P. Dicken, M. Hess, N. Coe and H.W.-C. Yeung (2002), ‘Global production networks and the analysis of economic development’, Review of International Political Economy, 9 (3), 436–64. Hesse, J.-O. (2020), ‘Financial crisis and the recurrence of economic nationalism’, Journal of Modern European History, 19 (1), 14–18. Kodongo, O. and K. Ojah (2017), ‘Equity markets’, in K.A. Reinert (ed.), Handbook of Globalisation and Development, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 201–17. Kone, Z.L. and Ç. Özden (2017), ‘Brain drain, gain and circulation’, in K.A. Reinert (ed.), Handbook of Globalisation and Development, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 349–69.
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Lanz, R. and A. Maurer (2015), ‘Services and global value chains: Servicification of manufacturing and services networks’, Journal of International Commerce, Economics and Policy, 6 (3), 1550014. Magud, N.E., C.M. Reinhart and K.S. Rogoff (2018), ‘Capital controls: Myth and reality’, Annals of Economics and Finance, 19 (1), 1–47. Oguamanam, C. (2006), ‘Intellectual property rights in plant genetic resources: Farmers’ rights and food security in indigenous and local communities’, Drake Journal of Agricultural Law, 11 (3), 274–305. O’Rourke, K.H. and J.G. Williamson (1999), Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Economy, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pagliari, M.A. and S.A. Hannon (2017), ‘The volatility of capital flows in emerging markets: Measures and determinants’, IMF Working Paper WP/17/41. Pritchett, L. (2006), Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock On Global Labor Mobility, Washington, DC: Center for Global Development. Reinert, K.A. (2017), ‘Trade in goods’, in K.A. Reinert (ed.), Handbook of Globalisation and Development, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 19–35. Reinert, K.A. (2021), An Introduction to International Economics: New Perspective on the World Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sirkeci, I., J.H. Cohen and D. Ratha (2012), ‘Introduction: Remittance flows and practices during the crisis’, in I. Sirkeci, J.H. Cohen and D. Ratha (eds), Remittances During the Global Financial Crisis and Beyond, Washington, DC: World Bank, pp. 1–12. Taglioni, D. and D. Winkler (2016), Making Global Value Chains Work for Development, Washington, DC: World Bank. Wacziarg, R. and K.H. Welch (2008) ‘Trade liberalization and growth: New evidence’, World Bank Economic Review, 22 (2), 187–231. Wolf, M. (2004), Why Globalization Works, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. World Bank (2011), World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development, Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank (2018), Moving for Prosperity: Global Migration and Labor Markets, Washington, DC: World Bank.
Good governance Introduction
‘Good governance’ is considered good for development. There is a clear correlation between level of gross domestic product (GDP), that is, income or level of development and improved governance. However, correlation does not imply causation. There is no clear systematic evidence that ‘good governance’ is either necessary or sufficient for development – whether in its narrow sense (i.e. economic growth) or in its broader sense of sustainable and inclusive social and human progress. The overwhelming evidence is that higher level of income or development leads to improved governance, not the converse. This is because governance reform requires capacity and capability; the higher the income level, the greater the capacity and capability. With higher level of development and income, there is also greater demand for good governance. Governance does matter, but not in the way that most ‘good governance’ advocates imply or claim. There are many reasons to press for governance that is capable, honest, effective, legitimate, and responsive to the public will.
Historical context
‘Good governance’ paradigm as a pre-requisite for development emerged in the late 1990s as a response to failure of neoliberal policy reforms involving privatization, liberalization, stabilization, and deregulation – dubbed ‘Washington Consensus’. The reform package, collectively called ‘structural adjustment’, was a condition for financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank during the developing country debt crises of the 1980s. However, the reforms failed to restore economic growth as promised (World Bank, 2005), resulting in ‘lost decades’ of development (Easterly, 2001) for Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa! Hence, a seemingly credible alternative explanation for this failure had to be found to preserve the Washington Consensus. Good governance reforms became the great new hope. It was claimed that there was nothing wrong with neoliberal policies; they failed by and large due to ‘poor’ or ‘bad’ governance;
a convenient way to explain away the failure of the neoliberal economic orthodoxy. Thus, advising governments on how to ‘govern less, but better’, became the new vocation for international development institutions. Good governance came to be touted as the great miracle cure for development failure and corruption, usually simplistically attributed to big government. After all, who favours corruption, red-tape, or ineptitude?
Critique
Unrealistic expectations have been created by presuming that good governance reforms are necessary for development (Grindle, 2017). When countries are presented with well over a hundred good governance indicators, reforms become so wide-ranging, impossible to achieve, beyond the means of most developing countries and, worst of all, a major distraction from needed development efforts. Therefore, the results were often dispiriting; expected outcomes from large and expensive governance programmes failed to materialize, and the economically best performing countries often scored low on governance indicators (Khan, 2010). The historical record offers many countries which have developed despite ‘bad’ governance, or lack of ‘good’ governance, especially in East Asia (Goldsmith, 2007; Rodrik, 2008), in Asia (e.g. Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam), and Africa (e.g. Ethiopia, Tanzania) which are also growing rapidly despite (or perhaps precisely because of) what underlies their poor governance indicators. Poor governance in general may be the binding constraint in some countries, but obviously not in the countries growing rapidly despite poor governance. Thus, broad good governance reform is neither necessary nor sufficient for growth. In many cases, governance reforms have had unexpected, if not perverse outcomes, for example, when decentralization and devolution have enabled the rise of powerful local political patrons – which some call ‘cacique democracy’ (Anderson, 2010). Ostensibly neutral, good governance solutions, such as formalization of property rights and rule of law, have been implemented in ways favouring powerful vested interests, with grossly unequal consequences. Implicitly, many ‘good governance’ proponents presume a binary world. That is, all
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countries have the same set of institutional characteristics, but poor countries score badly on governance scores due to ‘pathologies’, such as corruption, lack of democracy, state failures, market failures, and so on. These prevent them from ‘catching up’ with wealthy countries. But developing countries are not simply countries that would be ‘wealthy if they were not ill’. Rather, they are structurally and systemically different in many ways. It is therefore not useful to view development problems as ‘pathologies’. Not surprisingly, the imposition of formal rules from wealthy countries in low-income countries has not worked.
Conceptual, methodological, measurement issues
It is not obvious or clear what good or effective governance means. The World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGIs) project defined indicators corresponding to what they considered ‘fundamental governance concepts’ (Kaufmann et al., 1999, p. 1). However, the chosen key indicators and their definitions have changed over time since they were first identified and introduced. The World Bank’s 1997 World Development Report advised 45 aspects of good governance. By 2002, the list had grown to 116 items, and more since then. Changed definitions should lead to discontinuing the previous series of governance indicators. Instead, many of the new indicators used confusingly bear the same labels or names, with no qualifications offered to justify the changes in definitions, implying continuity (Thomas, 2010). The WGIs’ methodology assumes that its perception variables are noisy signals of actual governance. Typically, when direct measurement of observable variables is impractical, social scientists use proxies, validated first by showing that it correctly represents the theoretical definition of the construct, and then by ascertaining whether the proposed measure has the same relations with observable variables that the theory predicts. The WGIs fail on all counts, and hence, they do not measure what they claim to measure (Thomas, 2010). World Bank Researchers (e.g. Langbein and Knack, 2008) also raised similar doubts about the WGIs: ‘there is little if any eviAnis Chowdhury
dence on the concept validity of the six WGI indexes’ (p. 3). The six indicators say pretty much the same thing in various ways, with different words. Hence, they are redundant, and possibly tautological when statistically misused or misinterpreted. Rothstein and Teorell (2008) identify at least three problems with existing definitions of good governance or quality of governance. First, most are extremely broad, often too ambiguous to be used meaningfully. Second, many existing definitions tend to be functionalist (e.g. ‘good governance’ is ‘good-for-development’). The Economist (4 June 2005) noted that defining ‘good governance’ as ‘good-for-development’ generates tautological explanations and meaningless policy implications: ‘What is required for growth? Good governance. And what counts as good governance? Whatever promotes growth.’ Third, many existing good governance definitions focus exclusively on corruption, presuming that government policy discretion and interventions lead to corruption and abuse. However, there is no empirical support beyond convenient anecdotes for this presumption. The creators of the WGIs identify the foundations of their good governance work as ‘[t]he norms of limited government that protect private property from predation by the state’ (Kaufmann et al., 2007, p. 2). Thus, they assert that government should be limited to responsibility for producing key ‘inputs’ to growth and development – such as education, healthcare and transport infrastructure. Kurtz and Schrank (2007) point out that the WGIs’ reliance on perception surveys assumes that the interests of investors and those of countries are the same, similar or at least not contradictory. These surveys typically contain substantial biases (e.g. that investor-friendly liberalization, deregulation or privatization will improve governance, even though these policies generally reduce and weaken the effectiveness of governments). The WGIs are ahistorical and do not take into account country-specific challenges and conditions which are very different, not only among developing countries, but also in contrast with developed countries (Andrews, 2008). Essentially, the WGIs combine various different measures drawn from many distinct underlying theories, normative perspectives and viewpoints.
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Reviewing conceptual issues in the complex relations between institutions and economic development, Chang (2006) concludes that definitional issues, the failure to distinguish between institutional forms and functions, excessive focus on property rights, and the lack of a plausible, let alone sophisticated theory of institutional change are major problems of this influential literature. ‘Indeed, by encompassing so many good things, the [good governance] concept encouraged muddy thinking about the role of governance in the development process’ (Grindle, 2017, p. 17).
Empirical evidence
There are no theories of economic development which support the claims of ‘good governance’ advocates (Meisel & Ould-Aoudia, 2007). The evidence conclusively shows that countries have only improved governance through development, and that what is termed good governance is not a necessary precondition for development (Khan, 2010; Kurtz & Schrank, 2007). Huynh and Jacho-Chávez (2009) find that regulatory control, reduced corruption, and government effectiveness were insignificant for growth, while the empirical relationship between voice, accountability as well as political stability, and growth are highly nonlinear. Specific, targeted reforms to improve governance, rather than wholesale reform, may be more effective in accelerating economic growth. Kurtz and Schrank (2007) note that several developing countries that have performed well in terms of growth, equity, and structural transformation fell short on the most widely used World Bank good governance benchmarks. Their development experiences suggest that state capacity and ‘market governance’ better explain their unusually high growth rates and their higher levels of education, social equality, and investment rates despite their modest, compromised, or even corrupt governance records. The apparently high correlation between low human development and inequality has been invoked to claim that poor governance results in low human development and high inequality. However, low human development or high inequality cannot be attributed to poor governance. Instead, poor human development, high inequality, and bad gov-
ernance all typically reflect the same underlying malaise (i.e. poor development resulting in a high correlation among them). Cross-country statistical analyses typically suffered from selection bias in the choice of countries; and complex inter-linkages among different variables were ignored, exaggerating the expected acceleration of economic growth due to better governance (Aron, 2000). For example, African countries – where institutions are more likely to be considered weak and growth performance poor, especially in the 1980s and the 1990s – are over-represented. Many African countries are actually well governed once governance indicators are adjusted for income level (Sachs et al., 2004). While poor African countries undoubtedly suffer adverse effects of poor governance, well-governed African countries also remained stuck in poverty. ‘More policy or governance reform, by itself, will not be sufficient to overcome this trap’ (Sachs et al., 2004, p. 122). Aron (2000) found that methodological and measurement flaws over-estimated the impacts of governance and institutions on growth. For example, in most cross-country regressions some institutional or governance quality measures are used with other variables, such as investment, assumed to directly affect growth. Such regressions can overestimate the impact of institutions on growth, if institutional or governance quality also affects the ‘efficiency’ of investment. Many institutional indices used are ordinal indices, which rank countries, with numbers ascribed for ranking, without specifying the degree or extent of differences among countries. To be used meaningfully in a growth regression, such an index needs to be transformed into a cardinal index, where the degree, not just the order of difference matters. Based on descriptive and econometric study of 45 developing countries, Mira and Hammadache (2017) conclude that there is little support for ‘the high significance in the relationship between “good governance” and economic growth’ (pp. 119–20). Statistical analysis using good governance measures actually suggest that growth and development improve governance, rather than vice versa. Contrary to claims about how much ‘institutions matter’, greater transparency, Anis Chowdhury
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accountability, and participation are often a consequence, rather than a direct cause of accelerated development (Goldsmith, 2007). Governance may not be significant in the way good governance proponents claim. Undoubtedly, the dire conditions typically associated with state failure probably prevent much economic or social progress, and can cause stagnant if not declining productivity, output, and living standards.
Implications for reforms agenda
All developing countries do poorly on good governance indicators, but some have performed much better than others in terms of economic development. This underscores the need to identify key governance capabilities that help developing countries to accelerate economic development, and thus improve governance on a sustainable basis. The good governance agenda is particularly demanding for developing country governments. Not all good governance reforms are similarly feasible or beneficial, let alone necessary or desirable in all circumstances. There is typically little guidance on feasibility and what can be achieved in the short term and what can only be achieved over the longer term, which should, in turn, guide judgements and planning reflecting appropriate sequencing and prioritization (Grindle, 2004). The undeniable long-run association between good governance and high incomes provides very little guidance for appropriate strategies to induce high growth (Rodrik, 2008). Poor countries suffer from many constraints, and effective growth-accelerating interventions should address the most binding ones rather than large-scale institutional transformation envisaged by the good governance agenda. For Fukuyama (2008), growth accelerations require ‘just enough’ development governance capacity, and comprehensive institutional reform is not a pre-requisite for development. Grindle (2004, 2017) argues for ‘good enough’ governance. Growth accelerations can and have occurred under a wide variety of institutional and policy regimes (Hausmann et al., 2004). ‘Good or just enough governance’ implies a more realistic, pragmatic, nuanced, better prioritized, and sequenced understanding of the evolution of governance capabilities. Anis Chowdhury
Hence, ‘good enough governance’ may be more realistic for countries seeking to accelerate development. Such an approach necessarily recognizes priorities, pre-conditions, and trade-offs in a context where everything desirable cannot be pursued at once. This implies political economy approach acting on knowledge of what is most important and achievable, rather than trying to fill all supposed governance shortfalls or gaps at the same time (Grindle, 2004, 2017). Similarly, Meisel and Ould-Aoudia (2007) recommend ‘governance for development’, a broader concept of governance, including various institutional arrangements that inspire confidence which, they suggest, vary with the country’s income and other factors. Reform priorities should be determined by accountable country governments, not donor requirements, while reforms should always take account of context and realities. History provides a useful longer-term perspective on good or poor government, and on ways to improve it (Khan, 2010). It also provides useful insights into processes of change, including inter-connections among the economic, social, political, and institutional dimensions of development, as well as for improving government. However, such historical insights do not lead to easy solutions or ready formulas for better government or economic development, but nevertheless suggest small, but important ways to enhance the cumulative development effects of policy reform efforts. ‘The search for alternative governance models to meet citizens’ needs will remain an integral part of development’ (Bettcher, 2017).1 Anis Chowdhury
Note 1.
This entry draws on Jomo and Chowdhury (2012).
References
Anderson, B. (2010). Cacique Democracy in the Philippines: Origins and Dreams, Routledge. Andrews, M. (2008). The Good Governance Agenda: Beyond Indicators without Theory. Oxford Development Studies, 36(4), 379–407. Aron, J. (2000). Growth and Institutions: A Review of the Evidence. The World Bank Research Observer, 15(1), 99–135. Bettcher, K. (2017). How Good Governance Got a Bad Name – and Why Governance Still Matters, https://www.cipe.org/resources/good
Good governance 307 -governance-got-bad-name-governance-still -matters/. Chang, H. (2006). Understanding the Relationship between Institutions and Economic Development – Some Key Theoretical Issues. UNU-WIDER Discussion Paper, No. 2006/05, https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/ dp2006–05.pdf. Easterly, W. (2001). The Lost Decades: Developing Countries’ Stagnation in Spite of Policy Reform 1980–1998. Journal of Economic Growth, 6(2), 135–57. Fukuyama, F. (2008). What Do We Know about the Relationship between the Political and Economic Dimensions of Development? In D. North, D. Acemoglu, F. Fukuyama, & D. Rodrik (eds), Governance, Growth, and Development Decision-making (pp. 25–35), World Bank. Goldsmith, A. (2007). Is Governance Reform a Catalyst for Development? Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, 20(2), 165–86. Grindle, M. (2004). Good Enough Governance: Poverty Reduction and Reform in Developing Countries. Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, 17(4), 525–48. Grindle, M. (2017). Good Governance, R.I.P.: A Critique and an Alternative. Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, 30(1), 17–22. Hausmann, R., Pritchett, L., & Rodrik, D. (2004). Growth Accelerations. NBER Working Paper, No. 10566, National Bureau of Economic Research. Huynh, K., & Jacho-Chávez, D. (2009). Growth and Governance: A Nonparametric Analysis. Journal of Comparative Economics, 37(1), 121–43. Jomo, K. S., & Chowdhury, A. (2012). Is Good Governance Good for Development? London & New York: United Nations & Bloomsbury Academic. Kaufmann, D., Kraay, A., & Mastruzzi, M. (2007). Governance Matters VI: Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators 1996–2006. World Bank. Kaufmann, D., Kraay, A. & Zoido-Lobato, P. (1999). Governance Matters. World Bank. Khan, M. (2010). The Illusory Lure of Good Governance and the Hard Realities of Growth in Poor Countries, seminar paper, 24 June, Danish Institute for International Studies.
Kurtz, M., & Schrank, A. (2007). Growth and Governance: Models, Measures, and Mechanisms. The Journal of Politics, 69(2), 538–54. Langbein, L., & Knack, S. (2008). The Worldwide Governance Indicators and Tautology: Causally Related Separable Concepts, Indicators of a Common Cause, or Both? Policy Research Working Paper 4669. https://openknowledge .worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/6839/ WPS4669.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. Meisel, N., & Ould-Aoudia, J. (2007). Is ‘Good Governance’ a Good Development Strategy? Working Paper No. 2007/11, November, Direction générale du trésor et de la polijacques tique économique (DGTPE). https:// -ould-aoudia.net/is-good-governance-a-good -development-strategy-jacques-ould-aoudia -with-nicolas-meisels-collaboration-november -2007-published-in-document-de-travail-du -tresor-et-de-lafd/. Mira, R., & Hammadache, A. (2017). Good Governance and Economic Growth: A Contribution to the Institutional Debate about State Failure in Middle East and North Africa. Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 11, 107–120. Rodrik, D. (2008). Thinking about Governance. In D. North, D. Acemoglu, F. Fukuyama, & D. Rodrik (eds), Governance, Growth, and Development Decision-making (pp. 17–24), World Bank. Rothstein, B., & Teorell, J. (2008). What Is Quality of Government? A Theory of Impartial Government Institutions. Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, 21(2), 165–90. Sachs, J., McArthur, J.W., Schmidt-Traub, G., Kruk, M., Bahadur, C., Faye, M., & McCord, G. (2004). Ending Africa’s Poverty Trap. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 1, 117–240. The Economist. (2005). A regime changes. https:// www.economist.com/special-report/2005/06/ 02/a-regime-changes.. Thomas, M. (2010). What Do the Worldwide Governance Indicators Measure? European Journal of Development Research, 22(1), 31–54. World Bank (2005). Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reform, World Bank.
Anis Chowdhury
Green economy Introduction
Climate change represents a significant challenge to all aspects of life: the economy is no exception. The present high-carbon conjuncture has emerged from a dependence on fossil fuel extraction and combustion, which is widely agreed as having directly and fundamentally changed the constitution of the atmosphere and its ability to retain heat. Worryingly, demand for fossil fuels shows no sign of abating, and is even predicted to grow (OECD, 2019). The policy frameworks in place to tackle growing greenhouse gas emissions are increasingly seen as failing and underestimating the pace and nature of change required. Multiple Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports have focused attention on the need to act in the face of serious climate change, yet there is little agreement on the form of such action, and action to date is negligible. According to Wallis (2010: 32), the severity of the environmental crisis cannot be denied, ‘but it is still not widely recognised as a capitalist crisis, that is, a crisis arising from and perpetuated by the rule of capital, and hence incapable of resolution within the capitalist framework’. As shown below, the popularity of the green economy concept reinforces this view. A popular response to environmental and climate concerns has been to argue the case for a green economy, which, according to some, signifies a ‘new’ form of economy that can provide continued economic growth whilst also addressing multiple environmental ills. So, what is this green economy? Whilst related to the concept of sustainable development, the green economy remains ambiguous, with multiple definitions according to different actors. Brand (2016) suggests that it is not even possible to define the green economy due to significant global variations. Yet, all institutions and strategies agree that the green economy constitutes a [mythical] social, ecological and economic win–win situation. Morrow (2012) suggests that this conceptual vagueness is part of the appeal: the nebulous nature of the green economy ensures that advocates can apply the most suitable interpretation. Indeed, the idea of the green economy is related to terms such as low-carbon, decar-
bonization, Net Zero, and clean growth, amongst others. Thus, the green economy represents a swirling set of ideas that both encapsulate and obscure critical issues depending on institutional and actors’ perspectives. The notion of the green economy increasingly functions as a catch-all for this patchwork of perspectives and approaches. Whilst there are inevitable definitional differences, Kenis and Lievens (2016: 219) argue that there are four key characteristics shared by many dominant, neoliberal, interpretations of the green economy: 1. the market is the best vehicle to realize a transition towards sustainability e.g. taxes and carbon markets 2. innovation and new technologies are needed to resolve the climate crisis and the economic crisis 3. central roles for sustainable entrepreneurship, Corporate Social Responsibility and voluntary sustainability actions 4. sustainable consumption is a driver for environmental harm reduction. A universally agreed definition of the ‘green economy’ does not exist: some prioritize social justice, others focus on environment protection, and yet others emphasize technology, including clean energy. In their review of green economy definitions, Merino-Saum et al. (2020) reveal how the green economy is linked to diverse ideas and approaches, including the circular economy, social justice and ecological modernization. However, it is possible to identify a powerful and increasingly hegemonic form of the green economy (Kenis and Lievens, 2016), and this section will unpack and critique this approach whilst also indicating some alternatives that have been proposed.
Evolution of the green economy
The green economy concept has a long and varied history, but it is since the 2008 great financial crisis that it has been rolled out in a very specific way by certain institutions and agencies. There is a global cohort of powerful institutions that have collectively created a dominant view of what the green economy is, one which is based on economic growth, new markets, innovation, technology and competitiveness. This perspective works to give the impression of a green
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economy consensus, whereby financial and market approaches are the only way that we can respond to climate change, which depoliticizes and minimizes possibilities for resistance and the discussion of alternative approaches like degrowth. Presented in a suite of policy documents, organizations like the World Bank and the United Nations promote an approach of increased marketization, whereby environmental problems are viewed as market failures and the solution is new markets such as emissions trading schemes and offsetting. This neoliberal green economy represents a new ‘common vision’ and ‘pathway’ to achieve sustainable development for institutions such as the World Bank, as these discursive constructs fit within existing market-driven ideologies of such institutions. Given the compatibility with the growing trend of marketization and commodification, this interpretation of the green economy/green growth has been popular amongst policymakers. The green economy rhetoric is about re-establishing growth as fast as possible, with continued economic growth seen as both essential and unquestionable, albeit greener. This serves to elide environmentalists and their concerns in favour of growth, jobs, capital investment and wealth accumulation. This overriding faith in market mechanisms sees economists and engineers as having the ability to assign economic value to nature and to set up technical systems that ensure such values are captured by market institutions and private property rights. Furthermore, institutions such as United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP, 2011: 17) employ this language to link economic growth and sustainability: ‘there is a growing recognition that achieving sustainability rests almost entirely on getting the economy right’. Thus, current ‘green’ thinking sees investment in sustainable business as not just compatible with justice and equity goals, but the core means to address such concerns (Alkon, 2012), yet there is limited evidence of this occurring successfully in the last 30 years. The overarching message is economic growth is good, more is better, and this can simultaneously address societal, economic and environmental crises. These powerful actors work to create the impression that change is occurring, and that the climate and environment is being protected, whilst
actively reproducing neoliberal capitalist demands for new markets and a reinvention that is anything but green. For these organizations, the green economy is presented as an economic advantage, whereby green growth can deliver economic growth and development while ensuring that the natural assets continue to provide the resources and environmental services on which our well-being relies. To do this it must catalyze investment and innovation which will underpin sustained growth and give rise to new economic opportunities. (OECD, 2011: 9)
The green economy has proven seductive for it suggests that it is possible to have ‘a growing economy (in terms of the value of goods and services produced) that protects natural assets and resources’ (Bowen and Hepburn, 2014: 411). In this way, coalitions of neoliberal actors have joined forces to promote a narrative that dissolves the trade-offs between growth and environmental crisis, whilst also depoliticizing the climate crisis within existing neoliberal logics. UNEP explicitly dismisses the idea that there even are trade-offs between profit and planet: Perhaps the most prevalent myth is that there is an inescapable trade-off between environmental sustainability and economic progress […] There is now substantial evidence that the greening of economies neither inhibits wealth creation nor employment opportunities. To the contrary, many green sectors provide significant opportunities for investment, growth, and jobs. (UNEP, 2011: 1–2)
UNEP continue that it is the responsibility of governments to provide the conditions to enable a green economy. The language focuses specifically on economics, with much less attention paid to social and environmental sustainability in the green economy. These market-based ideologies are increasingly entrenched in diverse countries, with governments employing these approaches to tackle environmental problems including climate change. Thus, climate change is reframed as an economic opportunity for entrepreneurial actors, where new forms of technology, including carbon dioxide removal, are central to political agendas on climate change. Kirstie O’Neill
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Such an approach embodies what Bond calls ‘climate-crisis capitalism’, namely, ‘turning a medium/long-term, system-threatening prospect into a short-term source of commodification, speculation and profit’ (Bond, 2011: 2), which ultimately exacerbates the crisis. Critics note that depending on ‘slight adjustments within the system relying mainly on technological improvements while promoting environmental modernism and green growth runs the risk of sooner or later encountering long expected disasters’ (Lorek and Spangenberg, 2014: 36).
Decoupling
The idea of decoupling is a central node of contention, with neoliberal green economy advocates arguing that the economy and environment can be mutually compatible, reminiscent of ecological modernization thinking. The need to ‘decouple’ growth and wealth from resource use is widely acknowledged. This model emphasizes efficiency gains and technological innovation: investment in innovation and technology is essential to enable future decoupling. Many problems have been identified with decoupling, not least of which that decoupling has not been achieved to date and shows little sign of being achievable any time soon. However, that does not seem to dissuade actors, such as the Global Green Growth Initiative, from imagining that it is possible in future. While more actors are recognizing the need for a transition to a low-carbon economy, the primary approach is grounded in reforms to the existing capitalist system through ‘green growth’. There are powerful incumbents who see system change as a threat, and these interests work to sustain the status quo from which they benefit. Critical scholars from both the natural and social sciences note that climate change represents an existential threat, and that fundamental changes are required in many societies, especially in the global North. For example, gross domestic product growth has been identified as a main driver of CO2 emissions. Change requires buy-in from actors at every scale, from households, businesses, and heads of state. However, many continue to place their faith in new technological innovations to address climate change and decarbonization. Complex systems must be transformed to deliver deep decarbonizzation, which requires significant social change Kirstie O’Neill
in addition to socio-technical system change, with some arguing that coevolutionary interactions can accelerate low-carbon transitions. However, politicians outline a future that relies on the technical skills and knowledge of engineers and scientists, and the ambition of entrepreneurs, to realize the riches of the green economy. Thus, increasingly dominant approaches like sustainability transitions reinforce and reproduce a reliance on technological innovation as the route to decarbonization. There is, however, a more transformative approach outlined by activists and scholars, as explored below.
Injustices of the green economy
The potential for the green economy in its current guise to inflict new, or reproduce and intensify existing, inequalities is a question that receives relatively little attention in mainstream debates. Such injustices affect different groups, in diverse places, both within the global South and, to a lesser extent, within the global North. The green economy promises the poor environmental riches, recycled materials, and renewable energy, the promise of environmental exploitation without impact. Under the dominant ‘green economy as green growth’ narrative outlined above, concerns have been expressed regarding the neglect of common but differentiated responsibilities between the global North and the global South, which would potentially compromise poverty alleviation and basic needs provision in the global South. This approach risks reinforcing colonial relations, through the appropriation of labour, materials, and land. As Söderholm (2020) argues, the transition to a green economy affects the whole of society. However, in terms of changing industrial sectors and the effects of climate change, some species, places, and communities are affected to a greater degree than others, which can be conceptualized as forms of (in) justice. It has been argued that a just transition is required to counteract these injustices. The justice effects of the green economy need to be attended to, to minimize conflict and allay local fears in all affected communities. However, the World Bank and United Nations frequently apply the green economy concept with spatial blindness, which can lead to conflicts and points of tension in particular places, for instance, where a blighted
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landfill site in South Africa (Bond, 2011) was reconceptualized by the World Bank as a new ‘green’ offsetting scheme which eclipsed previous local opposition to the same site that caused racialized health problems. Using market mechanisms to green the economy risks pushing the costs of this transition towards lower social classes both in the global North and in the global South, reproducing unequal power relations. Policies may even reinforce such patterns whereby wealthy households are most likely to benefit from subsidies to solar cells and electric cars. Is a new environmental politics necessary to address such concerns?
A new politics for a new future?
It is increasingly argued that we need a new kind of politics, which focuses not on ‘greening’ the existing system, rather on radical system change to facilitate the survival of life on earth. Such a radical societal transformation is required to restore our relationships with the natural world and one another. The ‘limits to growth’ (Meadows et al., 1972) argument from the 1970s inspired other alternative ideas, including degrowth, steady-state economics, and prosperity without growth. Such approaches, for their advocates, are not just necessary shifts, but the means to improve fairness and equity for people and planet. Part of such a project would involve a re-politicization of climate politics and the green economy to encourage consideration of alternative futures. In contrast to green economy advocates, climate justice supporters promote a socially just transition grounded in ideologies of decommodification, social equality, communing, and radical democracy. Such an approach offers a refreshing and much needed antidote to yet more capitalist expansion and economic growth at any cost. A new politics of the green economy could benefit those who are already acting in more sustainable ways, such as social enterprises or cooperatives who employ a different logic to multinational corporations. This could also help build legitimacy for peasant agriculture, Indigenous communities, and other lower impact ways of living that are frequently undermined by mainstream capitalist cultures.
It is, however, easy but unhelpful to see these multiple approaches to a green economy as binary opposites. Death (2014) suggests that there is radical potential in the green economy which environmental and social justice activists could appropriate, but how such actors can achieve this against the might of powerful corporate actors and states remains to be seen and is a key question for future research. It is, thus, critical that the golden promises of the green economy are subject to scrutiny, especially given the potential for yet further intensification of commodification and marketization post-Covid-19. Despite being proposed as a new economic paradigm, akin to the Industrial Revolution of the 1700s, the green economy is frequently perceived as a new engine for continued economic growth, without acknowledging the accompanying environmental ruin. To conclude, the hegemonic perspective outlined above constructs the green economy as the provider of future growth, profits, jobs, and markets, yet lessons from recent financial market volatility should alert us to the dangers of further financialization of nature. Kirstie O’Neill
References
Alkon, A.H. (2012) Black White and Green: Farmers’ Markets, Race and the Green Economy, Athens: University of Georgia Press. Bond, P. (2011) The Politics of Environmental Justice, Durban: UKZN Press. Bowen, A. and Hepburn, C. (2014) Green growth: an assessment, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 30(3), 407–22. Brand, U. (2016) Green Economy, green capitalism and the imperial mode of living: limits to a prominent strategy, contours of a possible new capitalist formation, Fudan Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 9, 107–21. Death, C. (2014) The green economy in South Africa: global discourses and local politics, Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies, 41(1), 1–22. Kenis, A. and Lievens, M. (2016) Greening the economy or economizing the green project? When environmental concerns are turned into a means to save the market, Review of Radical Political Economics, 48(2), 217–34. Lorek, S. and Spangenberg, J.H. (2014) Sustainable consumption within a sustainable economy – beyond green growth and green economies, Journal of Cleaner Production, 63, 33–44. Meadows, D.H., Meadows, D.L. and Randers, J. (1972) The Limits to Growth: A Report for the
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312 Elgar encyclopedia of development Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind, Earth Island. Merino-Saum, A., Clement, J., Wyss, R. and Baldi, M.G. (2020) Unpacking the green economy concept: a quantitative analysis of 140 definitions, Journal of Cleaner Production, 242, 118339. Morrow, K. (2012) Rio+20, the green economy and re-orienting sustainable development, Environmental Law Review, 14 (4), 279–97. OECD (2011) Towards Green Growth: Monitoring Progress: OECD Indicators, Paris: OECD.
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OECD (2019) Global Material Resources Outlook to 2060: Economic Drivers and Environmental Consequences, Paris: OECD. Söderholm, P. (2020) The green economy transition: the challenges of technological change for sustainability, Sustainable Earth, 3, https://doi .org/10.1186/s42055-020-00029-y. UNEP (2011) Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication, Nairobi: UNEP. Wallis, V. (2010) Beyond green capitalism, Monthly Review (February): 32–47.
H
Health system The World Health Organization (WHO) World Health Report 2000 defines health systems as ‘all the activities whose primary purpose is to promote, restore or maintain health’ (World Health Organization, 2000). This definition is deliberately broad, and intended to encompass all organizations, institutions and resources that are devoted to improving health. The notion of a health system barely existed a century ago, whereas in modern times there is consensus that a right to health is a fundamental right of every human being (United Nations, 1966), and ‘achieving universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all’ has been outlined as a United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) for all nations in the 2020s (United Nations, 2015). The objectives of health systems should be understood as three-fold: improving health,
protection against the financial risks of ill-health, and responsiveness to the reasonable expectations of the population (Murray & Frenk, 2000). These objectives are intended to be delivered through four functions: financing, provision of services, resource generation, and stewardship (Figure 1). We consider each objective in turn, including how they relate to different health system objectives.
Financing
Financing can be broken down into three components; revenue collection, pooling of funds, and the purchasing of healthcare services (Mossialos & Dixon, 2002a). These functions can be integrated or separated in various combinations, depending upon the context within each country. Revenue collection Revenue collection is concerned with who pays, the type of payment made, and who collects it. Different financial mechanisms used for this purpose include user charges,
Source: Papanicolas and Smith (2013).
Figure 1
WHO health system performance framework: functions and goals
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medical savings accounts, private health insurance, social health insurance, and taxation. There are other tools which can be used to finance healthcare including domestic debt or overseas development assistance, although these typically account for a much lower proportion of total health spending. User charges, also referred to as ‘out-of-pocket payments’, include all costs paid directly to access and receive healthcare services and products by individuals and households. User charges can either be: co-payments which are flat rate fees for services, co-insurance which involves payment of a percentage of the cost of a service, and deductibles which involve paying the entire cost of services up to a defined maximum (Thomson et al., 2010). Medical savings accounts, or ‘health savings accounts’, are earmarked funds into which individuals contribute funds which can only be withdrawn to pay for healthcare costs (Maynard & Dixon, 2002). They can be used at the individual or household level, with contributions made on a voluntary or compulsory basis. They are typically used to pay for deductibles to access healthcare services and combined with forms of private or government health insurance. Private health insurance involves insured people paying a regular contribution, a ‘premium’, to an independent organization, an ‘insurer’. Contributions are often voluntary, and premiums are typically risk-rated reflecting the health risks of each insured individual. Social health insurance involves people paying a regular contribution to an independent, quasi-governmental organization that has a legal commitment to paying for healthcare on behalf of the insured. Contributions are often compulsory and shared between employers and their employees, or the government for those not in employment (Mossialos & Dixon, 2002a). These contributions are not related to health risks and are paid separately from other legally mandated taxes or contributions. Taxation can be national or local, and general or hypothecated (Mossialos & Dixon, 2002a). National taxes are transferred to a central government body, which then disburses funds at both national level and to local authorities. Local taxes are transferred to a local government body, with funds only distributed to local authorities. General taxes are collected and then, through government decision-making, are allocated Michael Anderson and Elias Mossialos
to different sectors (e.g. healthcare, education, and defence), whereas hypothecated taxes are earmarked for a specific purpose or sector (e.g. healthcare) (Mossialos & Dixon, 2002b). Pooling Pooling is to what degree prepaid payments for healthcare are accumulated into collective revenue on behalf of a population (Kutzin, 2001). Pooling is important as it allows financial risks to be shared across the population or defined subgroups of contributors and can protect individuals from catastrophic health expenditure. The degree of pooling of financial risk across the population increases between user charges, medical savings accounts, private health insurance, social health insurance, and taxation (Figure 2). User charges provide the lowest level of pooling of financial risks of ill-health across the population. However, exemptions for certain low-income or high-need patients can improve pooling. Medical savings accounts can offer a limited degree of protection from the financial risks of ill-health for individuals, but this is dependent upon to what degree available savings cover deductibles required to access healthcare services. Social health insurance provides a higher level of pooling than private health insurance as citizens typically cannot choose their insurance scheme and contributions are compulsory, leading to lower mobility between insurance funds. This prevents risk selection by insurance funds, and with adequate risk-equalization between insurance funds, pooling is improved further. In contrast, private health insurance is usually voluntary, and risks are often not equalized between insurance funds creating opportunities for risk-selection, and increased segmentation of financial risks of ill-health across the population. There are however possibilities to implement risk equalization between insurance funds in private health insurance-based healthcare systems to mitigate against this. In both social and private health insurance-based healthcare systems, pooling is influenced by the number of insurance funds operating, with improved pooling with lower number of insurance funds. Taxation provides the highest level of pooling of financial risks of ill-health across the population due to limited number of pools. General taxation provides a higher level of pooling than hypothecated
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Figure 2
Pooling of financial risk of ill-health across population by revenue collection mechanism
taxes, as there is potential for revenues to be redirected from other government functions during periods of austerity if necessary. National taxes pool financial risks of ill-health more than local taxes as local taxes segments risks between regions, whereas once revenues are collected, national taxes are typically allocated to local regions according to healthcare need. Purchasing of healthcare services Purchasing is the transfer of these pooled resources to service providers on behalf of the population for which the funds were pooled (Kutzin, 2001). In some countries, purchasing of healthcare services is separated from institutions responsible for collection and pooling of resources, for example clinical commission groups in England. In other countries, insurance funds are responsible for all three functions of collection, pooling, and purchasing of healthcare services. To maximize objectives of improving health, responsiveness, and financial protection, resources need to be deployed according to healthcare needs. To achieve this goal, most countries have developed resource allocation formulae that calculate annual budgets based on capitation and other measures of local healthcare needs such as deprivation, age, gender, morbidity, and mortality rates (Smith, 2008). Defining benefits and beneficiaries is also a key aspect of purchasing healthcare ser-
vices. By explicitly outlining what services the healthcare system provides and in what context, citizens can be made aware of what services are available, and payers can more effectively assess resource requirements (Glassman et al., 2016). This is particularly important in the context of maximizing value from limited resources as healthcare systems face rising costs driving by technological advances and ageing populations. Defining benefits and beneficiaries requires some understanding of the comparative clinical and cost-effectiveness of pre-existing and novel health technologies. Since the early 2000s, many countries have developed health technology assessment agencies which have responsibility for this function by utilizing methods such as cost-effectiveness analyses (Oliver et al., 2004). Social and private health insurance funds typically have an explicit benefits package, whereas some taxation-based healthcare systems, such as in the UK, have an implicit benefits package based upon essential medicines lists and clinical guidance (Smith & Chalkidou, 2017).
Provision of services
Provision of services can be separated into personal and non-personal health services. Personal health services refer to services that are consumed directly by individuals, encompassing the complete spectrum of care from preventive, diagnostic, therapeutic, to rehaMichael Anderson and Elias Mossialos
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bilitative care. Non-personal health services refer to services that are not consumed by the individual such as national health promotion initiatives or basic sanitation. Personal health services Personal health services can be further separated according to different sectors including primary, secondary, tertiary, or long-term care. Primary care can be understood as ambulatory care services which provide five key concepts of primary care: providing first contact of care for new health problems; comprehensive care for most health problems; continuity of care; long-term person-focused care; and care coordination (Starfield et al., 2005). Primary care services are delivered in multiple settings, including community health centres, pharmacies, and emergency departments, whereas secondary care is typically delivered in hospitals and consists of inpatient care and some specialist ambulatory care services. Tertiary care is highly specialized care such as neurosurgery or transplant surgery, which is delivered in specialist hospitals that typically take referrals from whole regions or even countries. Long-term care is the provision of rehabilitation, restorative, or ongoing care to meet medical and non-medical needs delivered in a combination of residential or non-residential settings, including within people’s homes. The structural arrangements regarding how each sector interacts vary between countries. For example, in some countries primary care plays a ‘gatekeeper’ role, where they act as first point of contact for all health problems and triage referrals onwards to secondary or tertiary care colleagues, whereas in other countries people have direct access to specialists and can bypass primary care services. In modern times, efforts have focused on strengthening integration between sectors to ensure the health services meet the multidimensional needs of individuals through coordinated and multidisciplinary teams (Clarke et al., 2021). Many countries have responded to this challenge by creating organizations such as Health Maintenance Organizations in the United States, and Integrated Care Systems in England, that are responsible for delivering health services for predefined population. A split exists between purchasers and providers in many countries, and this has been perceived as a major barrier to integraMichael Anderson and Elias Mossialos
tion as organizations have reduced incentives to engage with broader health system objectives (Maruthappu et al., 2015). This financial arrangement is increasingly being abandoned in favour of ‘vertical integration’ whereby organizations hold joint responsibility for purchasing and provision of health services. Non-personal health services Non-personal health services are broad and consist of any policies, interventions, or initiatives that improve population rather than individual health. This includes population-based public health interventions such as the promotion of healthy lifestyles, improved sanitation, or the fluoridation of water. In many countries there are public health agencies which have some responsibilities for designing or implementing policies, although responsibilities for non-personal health services lies with multiple actors, and ideally involves a whole-systems approach, with cross-sector partnerships between local and national government, community and voluntary organizations, relevant commercial organizations, educational institutions, and other statutory service organizations to influence the contexts that create poor health. The degree to which the priorities of the personal and non-personal health services are aligned is an important policy question, and governance structures should exist whereby health services are responsive to health promotion initiatives.
Resource generation
Health systems are not just concerned with the financing and provision of health services, but also the optimal investment in capital, workforce, as well as research and development. This is required to ensure the health system can continue to meet changing health population needs and improve quality of care. Investment in capital such as healthcare facilities or equipment may be coordinated at a national or local level, or both, and requires some oversight of the maintenance requirements of pre-existing healthcare facilities and future requirements. Investment in health information technology infrastructure is also a key enabler to improving efficiency, safety, quality, and integration of care (Sheikh et al., 2021). Effective workforce planning requires analysing supply-side
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factors, such as recruitment and retention, and demand-side factors, such as demography, morbidity, and use of health services (Lopes et al., 2015). Increasingly, workforce planning focuses on the collective workforce, including physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals, and considers opportunities for substitution of roles and responsibilities between health professionals to meet changing health population needs. Alongside workforce planning, which is concerned with the technical aspects of estimated future workforce needs, most countries develop and maintain a workforce strategy which contains policies to improve recruitment and retention through measures to support career development, reimbursement, and health and well-being of the workforce (Anderson et al., 2021). This process is typically coordinated at a national level, although large hospitals may have independent workforce strategies, and requires involvement from educational institutions, professional societies, and trade unions. Supporting research and development requires investment in academic research centres and industry, including the pharmaceutical sector, to stimulate innovation into novel health technologies, including pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Increasingly governments are focusing their efforts towards areas of unmet need such as the development of novel antibiotics and vaccines, through the use of grants to fund basic science research and reimbursement mechanisms such as market access agreements that share the financial risk of drug development (Renwick et al., 2016).
Stewardship
Stewardship is concerned with the overall governance of the health system, and the well-being of the population (World Health Organization, 2000). The role of steward is typically taken by government and is outlined as one of ‘oversight and trusteeship’, which requires ‘vision, intelligence and influence’ (World Health Organization, 2000). In 2002, the WHO defined governance further by outlining six domains or sub-functions; generation of intelligence, formulating strategic policy direction, ensuring tools for implementation, building coalitions/partnerships, ensuring a fit between policy objectives and organizational structure and culture, and
ensuring accountability (Travis et al., 2002). Later, within the 2007 WHO Framework for Action, these principles were cemented as one of the six key building blocks of a health system, under the domain of ‘leadership and governance’ (World Health Organization, 2007). The generation of intelligence is concerned with ensuring that all health system actors, including stewards, clinicians, and patients, have access to the information they need to make informed decisions and thus contribute to better health system outcomes. Formulating strategic policies reflects whether governments have a taken a broad, inclusive view of its responsibilities in relation to their health system and developed a vision of how it should develop. Ensuring tools for implementation is ensuring that policies are designed in a manner that supports implementation by granting government and other actors appropriate regulatory powers such as incentives and sanctions to guide behaviour change. Building and sustaining partnerships is based on the understanding that government cannot influence health systems by acting alone, and they must build and maintain a wide variety of relationship with different actors to be fully effective in achieving health system objectives. Creating a fit between policy objectives and organizational structure and culture involves establishing clear linkage and lines of communication between all sectors and components of the health system. Accountability is concerned with ensuring all health system actors (public and private, providers, payers, industry, regulators) are held accountable for their actions, and effective accountability mechanisms can help detect and reduce waste or misuse of resources, malpractice or negligence, or the unfair exclusion of population groups from accessing health services. Michael Anderson and Elias Mossialos
References
Anderson, M., O’Neill, C., Macleod Clark, J., Street, A., Woods, M., Johnston-Webber, C., Charlesworth, A., Whyte, M., Foster, M., Majeed, A., Pitchforth, E., Mossialos, E., Asaria, M., & McGuire, A. (2021). Securing a sustainable and fit-for-purpose UK health and care workforce. The Lancet 397, 1992–2011. https:// doi.org/10.1016/S0140–6736(21)00231–2.
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318 Elgar encyclopedia of development Clarke, L., Anderson, M., Anderson, R., Klausen, M.B., Forman, R., Kerns, J., Rabe, A., Kristensen, S.R., Theodorakis, P., Valderas, J., Kluge, H., & Mossialos, E. (2021). Economic aspects of delivering primary care services: an evidence synthesis to inform policy and research priorities. The Milbank Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468–0009.12536. Glassman, A., Giedion, U., Sakuma, Y., & Smith, P.C. (2016). Defining a health benefits package: what are the necessary processes? Health Systems & Reform 2, 39–50. https://doi.org/10 .1080/23288604.2016.1124171. Kutzin, J. (2001). A descriptive framework for country-level analysis of health care financing arrangements. Health Policy 56, 171–204. Lopes, M.A., Almeida, Á.S., & Almada-Lobo, B. (2015). Handling healthcare workforce planning with care: where do we stand? Human Resources for Health 13. https://doi.org/10 .1186/s12960–015–0028–0. Maruthappu, M., Hasan, A., & Zeltner, T. (2015). Enablers and barriers in implementing integrated care. Health System Reform 1, 250–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/23288604.2015 .1077301. Maynard, A., & Dixon, A. (2002). Private health insurance and medical savings accounts: theory and experience. In E. Mossialos, A. Dixon, J. Figueras & J. Kutzin (eds), Funding Health Care: Options for Europe (pp. 109–27). Open University Press. https://www.euro.who.int/ en/publications/abstracts/funding-health-care -options-for-europe-2002. Mossialos, E., & Dixon, A. (2002a). Funding health care: an introduction. In E. Mossialos, A. Dixon, J. Figueras & J. Kutzin (eds), Funding Health Care: Options for Europe (pp. 1–30). Open University Press. https://www.euro.who .int/en/publications/abstracts/funding-health -care-options-for-europe-2002. Mossialos, E., & Dixon, A. (2002b). Funding health care: weighing up the options. In E. Mossialos, A. Dixon, J. Figueras & J. Kutzin (eds), Funding Health Care: Options for Europe (pp. 272–300). Open University Press. https:// www.euro.who.int/en/publications/abstracts/ funding-health-care-options-for-europe-2002. Murray, C.J., & Frenk, J. (2000). A framework for assessing the performance of health systems. Bulletin of the World Health Organisation 78, 717–31. Oliver, A., Mossialos, E., & Robinson, R. (2004). Health technology assessment and its influence on health-care priority setting. International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care 20, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1017/ s026646230400073x.
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Papanicolas, I., & Smith, P. (2013). Health System Performance Comparison: An Agenda for Policy, Information and Research. McGraw-Hill Education. Renwick, M.J., Brogan, D.M., & Mossialos, E. (2016). A systematic review and critical assessment of incentive strategies for discovery and development of novel antibiotics. The Journal of Antibiotics 69, 73–88. https://doi.org/10 .1038/ja.2015.98. Sheikh, A., Anderson, M., Albala, S., Casadei, B., Franklin, B.D., Richards, M., Taylor, D., Tibble, H., & Mossialos, E. (2021). Health information technology and digital innovation for national learning health and care systems. Lancet Digital Health 3, e383–e396. https://doi .org/10.1016/S2589–7500(21)00005–4. Smith, P.C. (2008). Resource allocation and purchasing in the health sector: the English experience. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 86, 884–8. https://doi.org/10.2471/BLT.07 .049528. Smith, P.C., & Chalkidou, K. (2017). Should countries set an explicit health benefits package? The case of the English National Health Service. Value in Health 20, 60. https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.jval.2016.01.004. Starfield, B., Shi, L., & Macinko, J. (2005). Contribution of primary care to health systems and health. The Milbank Quarterly 83, 457–502. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468–0009 .2005.00409.x. Thomson, S., Foubister, T., & Mossialos, E. (2010). Can user charges make health care more efficient? BMJ (Clinical research edition), 341, 487–9. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.c3759. Travis, P., Egger, D., Davies, P., & Mechbal, A. (2002). Towards Better Stewardship: Concepts and Critical Issues. Evidence and Information for Policy. World Health Organization. https:// apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/339291. United Nations (1966). International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. United Nations. United Nations (2015). Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. United Nations. https://sustainabledevelopment .un.org/post2015/transformingourworld/ publication. World Health Organization (2000). The World Health Report 2000 – Health Systems: Improving Performance. World Health Organization. World Health Organization (2007). Everybody’s Business: Strengthening Health Systems to Improve Health Outcomes: WHO’s Framework for Action. World Health Organization. https:// doi.org/10July2012.
Heritage and development In contemporary approaches, heritage and development are interrelated. Many actors consider heritage from a pragmatic point of view and discuss contemporary values attributed to the past and potential benefits. There are numerous ways in which cultural heritage can contribute to development, particularly when viewed as a process of positive change which brings welfare and improves the lives of people. In the past, however, the mainstream view was that heritage was one that foremost needed to be protected, conserved, and transmitted to future generations due to its aesthetic and historic characteristics. Development processes were perceived as a threat to cultural and natural heritage objects. This entry begins with a discussion about the diverse meanings of heritage. Later, it will look at the main approaches forged in the last decades and their conceptualization of the heritage and development nexus.
Defining heritage
The concept of heritage is wide, multifaceted, and dynamic. Although linked to ‘history’, heritage, as David Lowenthal put it (1997, p. x): ‘is not an inquiry into the past, but a celebration of it … a profession of faith in a past tailored to present-day purposes’. The main challenge in defining heritage is the tension between cultural and economic functions, which has practical implications in relation to development. Commonly, heritage is perceived as those things, objects, and monuments from the past which, for their cultural values, are seen as worthy of preservation and safekeeping for future generations. This ‘monumentalist’ approach was popularized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage List. Accordingly, natural and cultural elements inscribed on the List deserve special attention and preservation efforts. The scope of heritage categories has evolved, and apart from artefacts (documents, objects, pictures, etc.), historic places or monuments, the field gradually included new things (e.g. ‘cultural landscapes’, ‘natural sacred sites’, ‘the underwater cultural heritage’) and, more recently, non-traditional categories such as ‘industrial heritage’.
An important step in defining heritage from the perspective of development was an introduction of the ‘intangible heritage’ category into the discourse and practice of heritage. It encompasses cultural expressions such as traditions, languages, customs, skills, rituals, traditional practices and local knowledge. UNESCO has authorized this approach in the 2003 Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), responding to concerns that tangible heritage concept is too narrow, and because it privileges European societies with their abundance of material culture from the past. Heritage can also be understood in a broad, anthropological sense. It is linked to culture, memories, values, or narratives originating in the past which are relevant for the present re/construction of social identity. As Laurajane Smith (2012, p. 2) puts it: ‘Heritage is not a thing, site or place, nor is it found, rather heritage is the multiple processes of meaning making that occur as material heritage places or intangible heritage events are identified, defined, managed, exhibited and visited.’ This conceptualization goes beyond objects and places stress on the ‘owners’ and ‘users’ of heritage, their needs and perspectives. The stress on actors engaged in heritage practices implies also the subjectivity in choosing which aspects of the past are worth preserving. Communities attribute special meanings to a selected part of the inherited past. There are objects, traditions or landscapes regarded as particularly valuable by contemporary groups which engage in safekeeping practices. They may serve either aesthetic or pragmatic purposes, such as political, economic or socio-cultural (e.g. identity building). This aspect is crucial when we discuss the usage of heritage for development purposes.
Heritage and development as separate or opposite areas
For a long time, heritage was regarded as a field opposite to development. This perspective was embedded in the European tradition of modernity, progress, colonialism, and nationalism. Historical monuments and archeological treasures were conserved or restored in order to represent cultural achievements of European societies. The main duty towards heritage was to keep the essence of
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heritage and protect its aesthetic values. The French term patrimoine conveys the idea of a duty of ‘guardians’ of the inherited past, to take care of it and hand it over to future generations in the best possible form (Choay, 2001). This approach to heritage translated into conservation practices, keeping artefacts in museums, and a lack of any real engagement with present-day challenges of social life. Heritage and development were separate and distinct areas. In many cases, efforts to safeguard heritage even collide with development projects. This is particularly striking when development is understood solely as economic growth. When new investments, such as roads, urban renewal, railway, mines, airports, dams, and so on are seen as priority and the best way to modernize a country, there can be a tension with the need to protect natural or cultural heritage. Among the most renowned actions by UNESCO was its international campaign to save the historic Abu Simbel temples in Egypt, which were endangered by the construction of a dam on the Nile river. This project was pursued as a part of national modernization and industrial growth plans to which cultural heritage was an obstacle. Similar examples of national development programmes which sacrifice the past or protected natural areas are observed worldwide.
The search for commonalities between heritage and development
The beginning of convergence between the concept of heritage and development dates back to second half of the twentieth century. Since the 1970s, discussions have focused on the need to redefine both terms and on forging links between them. The new discourse on development shifted from an obsession with growth and industrialization as the best way to get people out of poverty. A new, complex and multi-dimensional understanding of development matured, and the macro-economic indicators were accompanied by other tools to assess progress (e.g. the Human Development Index, which takes into consideration three dimensions: education, health and a living condition). Human needs gained more attention and a view of universal model of development gave way to more context- and culture-related perception of social change. Another crucial aspect was the departure from the Western development Dobrosława Wiktor-Mach
model which had been promoted as a universal one and the only option for the developing world as well (Torggler et al., 2015, pp. 4–5). Introduced to a public discourse in the landmark ‘Brundtland Report’ in 1987, the idea of sustainable development influenced the way people thought of development priorities and tools needed to make progress. The sustainability paradigm slowly, carefully, but steadily became a mainstream one in the development discourse of international organizations, including the United Nations and their agendas. While the Millennium Development Goals adopted by the international community in 2000 omitted the cultural dimension of development, the current 17 Sustainable Development Goals with 169 targets, which form the main frame of UN’s approach to development, pay attention to the contribution of culture. The very broad, human and environment-centred notion of development provided a fertile ground for forging links with heritage. The re-conceptualization of development took place alongside similar endeavours to widen the concept of heritage. UNESCO, in particular, became the arena for a fierce critique of a ‘monumentalist’ idea of heritage. Many countries called for re-framing the discussion from the issues of conservation and protection to making use of heritage assets for the benefit of contemporary societies (Wiktor-Mach, 2019). As stated above, the concept of intangible heritage paved a way to include numerous non-material elements of culture under the banner of heritage. As performances, songs, oral traditions became recognized not only as folklore, but also as a part of a wider phenomenon, the way of thinking about them changed as well.
Heritage as an enabler of sustainable development
The current UN agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (2015–2030), which constitutes an action plan for the contemporary world with its abundant development challenges, only partially acknowledges the approach to heritage which is already widespread among practitioners, that is, to see the multifaceted potential of heritage in its widest sense as an enabler of sustainability and holistic, context-dependent development (Giliberto & Labadi, 2022; United Nations, 2015; Wiktor-Mach, 2020). Currently, her-
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itage – both tangible and intangible – is increasingly seen as a tool which can be applied to address key challenges of our time. UNESCO, which is the main international organization promoting functional approach to heritage, identifies multiple global problems where heritage can play a positive role, such as: growing inequalities, including gender dimension, poverty, access to clean water and food; education, environmental degradation and climate change, peace-making and security needs and unsustainable urbanization. Heritage tourism is a thriving sector of economy which has gained a lot of attention. Supported by the prestige of UNESCO’s Lists, local cultural objects or traditions usually act as a magnet for international tourists. Their economic significance is seen not only in direct revenues left by visitors, but also in the number of jobs created inside the local community. If managed in a ‘responsible, culturally-aware, inclusive and sustainable’ manner, as UNESCO’s Hangzhou Declaration underlines, heritage has a lot of potential to contribute to the quality of life and social inclusion. On the other hand, income from visits to heritage places can partially be used to safeguard them and ensure necessary conservation. Similarly, creative economy can utilize the value of heritage. The Creative Economy Report published by UNESCO and UNDP in 2013 encourages decision-makers to invest in heritage to promote development. It argues that local populations that make use of their cultural assets have better chances to lead a transformation related to their real needs and possibilities. Heritage may help in adjusting development initiatives to specific conditions and experiences. The creative economy is said to have a huge potential for the future, from improving well-being and material conditions of local populations, to contributing to alternative ideas in the field of development. In regard to intangible heritage, UNESCO stresses the importance of local, including Indigenous, knowledge and practices in relation to nature. Relying on traditional links with the natural world can be valuable in spheres such as health, food security and water management. It is an appreciation of the ways of life, skills and knowledge of many groups and communities which, if con-
tinued or strengthened, can help to adapt to the environmental and climate crises. The safeguarding of ICH can mean, in practice, the endeavours of a community to restore ecological balance in a specific locality, return to sustainable practices in dealing with ecosystems as well as the protection of biodiversity or sustainable natural resources management (UNESCO & Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2015). However, whether this potential really translates into long-term positive outcomes remains to be seen. For example, there are multiple challenges, including issues of women’s empowerment in the contexts of traditional culture and rooted practices which perpetuate patriarchal structures (Giliberto & Labadi, 2022; Logan, 2012).
Concluding remarks
The way we define heritage and its functions has significant implications for its relations to development. The model of safeguarding heritage and preserving it for future generations is still a popular one. It underlines the duty of contemporary societies to be the guardians of inherited elements of the past. In this approach development is perceived often as a threat to the continuity of heritage, both tangible and intangible. The UN 2030 development agenda, which constitutes the main frame of reference for development practitioners, although it includes a ‘heritage target’, still regards heritage largely as an object requiring protection (Labadi et al., 2021; Wiktor-Mach, 2019). Heritage revolution, as it is sometimes called, has resulted in a novel approach to heritage. What was once seen as ‘objectified, glass-covered, and frozen’ (Loulanski, 2006, p. 207) remnants of the past acquired new meanings and functions. Heritage, instead of being an obstacle to development efforts, is valued as an asset or a tool which can be beneficial mainly for local communities in their struggle for better life – both in social and environmental terms. This understanding of heritage as an enabler and driver of sustainable development is currently supported by many actors, including international organizations such as UNESCO, although there are many questions regarding the effectiveness of this model. Dobrosława Wiktor-Mach Dobrosława Wiktor-Mach
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References
Choay, F. (2001). The Invention of the Historic Monument. Cambridge University Press. Giliberto, F., & Labadi, S. (2022). Harnessing Cultural Heritage for Sustainable Development: An Analysis of Three Internationally Funded Projects in MENA Countries. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 28(2), 133–46. Labadi, S., Giliberto, F., Rosetti, I., Shetabi, L., & Yildirim, E. (2021). Heritage and the Sustainable Development Goals: Policy Guidance for Heritage and Development Actors. ICOMOS. https://www.icomos.org/en/focus/un -sustainable-development-goals/91455-icomos -releases-sustainable-development-goals-policy -guidance-for-heritage-and-development-actors. Logan, W. (2012). Cultural Diversity, Cultural Heritage and Human Rights: Towards Heritage Management as Human Rights-Based Cultural Practice. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 18(3), 231–44. Loulanski, T. (2006). Revising the Concept for Cultural Heritage: The Argument for a Functional Approach. International Journal of Cultural Property, 13, 207–33. Lowenthal, D. (1997). The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. Cambridge University Press. Smith, L. (2012). Discourses of Heritage: Implications for Archaeological Community Practice, Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos. https:// doi.org/10.4000/nuevomundo.64148.
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Torggler, B., Baltà Portolés, J., Murphy, R., & France, C. (2015). UNESCO’s Work on Culture and Sustainable Development: Evaluation of a Policy Theme. IOS/EVS/PI/145 REV.2. UNESCO. UNESCO & Intangible Cultural Heritage (2015). Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development. UNESCO & ICH. https:// ich .unesco.org/doc/src/34299-EN.pdf. United Nations (2015). Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. United Nations. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] (2013). Hangzhou Declaration: Placing Culture at the Heart of Sustainable Development Policies. UNESCO. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization–United Nations Development Programme [UNESCO–UNDP] (2013). Creative Economy Report. UNESCO/ UNDP. Wiktor-Mach, D. (2019). Cultural Heritage and Development: UNESCO’s New Paradigm in a Changing Geopolitical Context. Third World Quarterly, 40(9), 1593–612. Wiktor-Mach, D. (2020). What Role for Culture in the Age of Sustainable Development? UNESCO’s Advocacy in the 2030 Agenda Negotiations. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 26(3), 312–27.
Human development approach With the first Human Development Report (HDR) in 1990 by the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Report Office (HDRO), the human development (HD) approach emerged as a revolutionary progression in development practice and theory in the post-Second World War (WWII) era. Under the leadership of economist Mahbub ul Haq, the new development paradigm was grounded in Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s capability approach (CA) (Sen 1985, 1990, 1999). As such it is a people-centred approach, concerned with expanding people’s valuable capabilities, and defining and informing policy in this direction. Hence, it differs fundamentally from approaches focused on economic objectives, such as growth or income, from welfare or utilitarian approaches of development, and goes beyond some basic need approaches by centrally including freedom and agency.
Historical development
While the HD approach represented a new course for development at its inception in the 1990s, the idea to focus on people and human benefit is not new. Sen’s CA builds upon early economic and political thinkers, such as Aristotle who argued ‘wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking, for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else’ (Sen 1990). Aristotle distinguished a good political arrangement from a bad one by its successes and failures in enabling people to lead ‘flourishing lives’. The HD approach and CA also draw on additional authors, citing key works of Immanuel Kant, Adam Smith, Robert Malthus, Karl Marx, and John Stuart Mill, among others (Haq 1995: 13, 24; Alkire 2010: 3). However, in the post-WWII era, attention was directed towards measurable economic phenomena as the means and ends of development and people were often overlooked (Haq 1995: 24). A narrowed focus on economic growth of GNP started in the 1950/60s. But counterbalancing efforts to ‘dethrone GNP’ came with the emergence of various basic human needs approaches in the 1970s (Seers in Stewart, Ranis, and Samman 2018: 13),
alongside integrated rural development and self-reliance movements. Nevertheless, economic growth as the primary objective was advanced enthusiastically by the US and UK governments in the 1980s and was articulated in the ‘Washington Consensus’ (Stewart et al. 2018: 17). Yet growth outcomes themselves were mixed, and inequality and poverty levels were troubling (Haq 1995: 14, 24–5, 52–5). This context allowed, as Haq (1995: 3) put it, for a ‘rediscovery of the obvious’ – ‘People are both the means and the end of economic development’ – in the HD approach.
Philosophical underpinnings: the capability approach
The concept and approach of HD is grounded in Amartya Sen’s CA (Fukuda-Parr 2003).1 It was developed from 1979 into the 1990s and often contrasted with approaches that took a utilitarian view or focused monetary or resources and primary goods. The CA stresses multidimensionality, criticizing any unitary focus (e.g. on utility or welfare), which fails to capture the diversity of well-being. Instead, the CA considers people’s achieved ‘functionings’: the various ‘beings’ and ‘doings’ which people value and have reason to value (Sen 1990, 1999, 2017) – such as being well-nourished, being educated, or being able to enjoy a candlelit dinner with a loved one peacefully. Alongside, and of equal import, it considers people’s opportunity freedom with respect to these beings and functionings – their real freedom to enjoy alternative capability sets. Another key component is agency, by which people advance goals they value – whether these goals relate to themselves and their community (putting in a new windmill) or a different objective like saving the spotted owl or changing climate policies. So the CA as well as the HD approach regard all people ‘as active agents of change, rather than as passive recipients of dispensed benefits’ (Sen 1999: xiii; Fukuda-Parr 2003). The HD approach takes the CA’s practice to also go beyond a resource focus that ignores people’s diverse abilities to convert resources into functionings. In doing so, they recognize that resource needs are not the same for children, or for persons living with disabilities, or even for those with a high metabolism or job involving active physical labour compared to others. By focusing on
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functionings (outcomes), HD assesses and tries to create equity in terms of what people, given their diversity of abilities, activities, and proclivities, are really able to be and do. In policy discourse, due to its rootedness in the CA, which clearly distinguishes means from ends, HD challenged the growth-focused approaches that maximized means but failed to recognize people as the ultimate end of development. Going beyond material basic needs approaches, it integrates two kinds of freedom into the concept of flourishing – a person’s agency to shape their own destinies, and their real freedom to enjoy alternative capability profiles, into the very objective of development (Sen 1985, 1995). Finally, going beyond unidimensional concepts of welfare (utility and, more recently, subjective happiness), it focuses on multidimensional well-being and flourishing. Psychological well-being, positive emotions, and evaluative life satisfaction constitute an important dimension of well-being. But it is not the only one. In sum, HD is centred on people’s capabilities and agency. It evaluates states of affairs according to people’s capabilities and their real freedoms to achieve beings and doings they value and have reason to value. It takes a multidimensional view of well-being, rather than reducing it to money or happiness or even contemplation. And it emphasizes people’s agency alongside their well-being. The relationship between the HD approach and the CA has been differently specified by different authors. In academic research, the CA and HD approach are often not differentiated. At other times, the HD approach is perceived as a practical translation of the capability approach into simpler language, so that it can easily animate development practice ‘in different contexts and institutional settings and at different levels’ (Alkire 2010: 22).
Concept and approach
This section restates HD in its own terms, drawing primarily upon the human development reports and similar documents. First and foremost, as the 20-year reaffirmation defined it, the HD approach takes a holistic freedom-based approach: Human development is the expansion of people’s freedoms to live long, healthy and cre-
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ative lives; to advance other goals they have reason to value; and to engage actively in shaping development equitably and sustainably on a shared planet. People are both the beneficiaries and the drivers of human development, as individuals and in groups. (UNDP 2010: 2)
Overall, the HD approach has the following characteristics (Haq 1995; Sen 2000; Jahan 2019; Alkire 2010; UNDP 1990; Fukuda-Parr 2003; Stewart et al. 2018): the HD approach is people-centred: ‘It has to be development of the people, by the people, for the people’ (UNDP 1991: 13). People are seen as the means and ends of development. They are ‘the agents, beneficiaries and adjudicators of progress’ (Sen 1990). It is concerned with the expansion of people’s capabilities, their real freedoms, by enhancing their opportunity freedoms as well as abilities to achieve what they value. While it recognizes that these can vary over time and from person to person, the human development approach focuses on both the process of expanding choices and opportunities as well as the outcome (i.e. the achieved level of well-being). Seeking to reflect the richness of human life, it is multidimensional with a focus on what people value. Thus, HD stands opposed to conventional unidimensional approaches to development, to include economic, social, cultural, and political freedoms on a shared planet. Furthermore, these different aspects are not viewed as separate but as interconnected with the power to reinforce each other. While the HD approach conceptually recognizes the individual as the ultimate unit of ethical analysis – thus supporting a human rights optic – it is also applied to groups, thus emphasizing the expansion of collective choices and opportunities. Overall, the approach is inclusive and universal: “Every human being counts and every human life is equally valuable” (Jahan 2016: 233). One way of describing HD is that it rests on four pillars: equity, sustainability, productivity, empowerment (Haq 1995: 16–20; UNDP 1995: 12). Equity indicates equity in opportunities – not per se in results, as people shall make their own choices about what they want to achieve. All people should have equitable access to opportunities. Sustainability implies that principle of equity of opportunities includes the next gen-
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erations: ‘everyone should have equal access to development opportunities – now and in the future’ (Haq 1995: 19). The conception of sustainability within the HD approach is, thus, broader than environmental sustainability but permeates all spheres of human life: ‘the purpose of development is to create an environment in which all people can expand their capabilities, and opportunities can be enlarged for both present and future generations’ (UNDP 1994: 13). Productivity means that people should be able to act creatively towards the common good through, for example, investment in human capital as well as a facilitating macroeconomic environment. Thus, HD requires an adequate economic strategy that is focused on enhancing people’s freedom and ability to serve their society. Empowerment implies that people are recognized as agents. Their participation in and leadership of the development process is key. This particularly concerns those at the outskirts of societies or those whose voices have been suppressed as much as the elite. In this respect, HD is also often linked to participatory and democratic practices. Human development also focuses on investigating and implementing ways to enhance people’s capabilities – the means of development. Some capabilities (like certain forms of education) may have both intrinsic value to the people concerned, and also instrumental power to advance positive societal outcomes. So it aims to recognize and nurture instrumental freedoms while rejecting an understanding of them as the prime objective of development. Thus, it pragmatically explores efficient and effective policy strategies while maintaining its primary focus on the end, and not the means, of development. Based on these central features, and introducing explicit considerations like equity, non-discrimination by race, gender, and other identities, respect for human rights, participation, empowerment, sustainability and so on, the HD approach has ● brought a new and different understanding of progress to the development discourse which ‘sets priorities among goals using several principles at the same time [… such as] poverty reduction, equity, efficiency, voice and participation, sustainability, respect for human rights and
fostering the common good’ (Alkire 2010: 44). ● inspired different ways of how progress is measured, initially using the Human Development Index (HDI). ● incited an integration of people, their choices and opportunity, their agency and empowerment, their needs, and benefits into development processes, planning, and decisions (Haq 1995: 4, 4–11). ● demanded a reformulation and reorientation of policies towards people and their benefit. This includes ‘universal policies’ such as pro-poor growth strategies and empowerment of women and marginalized groups (Jahan 2019). Finally, the HD approach is complemented as well as differentiated by other related key concepts: Inequality is a key concept integrated within the HD approach in particular as a discussion of inequity. Inequality has featured in some way in all HDR – for example through a reflection of gender disparities, disproportionate consequences of environmental degradation or unequal development in the process of globalization. In terms of measurement, the Gini coefficient or the Gender Development Index (GDI) and Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) has often been used for such a discussion. Human Security was introduced in the 1990s and revolutionarily ‘humanized’ the concept of security, which was until then conceptually bound to the state and its territory. Human security expanded the concept of security to include not just ‘territorial aggression’, but protecting ‘the vital core of all human lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and human fulfilment’ (Commission on Human Security 2003: 4) Human development focuses on expanding freedoms, while human security focuses on protecting them from being undermined during difficult periods. Human development has a tangible synergy with the language of Human Rights. Both concepts perceive people as the end and push for greater human freedoms: ‘Human rights and human development share a common vision and a common purpose – to secure, for every human being, freedom, well-being and dignity’ (UNDP 2000). The main difference is that human rights tend to be mainly located Alexandra Fortacz and Sabina Alkire
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in the legal sphere, whereas human development is anchored in the space of capabilities and tends to be advanced by social, economic and political policies (Alkire 2010: 55–9). Human Capital emphasizes the value of people as a resource and of investment in people for development. However, as Haq (1995: 19) remarks: ‘While valid to some extent, it obscures the centrality of people as the ultimate end of development.’ People in the concept of human capital are understood as means, instrumental to a further purpose, whereas HD includes the instrumental value of human capital, and emphasizes people as ends. Next to the HD approach, scholars and policymakers have made a case for measuring social progress based on Happiness or subjective well-being (Layard 2011; Helliwell et al. 2020; Stiglitz 2010). Thus, as in the HD approach, income is deemed as an insufficient marker of well-being. However, with a few exceptions (e.g. the Gross National Happiness concept in Bhutan), happiness or well-being is far narrower than the HD approach. Sen has often warned against adaptive preferences by which poor people may be happy while millionaires, miserable – a situation Carol Graham documented empirically. So focusing only on happiness may shackle equitable policies. Furthermore, agency is often neglected: it is the psychological experts who tell policy actors how to make people happy. Nevertheless, studies and literature on happiness bring invaluable insights and evidence for HD regarding how happiness and well-being is understood and valued and how it connects with other dimensions, such as health, education or employment (Alkire 2010: 62–6). The human development and Multidimensional Poverty approach share common roots in Sen’s capability approach. As a result, next to embracing the space of human capabilities and the principle of multidimensionality, they both embrace three central features: people, participation and a policy focus (Alkire and Fortacz 2021). While HD focuses on the expansion of freedoms, multidimensional poverty concentrates on what Sen (1999: xii) described as the ‘removal of substantial unfreedoms’. Thus, the reduction of multidimensional poverty is a central part of human development – not least, as Anand and Sen (2000) asserted, that progress in development needs to be evaluAlexandra Fortacz and Sabina Alkire
ated based on how the poor and deprived fare, not just according to all people.
Human development reports
The idea of HDR as an annual independent report produced by the UNDP was first introduced by Mahbub ul Haq to UNDP’s administrator, William Draper III, in 1989 (Haq 1995: 25). Since 1990, UNDP and the HDRO have published a HDR nearly annually.2 The purpose of this series is twofold: first, it lays out a fundamentally different development approach by reflecting and discussing topical issues from a human development perspective (Fukuda-Parr 2003: 302); second, it reports and monitors progress in HD based on people-focused measurements. In the first few years after its inception, the HDR was key to set the stage for a paradigm change in development and raising understanding and awareness of human development. The first HDR (UNDP 1990: 9) did so with the basic premise that ‘[p]eople are the real wealth of a nation’, and an apt explanation of human development and its importance: It is about more than GNP growth, more than income and wealth and more than producing commodities and accumulating capital. A person’s access to income may be one of the choices, but it is not the sum total of human endeavour. Human development is a process of enlarging people’s choices. The most critical of these wide-ranging choices are to live a long and healthy life, to be educated and to have access to resources needed for a decent standard of living. Additional choices include political freedom, guaranteed human rights and personal self-respect. Development enables people to have these choices. No one can guarantee human happiness, and the choices people make are their own concern. But the process of development should at least create a conducive environment for people, individually and collectively, to develop their full potential and to have a reasonable chance of leading productive and creative lives in accord with their needs and interests. (UNDP 1990: 1)
Subsequent reports built on this and further elaborated HD through critical reflection of financing (1991), global markets (1992), economic reforms and growth (1996, 2010) as well as highlighting the importance of people’s participation, agency, and autonomy
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Human development reports
Year
Title
Theme
1990
Concept and Measurement of Human Development
Concept & Measurement
1991
Financing Human Development
Concept, Measurement, Financing
1992
Global Dimensions of Human Development
Concept, Measurement, Global Markets
1993
People’s Participation
Concept, Measurement, Participation
1994
New Dimensions of Human Security
Human Security & Conflicts
1995
Gender and Human Development
Gender
1996
Economic Growth and Human Development
Economic Reforms & Growth
1997
Human Development to Eradicate Poverty
Poverty & Inequality
1998
Consumption for Human Development
Globalization & Economic Integration
1999
Globalization with a Human Face
Globalization & Economic Integration
2000
Human Rights and Human Development
Human Rights
2001
Making New Technologies Work for Human Development
Information & Communication Technologies
2002
Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World
Democracy
2003
Millennium Development Goals: A Compact Among Nations to End Poverty & Inequality Human Poverty
2004
Cultural Liberty in Today’s Diverse World
2005
International Cooperation at Crossroads: Aid, Trade and Security in Inequality, Aid, International Cooperation
Culture
an unequal world 2006
Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis
2007/08
Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World
Water Climate Change
2009
Overcoming Barriers: Human Mobility and Development
Displacement, Internally Displaced Persons,
2010
The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development
Concepts & Measurement
2011
Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All
Environment & Energy
2013
The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World
Globalization & Economic Integration
2014
Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Sustainable Development
Migration
Resilience 2015
Work for Human Development
Trade
2016
Human Development for Everyone
Concepts & Measurement
2018
Statistical Update: Human Development Indices and Indicators
Measurement
2019
Beyond Income, beyond Averages, beyond Today: Inequalities in
Inequality
Human Development in the 21st Century 2020
The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene
Global Human Development Report
Source: UNDP (n.d.b).
(1993, 2016). In 1994, the report introduced the concept of human security. The 1997 HDR advanced a multidimensional understanding of poverty. Further reports discussed key issues, including gender (1995), globalization (1998, 1999, 2013, 2014), human rights (2000), technology (2001), democracy (2002), cultural diversity (2004), international cooperation (2005), water (2006), climate change and sustainability (2007/08, 2011, 2020), migration (2009), and work (2015), through the lens of human development. The most recent HDR 2020 addressed the acute issue of the COVID-19 pandemic, while shining light on greater dynamics
encapsulated in the new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, in which ‘human activity has become the dominant force shaping the planet’ (UNDP 2020: 4) – and its consequences on our natural environment (Table 1) In the thirty years since its inception, the HDRs have integrated human development within public policy debates and achieved a paradigm change in development. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) partially embody this more balanced approach to development, which is explicitly multidimensional, balancing environmental, political, social and economic aspects, and embodying goals of voice and agency, well-being, incluAlexandra Fortacz and Sabina Alkire
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sion and equity. But is such an ambitious optic feasible? We turn now to that question.
Measuring progress
Measurements are crucial not only to better understand the matter at hand, but also to incite the appropriate action (Atkinson 2019: 1). Part of the issue of development in the 1980s and before was measurement as income and other monetary-based measurements insufficient to capture the multi-faceted character of people’s lives and the interconnectedness of these different aspects. The – at the time of its construction – revolutionary result of the search for an alternative measure was the HDI – a simple composite index which incorporated three equally weighted dimensions: health, knowledge and income (Figure 1). The HDI challenged GNP because although very crude, the ranking of countries by HDI different visibly from their ranking from GNP. The HDI garnered considerable media attention, hence a plethora of composite indices later emerged, such as the GDI and Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, as well as the Global Peace Index, Legatum Prosperity Index, OECD’s Better Life Index and Social Progress Index. There is a general agreement that, albeit novel, the HDI and similar metrics are imperfect. And yet they make their essential point clearly: GNI alone does not proxy even basic gains in health and knowledge.
Future pathways
Since its emergence, the HD approach has gained a wide-reaching acceptance and has played a crucial and influential role determin-
Source: UNDP (n.d.a).
Figure 1
The human development index
Alexandra Fortacz and Sabina Alkire
ing international development programmes: With the Millennium Development Goals, it has moved from the margins to the mainstream of development and finally answered the call for global HD targets (Alkire 2010: 48), and its importance is further echoed and highlighted in the SDGs and the Agenda 2030 (Jahan 2016). As new themes emerge: subjective well-being, sense of belonging, and values, we see that the human development paradigm is not static and fixed. While its conceptual core remains stable, the human development approach allows a consideration of different aspects of well-being across time. For example, while environmental aspects have always been part of the conception of HDR, they are now inextricably embedded in it (Alkire and Fortacz forthcoming; UNDP 2020). Nevertheless, many people are still not able to live a long and fulfilling life. In 2019, the former HDRO director, Jahan (2019) discusses several parts of society, such as women and girls, minorities, migrants and refugees, LGBTI community, or persons with disabilities, who are still left behind. In particular, legal and political conditions, violence, social norms and elitist institutions act as barriers against progress in HD. As a way forward, he mentioned the need to enlarge collective capabilities, follow sustainable development and recognize the interdependence of freedoms. Furthermore, social norms and values have increasingly gained visibility (Jahan 2019; Alkire and Fortacz forthcoming). As the HDR 2020 states, ‘Like a three-legged stool, capabilities, agency and values are inseparable in how we think
Heritage and development 329
about human development in the context of the Anthropocene. We cannot assume that expanding people’s capabilities will automatically ease planetary pressures’ (UNDP 2020: 6). Furthermore, while evidence confirmed that the HD approach was able to propel funds and resources towards people and their capabilities and achieve progress, Stewart et al. (2018: 24–5) find that it has yet to change ‘thrust of economic policy – either in terms of the role of the market, or in relation to macroeconomic stabilization policies’. It follows that the journey of the HD approach that many people around the world have embarked on is still in progress. The concept and approach of HD will continue to be revisited, rethought, and further configured. Alexandra Fortacz and Sabina Alkire
Fukuda-Parr, Sakiko. 2003. ‘The Human Development Paradigm: Operationalizing Sen’s Ideas on Capabilities’. Feminist Economics 9 (2–3): 301–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 1354570022000077980. Haq, Mahbub ul. 1995. Reflections on Human Development. Ebook Central. Oxford University Press. Helliwell, John, Richard Layard, Jeffrey Sachs, and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve. 2020. ‘World Happiness Report 2020’. New York, Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Jahan, Selim. 2016. ‘Human Development and the 2030 Agenda: Effecting Positive Change in People’s Lives’. Development Matters (blog). 10 November 2016. https://oecd-development -matters.org/2016/11/10/human-development -and-the-2030-agenda-effecting-positive -change-in-peoples-lives/. Jahan, Selim. 2019. ‘Human Development and Universalism: From Ideas to Policies’. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 20 (2): 233–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/19452829 .2019.1574726. Notes Layard, Richard. 2011. Happiness : Lessons from 1. Other scholars, most notably Nussbaum (2011), a New Science. Revised and updated. Penguin. have also developed and worked on the capability Nussbaum, Martha Craven. 2011. Creating approach. Capabilities: The Human Development 2. No report was published in 2012 and 2017 and Approach. [Electronic Resource] Ebook a joint report was published for 2007 and 2008. Central. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/ References login?url=http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ oxford/detail.action?docID=3300953. Alkire, Sabina. 2010. ‘Human Development: Definitions, Critiques, and Related Concepts’. Sen, Amartya. 1985. ‘Well-Being, Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984’. The United Nations Development Programme, Human Journal of Philosophy 82 (4): 169–221. https:// Development Research Paper 2010/01. http://hdr doi.org/10.2307/2026184. .undp.org/en/content/human-development-de Sen, Amartya. 1990. ‘Development as Capability %1Fnitions-critiques-and-related-concepts. Expansion’. In Keith Griffin and John Alkire, Sabina, and Alexandra Fortacz. Knight (eds), Human Development and the 2021. ‘Insights for Policymaking from the International Development Strategy for the Multidimensional Poverty Index’. In Swarnim 1990s. Macmillan. https://digitallibrary.un.org/ Waglé and Kanni Wignaraja (eds), The Great record/75128. Upheaval: Resetting Development Policy and Sen, Amartya. 1995. Inequality Reexamined. Institutions for the Decade of Action in the Oxford Scholarship Online. Clarendon Press. Asia-Pacific. Cambridge University Press. Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. Alkire, Sabina, and Alexandra Fortacz. Oxford University Press. Forthcoming. ‘Human Flourishing on a Shared Sen, Amartya. 2000. ‘A Decade of Human Planet: Capabilities, Agency, and Values’. Development’. Journal of Human Development Anand, Sudhir, and Amartya Sen. 2000. ‘Human 1 (1): 17–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/ Development and Economic Sustainability’. 14649880050008746. World Development 28 (12): 2029–49. https:// Sen, Amartya. 2017. Collective Choice and Social doi.org/10.1016/S0305–750X(00)00071–1. Welfare. Expanded edition. Penguin Books. Atkinson, A.B. 2019. Measuring Poverty around Stewart, Frances, Gustav Ranis, and Emma the World. Princeton University Press. Samman. 2018. Advancing Human Commission on Human Security. 2003. ‘Human Development: Theory and Practice. Oxford Security Now’. https://reliefweb.int/report/world/ Scholarship Online. Oxford University Press. human-security-now-protecting-and-empowering Stiglitz, Joseph E. 2010. Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up. New Press. -people.
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330 Elgar encyclopedia of development UNDP. 1990. ‘Human Development Report 1990: Concept and Measurement of Human Development’. New York. http://hdr.undp.org/ en/reports/global/hdr1990. UNDP. 1991. ‘Human Development Report 1991: Financing Human Development’. http:// hdr .undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr1991. UNDP. 1994. ‘Human Development Report 1994: New Dimension of Human Security’. http://www.hdr.undp.org/en/content/human -development-report-1994. UNDP. 1995. ‘Human Development Report 1995: Gender and Human Development’. http://hdr .undp.org/en/content/human-development -report-1995. UNDP. 2000. ‘Human Development Report 2000: Human Rights and Human Development’. http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human -development-report-2000.
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UNDP. 2010. ‘Human Development Report 2010: The Real Wealth of Nations – Pathways to Human Development’. http://hdr.undp.org/en/ content/human-development-report-2010. UNDP. 2020. Human Development Report 2020: The Next Frontier. Human Development and the Anthropocene. http://hdr.undp.org/sites/ default/files/hdr2020.pdf. UNDP. N.d.a. ‘Human Development Index’. Human Development Reports. United Nations. https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/ human-development-index. UNDP. N.d.b. ‘Human Development Reports 1990–2020’. http://hdr.undp.org/en/global -reports.
Human Development Index Introduction
Quantitative international indices are influential in development advocacy, policy and research. As Høyland et al. (2012) observe, ‘one can hardly open a newspaper without finding a reference to an international index’ and refer to the ‘tyranny’ of the rankings produced by these indices. The Human Development Index (HDI) is one such index. It aggregates the achievements of individual countries in three dimensions: health, education and income. Created under the auspices of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and arguably the most influential index for assessing development levels, the HDI has played a major role in conveying the fundamental message that there is more to development than achievement in income. The HDI has also been responsible for increased public interest in, and scrutiny of, development achievements, in large part due to the publication of HDI country rankings, which have received enormous attention since the index’s inception in 1990, when it appeared in the first UNDP Human Development Report (UNDP, 1990). The Report has been published in most subsequent years, with annual HDI scores for more than 190 countries appearing in them. The HDI has been subject to many criticisms over the years, notwithstanding its many positive contributions. The most fundamental and persistent criticism concerns the assignment of equal weights of one-third to each of the three achievements (see Kelley, 1991; Rao, 1991; Ogwang, 1994; Srinivasan, 1994; Noorbakhsh, 1998a, 1998b; Lai, 2000; McGillivray and Noorbakhsh, 2007; Ravallion, 2011, 2012; McGillivray et al., 2023, among many other studies).1 Such a weighting scheme accords with the questionable assumption that each achievement is just as important as the others, for all years and countries for which the HDI is reported. An obvious alternative is for the weights to vary across achievements and countries, so that not all achievements in all countries receive the same weight. This criticism of the HDI’s weights has led to concerns about the robustness of HDI country rankings
(Permanyer, 2011; Ravallion, 2011; Foster et al., 2013; Seth and McGillivray, 2018). Yet despite this and many other criticisms, some of which the UNDP has sought to deflect while ignoring others, the HDI remains highly influential in development circles.2 This entry provides a quantitative examination of the HDI. It consists of three further sections. The second section outlines the formulation of the current HDI. The third section provides HDI profiles of selected countries, focusing on those with the highest and lowest HDI values, respectively. The fourth section concludes, briefly considering possible future directions for the design and use of the HDI.
The Human Development Index
The HDI has had many formulations since it first appeared in 1990. It is currently defined as an equally weighted geometric mean, which can be written as: _1
k i = 1, … , n HDIi = ∏ H [ j=1 i,j] k = 3 k
( 1)
where Hi,j is achievement of country i in health, education or income (UNDP, 2020a). It is obvious from (1) that the weights, 1 / k , necessarily sum to one and have the same value for each achievement. A geometric mean formulation was adopted by the UNDP in the Human Development Report 2010 (UNDP, 2010). It is justified on the assumption that there is not perfect substitutability between the three HDI achievements, so that, for example, a decline in any one achievement cannot be fully compensated in terms of overall human development achievement by an increase in another.3 Hi,j for j = 1, 3 (health and income) is obtained from: hi,j − h j nz
Hi,j = _ h at − h nz j
j
( 2)
where hi,j is an indicator of health or income achievement in country i, hj nz is a ‘natural zero’ of hi,j and hj at is an ‘aspirational target’ for hi,j . The health achievement indicator, hi,1 , is life expectancy at birth in country i and the income achievement indicator, hi,3 , is the natural logarithm of $PPP GNI per capita
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(UNDP, 2020a). As is noted below, a natural zero value is not necessarily zero. It follows from (2) that achievements in health and income are defined by the transformed values of their respective indicators, and theoretically range between zero (if hi,j = hj nz ) and unity (if hi,j = hj at ). Achievement in the education, H i,2 , is obtained from: + v2 Hi,j Hi,j = υ1 Hi,2,1 hi,2,1 − h2,1 nz h − h 2,2 nz = υ 1 _ h at − h nz + υ 2 _ hi,2,2 at − h nz 2,1
2,1
2,2
(3)
2,2
where hi,2,1 is the number of years a child of school-entrance age in i is expected to spend in primary to tertiary schooling, and hi,2,2 is the mean number of completed years of schooling for people aged 25 years or over at are the aspirational goals of in i, h2,1 at and h2,2 nz are their natural these indicators, h2,1 nz and h2,2 zeros and υ1 and υ2 are weights that both equal 0.50 (UNDP, 2020a).4 It follows from (2) and (3) that achievements are defined as the transformed values of the chosen indicators. The theoretical maximum achievement in each dimension is unity, which occurs if country i achieves the corresponding aspirational target. The theoretical minimum in each is zero, which occurs if the relevant indicator equals its natural zero. The natural zero for life expectancy is set at 20 years, which is based on historical evidence that no country in the twentieth century had a life expectancy of less than 20 years (Maddison, 2010; Oeppen and Vaupel, 2002; Riley, 2005, cited in UNDP, 2020a). The aspiration goal for life expectancy is set at 85 years, which the UNDP considers a realistic aspirational target for many countries since the early 1990s. The UNDP sets the natural zeros for both education variables at zero years, as it is of the view that societies can subsist without formal education. The aspirational goal for expected years of schooling is set at 18, which is the equivalent to achieving a master’s degree in most countries. That for mean years of schooling is set at 15, which according to the UNDP is the projected maximum of this indicator for 2025 (UNDP, 2020a). The natural zero value for GNI per capita Mark McGillivray
is set at $100, which the UNDP considers justifiable by what is claimed as a considerable amount of unmeasured subsistence and non-market production in economies close to the minimum, which is not captured in the official data. The aspirational value for GNI per capita is set at $75,000. In support of this, the UNDP cites Kahneman and Deaton (2014), who have shown that there is virtually no gain in human development from annual incomes above $75,000 per capita (UNDP, 2020a).
HDI country scores
HDI scores for various countries are shown in Table 1. The countries that have been selected are those with the highest 25 and lowest 25 HDI scores in 2019, and as such those with the highest and lowest achieved human development levels. The year 2019 is current the latest for which HDI scores are published by the UNDP. HDI scores were published for 189 countries for that year. The top three human development achievement countries are Norway, Ireland and Switzerland. Fourteen of the top 25 countries are European. Four of the 25 countries are Asian, those countries being Hong Kong, Japan and the Republic of Korea (South Korea, as it is more widely known). The bottom 25 countries are dominated by those located in sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, all but three are from that region. The three countries in the bottom 25 group that are not sub-Saharan Africa are Afghanistan, Haiti and Yemen. The country with the lowest HDI score in 2019 is Niger. Progress in achieved levels of human development between the years 1990 and 2019 are shown in Table . Changes for the countries with the 25 highest and 25 lowest changes in HDI scores between these years are shown. Owing to data availability, changes in HDI scores for 144 countries were able to be calculated. As such, the sample shown in Table 2 consists of roughly a third of such countries. The actual calculation simply compared HDI scores in 1990 to those in 2019. It is interesting that of these 144 countries, all but one record increases in their overall levels of achieved human development between these two years, which span a period of 30 years. That one country whose HDI in 2019 as the same level as it was in 1990, is Libya.
Heritage and development 333 Table 1
Countries with highest and lowest human development achievement based on HDI scores, 2019
Top 25 Countries
HDI Score
Bottom 25 Countries
HDI Score
Norway
0.957
Lesotho
0.527
Ireland
0.955
Djibouti
0.524
Switzerland
0.955
Togo
0.515
Hong Kong, China (SAR)
0.949
Senegal
0.512
Iceland
0.949
Afghanistan
0.511
Germany
0.947
Haiti
0.510
Sweden
0.945
Sudan
0.510
Australia
0.944
Gambia
0.496
Netherlands
0.944
Ethiopia
0.485
Denmark
0.940
Malawi
0.483
Finland
0.938
Congo (Democratic Republic of the)
0.480
Singapore
0.938
Guinea-Bissau
0.480
United Kingdom
0.932
Liberia
0.480
Belgium
0.931
Guinea
0.477
New Zealand
0.931
Yemen
0.470
Canada
0.929
Eritrea
0.459
United States of America
0.926
Mozambique
0.456
Austria
0.922
Burkina Faso
0.452
Israel
0.919
Sierra Leone
0.452
Japan
0.919
Mali
0.434
Liechtenstein
0.919
Burundi
0.433
Slovenia
0.917
South Sudan
0.433
Korea (Republic of)
0.916
Chad
0.398
Luxembourg
0.916
Central African Republic
0.397
Spain
0.904
Niger
0.394
Source: Data from UNDP (2020b).
Both groups of top and bottom achievers in terms of progress in achieved human development are highly diverse, and in particular much more so than those with the highest levels of such achievement in 2019. Only three of the 25 countries with the highest achieved levels appear in the top 25 countries based on progress in achievements: Singapore, Republic of South Korea and Ireland. Three of the top 25 HDI levels countries appear in the bottom 25 HDI progress group: Canada, Australia and the United States of America. This, particularly for the three of these countries in the lowest progress group, is partly due to the nature of indicators on which the HDI is based. Each of these countries is very close to or has already reached the above-defined aspirational targets. Regarding the other bottom HDI progress countries, one characteristic stands out: conflict. Many of these countries have since 1990 been conflict affected, in particular Congo, Yemen, Syria, Libya and Serbia.
The HDI: looking ahead
Let us conclude by considering future use of the HDI. It is commonplace in popular discourse circles for criticisms of the choice of dimensions of the index, such as that the HDI does not include dimensions capturing human rights, sustainability, human security and disparity are common criticisms. One of the valid reasons why the inclusion of additional dimensions, or use of other indicators that better capture the existing dimensions, is that data availability would dictate the country coverage of the HDI would be significantly reduced. Other valid reasons for avoiding the inclusion of addition dimensions are that they complicate inter-temporal comparison and cause confusion among lay users. But warning signs over the use of the HDI can be provided. The HDI is a mashup index. Ravallion (2011: 1) defines a mashup as a ‘composite index for which existing theory and practice provides little or no guidance Mark McGillivray
334 Elgar encyclopedia of development Table 2
Countries with highest and lowest progress in human development achievement based on HDI scores between 1990 and 2019
Top 25 Countries
Change in HDI Score
Bottom 25 Countries
Change in HDI Score
Rwanda
0.295
Russian Federation
0.089
China
0.262
Jamaica
0.089
Myanmar
0.241
Serbia
0.084
Bangladesh
0.238
Barbados
0.082
Turkey
0.237
Samoa
0.082
Morocco
0.229
South Africa
0.082
Mozambique
0.229
Fiji
0.081
Cambodia
0.226
Canada
0.079
Uganda
0.224
Congo
0.074
Viet Nam
0.221
Australia
0.073
Iran (Islamic Republic of)
0.218
Brunei Darussalam
0.071
Singapore
0.217
Tonga
0.071
India
0.216
Eswatini (Kingdom of)
0.070
Nepal
0.215
Yemen
0.069
Afghanistan
0.209
Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)
0.067
Lao People’s Democratic Republic
0.208
Namibia
0.065
Thailand
0.200
Central African Republic
0.063
Mali
0.200
United States of America
0.061
Guinea
0.195
Moldova (Republic of)
0.060
Indonesia
0.195
Kyrgyzstan
0.057
Korea (Republic of)
0.184
Ukraine
0.054
Guatemala
0.182
Tajikistan
0.051
Ireland
0.182
Lesotho
0.029
Benin
0.181
Syrian Arab Republic
0.017
Mauritius
0.180
Libya
0.000
Source: Author calculations using data from UNDP (2020b).
for its design … (with) an unusually large number of moving parts, which the producer is essentially free to set’. Ravallion (2011: 1) points to a number of pitfalls in the use of these indices, noting that ‘clearer warning signs are needed for users’ of them. Arguably the most important warning sign is over the weights and their impact on rankings, as was noted at the outset of this entry. The UNDP needs to make it clear to HDI users that the weights of the index are arbitrary, and that small changes to weights can have large impacts on country HDI ranking. Mark McGillivray
Notes 1.
For studies supporting equal weights, see Stapleton and Garrod (2007) and Nguefack-Tsague et al. (2011). 2. Many of the studies cited above refer to other issues. Other studies referring to additional issues include McGillivray (1991), White and McGillivray (1993), Ravallion (1997), Cahill (2005) and Lüchters and Menkhoff (1996).
Mark McGillivray
3.
4.
The general formulation of the HDI from 1990 to 2009 was an arithmetic mean, which rests on the assumption of perfect substitutability between achievements. The natural zeros and aspirational targets are set by the UNDP. Details are in UNDP (2020a). Since many countries exceed the aspirational targets in education and income, and achievements are capped at unity, achievements in these dimensions are not (quite) a linear transformation of the indicators on which they are based.
References
Cahill, M.B. (2005), ‘Is the Human Development Index Redundant?’ Eastern Economic Journal 31(1): 1–5. Foster, J.E., M. McGillivray and S. Seth (2013), ‘Composite Indices: Rank Robustness, Statistical Association, and Redundancy’. Econometric Reviews 32(1): 35–56. Høyland, B., K. Moene and F. Willumsen (2012), ‘The Tyranny of International Index Rankings’. Journal of Development Economics 97(1): 1–14. Kahneman, D. and A. Deaton (2014), ‘High Income Improves Evaluation of Life But Not Emotional
Heritage and development 335 Well-being’. Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences 107(38): 16489–93. Kelley, A.C. (1991), ‘The Human Development Index: Handle With Care’. Population and Development Review 17(2): 315–24. Lai, D. (2000), ‘Temporal Analysis of Human Development Indicators: Principal Component Approach’. Social Indicators Research 51(3): 331–66. Lüchters, G. and L. Menkhoff (1996), ‘Human Development as Statistical Artifact’. World Development 24(8): 1385–92. Maddison, A. (2010), Historical Statistics of the World Economy, 1–2030 AD. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris. McGillivray, M. (1991), ‘The Human Development Index: Yet Another Redundant Composite Development Indicator?’ World Development 19(10): 1461–8. McGillivray, M. and F. Noorbakhsh (2007), ‘Composite Indices of Human Well-being: Past, Present and Future’, in M. McGillivray (ed.), Human Well-being: Concept and Measurement, Palgrave Macmillan, London. McGillivray, M., P. Hansen, S. Feeny, S. Knowles and F. Ombler (2023), ‘What are Valid Weights for the Human Development Index? A Discrete Choice Experiment for the United Kingdom’. Social Indicators Research 165(2): 679–84. Nguefack-Tsague, G., S. Klasen and W. Zucchini (2011), ‘On Weighting the Components of the Human Development Index: A Statistical Justification’. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 12(2): 183–202. Noorbakhsh, F. (1998a), ‘A Modified Human Development Index’. World Development 26(3): 517–28. Noorbakhsh, F. (1998b), ‘The Human Development Index: Some Technical Issues and Alternative Indices’. Journal of International Development 10(5): 589–605. Oeppen, J. and J.W. Vaupel (2002), ‘Broken Limits to Life Expectancy’. Science 296: 1029–31. Ogwang, T. (1994), ‘The Choice of Principle Variables for Computing the Human Development Index’. World Development 22(12): 2011–14.
Permanyer, I. (2011), ‘Assessing the Robustness of Composite Indices Rankings’. Review of Income and Wealth 57(2): 306–26. Rao, B.V.V. (1991), ‘Human Development Report 1990: Review and Assessment’. World Development 19(10): 1451–60. Ravallion, M. (1997), ‘Good and Bad Growth: The Human Development Reports’. World Development 25(5): 631–8. Ravallion, M. (2011), ‘Mashup Indices of Development’. The World Bank Research Observer 27: 1–32. Ravallion, M. (2012), ‘Troubling Tradeoffs in the Human Development Index’. Journal of Development Economics 99(2): 201–9. Riley, J.C. (2005), Poverty and Life Expectancy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Seth, S. and M. McGillivray (2018), ‘Composite Indices, Alternative Weights and Comparison Robustness’. Social Choice and Welfare 54(4): 657–79. Srinivasan, T.N. (1994), ‘Human Development: A New Paradigm or Reinvention of the Wheel?’ American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings 84(2): 238–43. Stapleton, L.M and G.D Garrod (2007), ‘Keeping Things Simple: Why the Human Development Index Should Not Diverge from Its Equal Weights Assumption’. Social Indicators Research 84(2): 179–88. UNDP (1990), Human Development Report 1990, Oxford University Press, New York. UNDP (2010), Human Development Report 2019, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. UNDP (2019), Human Development Report 2019, United Nations Development Programme, New York. UNDP (2020a), Human Development Report 2020 Technical Notes, United Nations Development Programme, New York. UNDP (2020b), Human Development Report 2020, United Nations Development Programme, New York. White, H. and M. McGillivray (1993), ‘Measuring Human Development? The UNDP’s Human Development Index’. Journal of International Development 5(2): 183–92.
Mark McGillivray
Human trafficking and slavery Chattel slavery – the legal ownership of people – has been ‘abolished’ under international law since the nineteenth century. Yet various forms of extreme exploitation, in which one person treats another as if they own them, continue, and even thrive, in the contemporary global economy. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), some 40.3 million people were victims of this ‘modern slavery’ in 2016 (ILO 2017). The framework for their exploitation is typically not property law, but contract: employment and debt (including debt bondage) and forced marriage. Through Target 8.7 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, states committed to end modern slavery, forced labour and human trafficking by 2030. In doing so they recognized that these forms of exploitation pose an obstacle to sustainable development. Yet slavery and development have a complicated history.
The impacts of slavery on development
Some colonial administrators present at the birth of international ‘development’ as a field, were simultaneously avowed slavery ‘abolitionists’ and supporters of other forms of forced labour, such as conscripted corvée labour, in promoting developing countries’ economic growth (Quirk 2011). Cliometricians and historians have considered whether unfree labour has in fact promoted economic development, identifying deep links between slavery and patterns of economic growth in the US and Western Europe (Williams 1944; Fogel and Engerman 1974; Fogel 2006; Stelzner and Beckert 2021). More recent work has established the microeconomic impact of coercion in the workplace (Acemoglu and Wolitzky 2011). Other researchers have shown, at the macroeconomic level, that slave societies’ growth in fact came at the expense of communities from which enslaved people were taken, including in Africa (Nunn 2008), Latin America (Acemoglu, García-Jimeno and Robinson 2012) and Eastern Europe
(Buggle and Nafziger 2016; Markevich and Zhuravskaya 2018). More recent work has argued that slavery in fact makes everyone worse off – except for the traffickers, slavers and supporters that control the system of slavery (Datta and Bales 2013; Wright 2017). Slavery and human trafficking seem in fact to impose ten different drags on development (Cockayne 2021). First, the use of coercion in employment reduces productivity. It demotivates workers, while setting wages below the marginal value product of labour, producing an inefficient allocation of labour within the whole economy. Coercion may create firm-level or even sectoral efficiencies in the short term, especially in relatively unskilled labour markets; however, these are usually geographically and temporally limited, and lead in time to economy-wide inefficiency. Second, slavery leads to institutionalized inequality. Slavers privatize profits by reducing others’ economic agency, while socializing the costs of doing so. The impacts are enduring (Piketty 2020). Nunn (2008) finds that trans-Atlantic slavery accounts today for 72 per cent of income disparity between African nations and the rest of the world – and 99 per cent of the disparity between these nations and other developing countries. Third, slavery reduces economic multipliers. Victims’ control over their wages is usually constrained by exploiters. While being forced to work, victims may be paid a nominal wage – but are then also forced to buy goods and services at inflated prices from a ‘company store’, or charged mandatory ‘fees’ or extortionate interest rates on notional debts. Those enslaved consequently cannot use their (unpaid) wages to improve their nutrition or access to healthcare, to invest in education or household enterprise, or to improve their own welfare as they see fit in other ways. Fourth, slavery depresses innovation. It reduces both victims’ and exploiters’ incentives to innovate. Rents are easier to capture in low-skill production, so employers that use coercion have little incentive to invest in working methods requiring higher-skilled workforce. In both the American South and Imperial Russia, addiction to cheap, coerced labour held back innovation around labour productivity, capital investment and technological entrepreneurialism. This generated
336
Human trafficking and slavery 337
reliance on extensive rather than intensive agriculture, and to economies falling behind their peers. Fifth, slavery increases inter-generational poverty. It harms health and well-being, through entailed physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, occupational hazards, disease and injury, poor working conditions, malnutrition, increased mental illness and addiction, and increased morbidity. It deprives its victims of education, training, and other human capital formation possibilities, with impacts on economic outcomes that endure for the rest of their lives. This has a particularly strong negative impact for women and girls, and for future generations. Victims’ children are frequently separated from their parents, and there is some evidence that children of forced labourers are at increased risk of becoming forced labourers. Large-scale enslavement can lead to demographic skewing, with implications for agricultural production and reproduction rates, polygyny, gender discrimination and violence, and incidence of sexually transmitted diseases. In Central and Eastern Europe, labour coercion under serfdom reduced living standards so much that serfdom is a major explanation for the diverging economic performance of Western and European communities between 1350 and 1864. Sixth, slavery reduces fiscal space, by hitting both the revenue and expenses side of public accounts. On the income side, it reduces both income tax revenues (on wages not paid to workers) and consumption taxes (from their foregone consumption). On the expenditure side, slavery requires both enforcement expenditure and costs relating to management of its impacts. UK government researchers have estimated those costs, for the UK, at between GBP3.3 billion and GBP4.3 billion, annually (Reed et al. 2018). Seventh, because slavery entrenches social discrimination, it fosters ethnic fractionalization and impedes state-building, including through reduction in investment in public goods. Countries with lower (i.e. less rights-respecting) political institutions are more prone to slavery (Landman and Silverman 2019). In Africa, those states that participated – even hundreds of years ago – in the transatlantic slave trade today suffer increased stratification and incidence of violence than those that did not. Researchers
found that individuals whose ancestors were heavily affected by the slave trade exhibit lower trust in their relatives, neighbours, co-ethnics, and local government. This seems to be because slavery so corrodes other institutions and governance that it generates new social norms, beliefs, and values – new institutions – based on mistrust, which are transmitted inter-generationally (Nunn and Wantchekon 2011). Past involvement in large-scale slave trade also seems to correlate to involvement in contemporary conflict (Zhang and Kibriya 2016). Eighth, the illegality of modern slavery is conducive to corruption. Corruption is both a means of facilitating illegal conduct and part of the ‘domain maintenance’ strategy slavers use to buy off state enforcement of anti-slavery norms (Wright 2017; Crane 2013). In some cases, where the modern slavery system is sufficiently large, this can lead to sizeable illicit financial flows of wealth to offshore private accounts. Ninth, modern slavery can harm the environment, creating a feedback loop with compounding negative impacts on sustainable development. In agriculture, slavery skews production towards harmful extensive, rather than intensive, agriculture. It is closely linked to illegal deforestation in several commodity industries (beef, timber, palm oil, sugarcane), which reduces space for carbon sequestration, and increases greenhouse and pollutant emissions. In construction, brick kilns, in which forced labour and debt bondage are often rife, contribute significantly to environmental degradation, primarily through localized air pollution, black carbon and greenhouse gas emissions, and deforestation. And there are overlaps between environmentally unsound illegal fishing and reliance on forced labour (Bales 2016; Brown et al. 2019). Finally, slavery can distort capital markets. Slavery rests on an approach that permits firms to benefit from the labour cost reductions flowing from use of coercion, while ignoring the resulting social and macroeconomic costs. Firms that rely on illegal labour practices – often deep in their supply chains – have lower costs, higher expected net future profits, higher valuations – and thus lower capital costs. Firms that take on the costs of better human capital management are penalized. This creates an unlevel playing field in capital markets that tips in favour of James Cockayne
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firms using forced labour. ESG disclosure standards in capital market regulation are just now beginning to address this.
The turn to agency
Development actors have taken a fragmented approach to responding to these drags on development imposed by modern slavery. At the time of writing, just USD 12 per victim was spent in Official Development Assistance (ODA), aggregated across all ODA donors, each year (Cockayne 2021). This fragmented response is partly a product of the fragmentation of definitions and norms that have emerged over the last century as responses to different forms of exploitation, rooted in the colonial differentiation of ‘slavery’ from other forms of unfree labour. In addition to the norms around freedom from slavery, today incorporated into human rights law, separate international regimes emerged, relating to forced and child labour (governed through the ILO), and relating to sexual exploitation. In the late 1990s, efforts to address the latter were combined with states’ concerns about the role of organized crime in illegal cross-border migration. This led to a Protocol to the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime establishing a new normative regime around ‘human trafficking’. The term ‘modern slavery’ has emerged subsequently as an umbrella advocacy concept, intended to re-connect efforts to tackle exploitation across these different silos (Bales 1999). What connects responses to these different forms of exploitation is arguably a shared goal of defending individual agency. Modern slavery involves a denial of political and social agency, and economic agency: control over how your labour and capital are used, including how the income from that labour is saved, invested or consumed. Development theory tends to assume individuals control their own agency. Even Amartya Sen’s seminal Development as Freedom, which laid the groundwork for a turn towards ‘human development’, assumes that individuals make their own choices about how to develop their capabilities (Sen 1999). Yet for the 40.3 million people currently enslaved, that is not the case. Both development theorists and models have essentially overlooked this important empirical fact. This is closely related to their James Cockayne
tendency to focus on formal work, traditionally downplaying the informal and domestic forms of work in which exploitation is in fact most likely to occur – and its gendered and racialized contours. As a result, development economics may have a ‘blindspot’ regarding the continued existence of modern slavery, and its overall impact on development (Cockayne 2021). In recent years a new approach has emerged, which recasts slavery systems as rentier political economies. This approach treats slavery, forced labour, and human trafficking as systems in which traffickers and their supporters use social characteristics such as gender, caste, and race as discriminating principles underpinning the organization of large-scale exploitation and even repression. One group’s control of another’s agency becomes the basis for systematic rent-taking. That control is enforced through formal and informal institutions, often backed up by the power of the state. It often occurs in a private, informal domain in which informal norms prevail that run contrary to the law’s formal, public commitment to anti-slavery (Crane 2013; Doyle 2020). In this approach, slavery is seen as the product of the intersection of institutional weakness, individual vulnerability, and exploiter strategies (Cockayne 2021). In a globalized economy, the institutions in question are not only national laws and local social norms, but also the structures and practices of global markets and global value chains (GVCs). These have become central to the operation of many labour markets and the creation of value-add. In some cases the buying practices embedded in GVCs, and governments’ willingness to compete for investment by relaxing labour standards, have together created conditions conducive to labour exploitation. Deliberate underpayment, impoverishment, and debt bondage emerge as recurring management practices by which labour brokers at the bottom of a variety of global supply chains extract marginal profit (Phillips and Mieres 2014; LeBaron and Phillips 2019). The pattern recurs across a range of industrial sectors, with exploiters harnessing social norms and institutional loopholes to exploit vulnerable people at the edge of production networks. Development interventions that reduce these vulnerabilities and institutional weaknesses, or disrupt exploiter strategies, can
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reduce the drag imposed by slavery on sustainable development. They may unlock significant development gains – a ‘freedom dividend’. IMF researchers suggest that terminating child marriage, just one component of modern slavery as addressed by SDG 8.7, would increase GDP by some 1.05 per cent (Mitra et al. 2020). Large-scale interventions aimed at reducing modern slavery through these pathways have, in recent years, made inroads in a number of bilateral settings, notably reducing forced labour cases by several hundred thousand per year in the Uzbek cotton harvest, and achieving double-digit percentage reductions in other contexts such as Thai fishing (Cockayne 2021). One central lesson that emerges from these interventions is that any effort to reduce modern slavery is inherently political. The promotion of individual agency in the face of an entrenched system of modern slavery inevitably means redistributing wealth – and power. Unsurprisingly, such interventions are frequently met with active resistance – and even organized violence. Finally, there is a growing push in anti-slavery circles for interventions to be not only informed, but also led, by those with lived experience of modern slavery. This turn to ‘survivor leadership’ recognizes that development interventions themselves offer sites of reproduction – or disruption – of established power relations. It rests on an argument that effective interventions are informed by the specific viewpoints, knowledge, and lived experience of the enslaved and trafficked (Dang 2019). The best way to protect and promote the agency of those vulnerable to slavery, or who have been enslaved, this approach suggests, is precisely to give them that agency, rather than treating them as passive beneficiaries’ of others’ interventions. This turn mirrors the growing emphasis on community participation in and decolonization of development interventions. James Cockayne
References
Acemoglu D., García-Jimeno, C., and Robinson, J.A. (2012) ‘Finding Eldorado: Slavery and Long-run Development in Colombia’, Journal of Comparative Economics, 40(4), 534–64. Acemoglu, D., and Wolitzky, A. (2011) ‘The Economics of Labor Coercion’, Econometrica, 79(2), 555–600. Bales, K. (1999) Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, University of California Press, Berkeley. Bales, K. (2016) Blood and Earth: Modern Slavery, Ecocide, and the Secret to Saving the World, Random House, New York. Brown, D., Boyd, D., Brickell, K., Ives, C.D., Natarajan, N., and Parsons, L. (2019) ‘Modern Slavery, Environmental Degradation and Climate Change: Fisheries, Field, Forests and Factories’, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 1–17, https://doi.org/10 .1177/2514848619887156. Buggle, J.C., and Nafziger, S. (2016) ‘Long-Run Consequences of Labor Coercion: Evidence from Russian Serfdom’, Department of Economics Working Papers 2016–07, Department of Economics, Williams College. Cockayne, J. (2021) Developing Freedom: The Sustainable Development Case for Ending Modern Slavery, Forced Labour and Human Trafficking, United Nations University, New York. Crane, A. (2013) ‘Modern Slavery as a Management Practice: Exploring the Conditions and Capabilities for Human Exploitation’, Academy of Management Review, 38(1), 49–69. Dang, M. (2019). Epistemology of Survival: A Working Paper, University of Nottingham, https://www.minh-dang.com/publications. Datta, M.N., and Bales, K. (2013) ‘Slavery Is Bad for Business: Analyzing the Impact of Slavery on National Economies’, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, 19(2), 205–23. Doyle, P. (2020, 3–31 July) ‘On Economic Agency: The Implications of Slavery for Economics and of Economics for Reparations in the age of COVID-19 and George “Perry” Floyd’ [conference presentation], 22nd Annual Conference of the Association for Heterodox Economics: The World Transformed: The Contributions of Heterodox Economics Globally, AHE, https://www.hetecon.net/2020-papers-and -presentations/. Fogel, R. (2006) The Slavery Debates, 1952–1990: A Retrospective, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge.
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340 Elgar encyclopedia of development Fogel, R.W., and Engerman, S.L. (1974) Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, Little, Brown and Company, New York. ILO [International Labour Office] (2017) Global Estimates of Child Labour: Results and Trends, 2012–2016, ILO, Geneva. Landman, T., and Silverman, B. (2019) ‘Globalization and Modern Slavery’, Politics and Governance, 7(4), 275–90. LeBaron, G., and Phillips, N. (2019) ‘States and the Political Economy of Unfree Labour’, New Political Economy, 24(1), 1–21. Markevich, A., and Zhuravskaya, E. (2018) ‘The Economic Effects of the Abolition of Serfdom: Evidence from the Russian Empire’, American Economic Review, 108 (4–5), 1074–117. Mitra, P., Pondi Endengle, E.M., Plant, M., and Almeida, L.F. (2020) ‘Does Child Marriage Matter for Growth?’ IMF Working Paper, WP/20/27, Washington, DC. Nunn, N. (2008) ‘The Long-term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123(1), 139–76. Nunn, N., and Wantchekon, L. (2011) ‘The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa’, American Economic Review, 101, 3221–52. Phillips, N., and Mieres, F. (2014) ‘The Governance of Forced Labour in the Global Economy’, Globalizations, 12(2), 244–60.
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Piketty, T. (2020) Capital and Ideology, Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Quirk, J. (2011) The Anti-Slavery Project, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Reed, S., Roe, S., Grimshaw, J., and Oliver, R. (2018). The Economic and Social Costs of Modern Slavery: Research Report 100, UK Home Office, London. Sen, A. (1999) Development as Freedom, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Stelzner, M., and Beckert, S. (2021) ‘The Contribution of Enslaved Workers to Output and Growth in the Antebellum United States’, Working Paper Series, Washington Center for Equitable Growth, Washington DC, https:// equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/the -contribution-of-enslaved-workers-to-output -and-growth-in-the-antebellum-united-states/. Williams, E. (1944) Slavery and Capitalism, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill. Wright, R.E. (2017) The Poverty of Slavery: How Unfree Labor Pollutes the Economy, Palgrave Macmillan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978–3 -319–48968–1. Zhang, Y., and Kibriya, S. (2016, July 31–August) ‘The Impact of Slave Trade on Current Civil Conflict in sub-Saharan Africa’ [conference presentation], 2016 Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Annual Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts.
Humanitarian aid
which have become known as ‘the humanitarian principles’:
Humanitarian aid is a term used to describe support provided to save lives and/or urgently improve well-being. It is typically used in the context of response to a disaster or crisis, though its provision in long-term scenarios – often deemed ‘protracted crises’ – questions this traditional view. It includes both material and non-material forms. Examples of the former include delivery of food, medicines, and household supplies. Non-material forms include knowledge-sharing and advocacy. Related terms include humanitarian assistance, humanitarian action, humanitarian response, humanitarian or disaster relief, and humanitarianism.
● Humanity – responding to suffering wherever it is found ● Impartiality – distribute aid according to need, without prejudice towards nationality, gender, ethnicity, race, or religious or political beliefs ● Independence – autonomy from economic, political, military, or other objectives ● Neutrality – refraining from taking sides in hostilities (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs [UN OCHA] 2017).
Cultural traditions and approaches to humanitarian aid
Responding to the needs of people in crisis has roots in different cultural and political traditions around the world. Yeophantong (2014) argues that it is more accurate to speak of humanitarianisms, rooted in different contextual concepts and histories, rather than a singular humanitarianism. This entry does not have scope to cover these varied histories and approaches, and instead offers only a few examples. The act of response can be embedded in such concepts as caring, compassion, solidarity, rights, community, charity, volunteerism, and disaster management, as well as within the mainstream Western concept of humanitarianism. Islamic traditions of compassion and equality include both unprescribed (sadaqah) and requisite (zakat) forms of charity as well as broader cooperation between humans and other living beings (Abuarqub & Philips, 2009). Chinese scholarship on humanitarian aid can be both wary of an underlying imperialism in Western humanitarian approaches and explore Chinese concepts like Confucian benevolence as indigenous traditions that parallel foreign ideas (Yeophantong, 2014). Mainstream Western humanitarian aid’s origin story often begins with Henri Dunant, founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and his experience caring for combatants in 1859 at the Battle of Solferino. The Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement recognizes seven fundamental principles, four of
These principles form a core component of contemporary, mainstream, Western-based humanitarian aid. This general approach to aid that is rooted in a history of Western experiences is not without its own tensions, evolution, debates, and diverging approaches. However, it forms the basis of what many recognize as the international humanitarian system.
Humanitarian aid systems and stakeholders
Humanitarian aid is provided by a wide range of actors. These include non-governmental organizations (NGOs), international agencies, governments, civil society organizations (CSOs), diaspora, militaries, private sector groups, and impacted communities themselves. Actors may have a wide remit, providing multi-faceted humanitarian aid and working across different countries and regions, or they may be small and focused on a particular area. States hold a key role in the humanitarian realm – they can be barriers to aid or facilitators of humanitarian response, and they can also be aggressors in conflicts that lead to widespread civilian suffering. State-led understandings of humanitarian aid also contribute to the architecture of aid, including through policy, funding, and bestowing legitimacy to humanitarian institutions, but they do not hold a monopoly on the parameters of humanitarian response (Yeophantong, 2014). Civil society actors also play a key role. These actors may be focused on humanitarian response around the world (e.g. international NGOs – see the entries Oxfam,
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Plan International, Save the Children in this Encyclopedia), in a specific context, or not focused specifically on humanitarian action but more broadly on community or aspects of community (e.g. community faith-based organizations, diaspora groups). The mainstream international humanitarian system, rooted in Western histories but active around the globe (Davey et al., 2013), comprises NGOs, international organizations such as United Nations (UN) humanitarian agencies, Red Cross/Red Crescent bodies, multilateral bodies, and states. In 2017, this sector employed 570,000 individuals and the majority of its USD27.3 billion funding went to UN agencies, who then in turn flowed much of this funding to NGOs (Knox Clarke et al., 2018). Davey et al. (2013, p. 1) describe the relationship between this imprecise system and other stakeholders – including impacted populations themselves – as one of ‘collaboration, complementarity, or competition’. It is a system that has also become increasingly professionalized and standardized over the last several decades through efforts such as the Sphere Handbook’s Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response and Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability, and the Core Humanitarian Competency Framework.
Access and international humanitarian law
International humanitarian law (IHL) aims to outline the means and methods of international armed conflict, in pursuit of restraining impacts of war on civilians. It is rooted in the Geneva Conventions, additional international legal instruments, and customary international law. While the rise of non-international armed conflict has brought into question the utility of current instruments to protect civilians, IHL remains an important cornerstone of many approaches to humanitarian aid. IHL codifies that states hold the primary responsibility for meeting the needs of civilians. Humanitarian agencies can thus provide a supplementary channel of support, with the consent of the state. However, states can and do hamper international humanitarian agencies’ ability to work in their territories. This is one component of humanitarian access, or the ability of actors to reach and to be reached by affected populations. Parties to conflict can restrict aid in attempts to cut off Nazanin Zadeh-Cummings
resources to enemy areas, or to weaponize food aid – acts which may be violations of IHL (Bakama Bope, 2021). In cases of blockade, humanitarian organizations may act in defiance of state permissions, and/or mobilize cross-border or remote responses.
Funding humanitarian aid
Humanitarian funding is largely short term and reactive, despite the prevalence of funding going toward situations of protracted crisis and the ability of early warning systems to indicate risk in advance of some types of crisis (e.g. drought-induced famine). There are initiatives to move toward more anticipatory funding, such as from the Start Network, but there is yet to be a significant shift in approach across mainstream humanitarian aid. Gross funding for humanitarian aid can be difficult to quantify. Figures may exclude informal flows from within and between communities, diaspora contributions or monetary support through remittances, or funds not recorded through specific reporting channels. The overarching approach is to examine flows in the mainstream international humanitarian system, which is largely dependent on donor states but also includes private sector funding. UN OCHA’s Financial Tracking Service (FTS; UN OCHA, n.d.) provides a centralized source of consistently updated information on humanitarian funding. It relies on reports from stakeholders to track flows, including those from government donors, multilateral donors, disbursement of UN-administered funds, progress on appeals, and flows to and from UN agencies, NGOs, and other actors. It is thus a core source for tracking mainstream international humanitarian funding. This includes funding towards UN-coordinated appeals – a ‘central pillar of the humanitarian response architecture’ that brings together hundreds of humanitarian agencies to make consolidated funding calls (Swithern & Degnan, 2019). According to data from FTS, as well as from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; see Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development entry) Development Assistance Committee, the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), and Development Initiatives, humanitarian aid funding grew year-on-year from USD18.4 billion in 2013
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to USD27.3 billion in 2017 (Knox Clarke et al., 2018, p. 83). However, while volumes of funding increased, the gap between what UN coordinated appeals requested and what they received has widened as funding needs have grown. FTS data shows that in 2013, of USD12.8 billion requested through appeals, 64.9 per cent (USD8.3 billion) was funded. Meanwhile in 2017, 61.3 per cent of the USD23.6 billion requested received funding (USD14.4 billion); 2020 saw USD38.5 billion in requests, but with tracked funding equalling USD19.2 billion, less than half (49.7 per cent) was funded (FTS). Increases in funding are thus relative to increases in funding requirements.
Localization
The 2016 World Humanitarian Summit (WHS), organized by UN OCHA, brought together stakeholders from UN member states, CSOs, NGOs, the private sector, and other humanitarian-related bodies in Istanbul, Turkey. The WHS aimed to inspire commitments for better preparedness and response, share best practices, and revitalize commitment to the humanitarian principles. The lead up to the WHS included regional and thematic consultations, but also scepticism around the summit’s desire for humanitarian transformation. Notably, one prominent NGO, Médecins sans Frontières, pulled out of the WHS weeks before it took place in May 2016, citing concerns that the summit was pulling humanitarian aid into the development realm and that its non-binding commitments would allow states to continue to violate international laws while alleging the importance of ending humanitarian need (MSF, 2016). The Grand Bargain is an agreement between major donors and aid organizations launched at the WHS that ‘aims to get more means into the hands of people in need’ (Inter-Agency Standing Committee [IASC], 2020). It included a commitment to channel, in as direct a route as possible, at least 25 per cent of humanitarian funding to local and national responders by 2020. However, the progress leading up to the commitment’s milestone year was abysmal – 2017 FTS data suggested overall funding that went directly to local and national entities made up only 2.9 per cent of international humanitarian funding – and the vast majority of this
(84 per cent) went to national governments (Knox Clarke et al., 2018, p. 85). In 2020, of 63 signatories (24 of which are donor states) only 13 had achieved the 25 per cent target (Metcalf-Hough et al., 2021, p. 18). In 2021, Grand Bargain signatories convened to devise a follow-up agreement, the Grand Bargain 2.0, which will prioritize localization and quality financing (IASC, 2021). Funding is a notable, though not the sole, aspect of ‘localization’ – an effort to bring humanitarian action closer to impacted communities. At the WHS, then-UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon called for humanitarian response to be ‘as local as possible, as international as necessary’ – a phrase often used to summarize the aims of the ‘localization agenda’. While locally led response has received increased international attention and codification into this agenda in the five years since the summit, it is important to note that the WHS was neither the beginning of calls for more local power, nor has the localization agenda been without critique. For example, Themrise Khan, an independent analyst and researcher, argued that professionals in the global South must challenge global North renderings of them as incapable ‘locals’ and gain control of and accountability for aid (Khan, 2021). Adeso’s Executive Director Degan Ali has continuously spoken out against and highlighted racist, colonial structures within the aid system that hold localization back (quoted in Cornish, 2019). COVID-19 has raised debates around the pandemic’s potential to disrupt humanitarian aid’s flawed approaches in favour of more locally led methods (McVeigh, 2021) though the long-term impact of the pandemic on power shifts remains to be seen.
Shaping needs and priorities
The power to determine what affected communities want and need is not always, or even often, in the hands of communities themselves. A 2021 review of the Grand Bargain found that ‘aid continues to be provided on the basis of what agencies and donors want to give, rather than what people say they want and need’ (Metcalfe-Hough et al., 2021, pp. 7–8). In other words, the international humanitarian system has taken on the role of arbiter of needs and priorities, rather than that position resting directly in the hands of those experiencing threats to their Nazanin Zadeh-Cummings
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human security and well-being. These interpretations of what is needed inform appeals, programming, and how humanitarian actors place themselves within the wider ecosystem of support and assistance available to and by affected populations. The mainstream humanitarian sector employs project cycle management to its work. This brings challenges of capturing complex social and political dynamics within limited and limiting tools such as logframes or donor-driven reporting models and schedules – leading Arbie Baguios, founder of Aid-Reimagined, to call for a decolonization of project management (ALNAP, 2020). One aspect of the project cycle is the dominant model for understanding, collating, and presenting need – known as the ‘needs assessment’. Framings and understandings of humanitarian need often emphasize a deficit, considering what people do not have access to and the subsequent packaging of this deficit by agencies into proposals and projects (Darcy & Hofmann, 2003). Needs assessments can use different qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches for gathering and analysing data. Variations in analysis can result in the same data emerging with different programmatic outcomes, and difficulties in collecting data – such as challenges of access to and by communities, or to and by populations within communities – can also skew needs assessments. The boundaries of what is considered ‘humanitarian aid’ – and thus, ‘humanitarian need’ – can be fuzzy and a point of contention between stakeholders. One example comes from Bosnia in the 1990s – Bosfam, a Bosnian NGO whose name is short for ‘Bosnian Family’, received support, including funding, from Oxfam. In 1995, Bosfam decided to use Oxfam funding to produce a fashion show. The decision was met with concern from Oxfam staff, who worried about reinforcing gender stereotypes but also about imposing restrictions on an organization that Oxfam was supposedly supporting in being an independent entity. Oxfam funded the show, and Deputy Country Representative Fiona Gell wrote, ‘Young refugee women, ground down by bereavement and violence, their futures bleak and hopeless, were striding up and down a catwalk, tripping up and
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down playfully in silken evening dresses and gorgeous woolly jumpers. The atmosphere was bursting with self-confidence … In the Crystal Ballroom I learned the meaning of “psycho-social rehabilitation”’ (Gell, 1997 quoted in Kar, 1999, pp. 27–8). This example of a fashion show during an active conflict illustrates the tensions that can appear between not only the humanitarian and development realms, but also international, national, and local perceptions of what communities need.
Summary
Humanitarian aid comes in diverse forms, from varied traditions, and through many material and non-material avenues. It is thus not a singular concept and process, but one core understanding is that humanitarian aid is material and non-material support for people experiencing acute threats to their safety, health, and/or well-being. Though there is a mainstream Western-based concept of humanitarianism that underpins much of humanitarian aid, it is important to note that there is no singular lens to understand what humanitarianism means. The mainstream concept is rooted in four humanitarian principles – humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality – that serve not as steadfast rules, but as ideas that shape dominant approaches and understandings of humanitarian aid and its delivery. IHL provides the legal background for many contexts where humanitarian actors operate, though non-international armed conflict has challenged IHL’s applicability and influence in contemporary wars. Humanitarian aid funding trends indicate increased volumes of aid funding but widening percentages of funding requests not met. There have been many contemporary discussions around localizing aid – or bringing decision-making and power closer to affected populations – but international stakeholders continue to hold a disproportionate degree of control over the sector. This includes in the project management approach, including interpreting, packaging, and presenting the needs and priorities of affected populations. Nazanin Zadeh-Cummings
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Khan, T. (2021). Racism doesn’t just exist within aid. It’s the structure the sector is built on. The Abuarqub, M., & Phillips, I. (2009). A Brief Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/global History of Humanitarianism in the Muslim -development/2021/aug/31/racism-doesnt-just World. Islamic Relief. -exist-within-aid-its-the-structure-the-sector-is ALNAP (2020). Story in 5: Arbie Baguios | -built-on. Decolonising project management in the aid Knox Clarke, P., Stoddard, A., & Tuchel, L. sector. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= (2018). State of the Humanitarian System. i3ycO3l8QAI. ALNAP/ODI. Bakama Bope, E. (2021). The legal implications of McVeigh, K. (2021). How Covid could be the humanitarian aid blockades. The Conversation. ‘long overdue’ shake-up needed by the aid https://theconversation.com/the-legal sector. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian -implications-of-humanitarian-aid-blockades .com/global-development/2021/feb/05/were -154847. -all-connected-how-aid-can-be-made-to-work Cornish, L. (2019). Q&A: Degan Ali on the -better-after-covid. systemic racism impacting humanitarian Metcalfe-Hough, V., Fenton, W., Willitts-King, responses. Devex. https://www.devex.com/ B., & Spencer, A. (2021). The Grand Bargain news/q-a-degan-ali-on-the-systemic-racism at Five Years An Independent Review. ODI. -impacting-humanitarian-responses-95083. https://odi.org/en/publications/the-grand Darcy, J., & Hofmann, C. (2003). According to -bargain-at-five-years-an-independent-review/. Need? Needs Assessment and Decision-Making MSF [Médecins sans Frontières] (2016). MSF in the Humanitarian Sector. ODI. https://odi to pull out of World Humanitarian Summit. .org/en/publications/according-to-need-needs https://www.msf.org/msf-pull-out-world -assessment-and-decision-making-in-the -humanitarian-summit. -humanitarian-sector/. Swithern, S., & Degnan, C. (2019). UN appeals: Davey, E., Borton, J., & Foley, M. (2013). What does underfunding really mean? A History of the Humanitarian System: Western Development Initiatives Blog. https://devinit Origins and Foundations. ODI. https://odi.org/ .org/blog/un-appeals-underfunding-really en/publications/a-history-of-the-humanitarian -mean/. -system-western-origins-and-foundations/. UN OCHA [United Nations Office for the IASC [Inter-Agency Standing Committee] (2020). Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] (2017). Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on the Grand OCHA on Message: Humanitarian Principles. Bargain. Inter-Agency Standing Committee. https://www.unocha.org/node/897. https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/ UN OCHA [United Nations Office for the frequently-asked-questions-faqs-on-the-grand Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] (n.d.) -bargain. Financial Tracking Service. https://fts.unocha IASC [Inter-Agency Standing Committee] (2021). .org. Grand Bargain 2.0 Framework and Annexes. Yeophantong, P. (2014). Understanding humanInter-Agency Standing Committee. https:// itarian action in East and Southeast Asia: interagencystandingcommittee.org/grand A historical perspective. ODI. https://odi.org/ -bargain-official-website/grand-bargain-20 en/publications/understanding-humanitarian -framework-and-annexes-deenesfr-0. -action-in-east-and-southeast-asia-a-historical Kar, U. (1999). Much ado about knitting: The -perspective/. experience of Bosfam (Bosnia). In F. Porter, I.A. Smyth, & C. Sweetman (eds), Gender Works: Oxfam Experience in Policy and Practice (pp. 19–30). Oxfam GB.
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Humanitarian– development nexus Introduction
The humanitarian–development nexus is a hot topic and has been so for a while, creating expectations as well as challenges to policymakers and practitioners of humanitarian action and development alike (Eade & Vaux, 2007; IDS, 2018; Hilhorst, 2018; Lie, 2020). Basically, the nexus refers to ‘the transition or overlap between the delivery of humanitarian assistance and the provision of long-term development assistance’ (Strand, 2020, p. 4). Humanitarian action and development aid draw upon different rationalities, formal differences and institutional systems that both constitute the starting point and the main dividing line in driving the humanitarian– development nexus. Among policymakers, the nexus is seen as a way to respond to more complex crises formations and the realization that the protracted nature of crises not only hampers development efforts and thus prolong crises, but also dramatically increases the volume, cost and length of humanitarian assistance itself. Among practitioners, however, this policy-shift is easier said than done, as the nexus seeks to merge well-established discursive, institutional and attitudinal differences that are hard to reconcile in practice. This entry outlines central ambitions and problems associated with the humanitarian–development nexus as seen from the perspectives of policy and practice.
The humanitarian–development nexus
The UN 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) reflect the central ideas underpinning the humanitarian– development nexus. They address not only the importance of meeting humanitarian needs and concerns, but also the simultaneous importance to reduce risk, vulnerability and overall level of need. The 2030 Agenda and the SDGs call for new ways of managing and responding to humanitarian crises, and provide a reference framework for humanitarian and development actors to ‘contribute to the common vision of supporting the furthest behind first and a future in which no one is left behind’ (OCHA,
2017, p. 3).1 Strengthening the humanitarian– development nexus thus emerged as a top priority by the majority of stakeholders of the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 (UN, 2016). The humanitarian–development nexus received renewed global attention with the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016. The background is how the protracted nature of crises, which causes scarce development efforts in many situations where vulnerability is the highest, dramatically affects the volume, cost and length of humanitarian assistance. Humanitarian appeals now last longer and cost more. Humanitarian relief – in its classical form of providing food, blankets and shelter – is thus not sufficient to the longer-term needs and concerns of those affected by a protracted crisis. Nor is it cost-effective to remedy long-term concerns with short-term and non-sustainable interventions. The summit’s participants thus shared the vision and moral imperative to prevent crises and reduce people’s level of humanitarian needs, and to end needs by reducing risks and vulnerability. In recognizing that humanitarian assistance alone is insufficient to adequately address the needs of the world’s most vulnerable, the UN summit called for new humanitarian approaches transcending the humanitarian realm. As phrased by the UN Secretary General, ‘we must bring the humanitarian and development spheres closer together from the very beginning of a crisis to support affected communities, address structural and economic impacts and help prevent a new spiral of fragility and instability’ (OCHA, 2017, p. 5). This means, first, that humanitarians are now to engage in conflict prevention and address the root causes of conflicts, which are activities not only typically designated by the development segment but also activities taking place before the crisis occurs. Second, it calls for increased emphasis on humanitarian diplomacy as a way for conflict resolution, thus infringing humanitarianism’s apolitical ethos. Third, it called for greater humanitarian efforts and attention in the post-emergency and reconstruction phase. In operational terms, this means that humanitarian and development actors should engage in joint analysis of needs, risks and vulnerabilities; share information, analysis and understanding of the situation; promote joint programming across segments; align plan-
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ning cycles; and partner with national and local actors to respond to emergencies and humanitarian needs. The summit’s outcome document stresses the need to pursue collective outcome across silos, including actors outside the UN system, in the sense that humanitarian and development actors need to work side-by-side and collaborate in project programming and implementation – a commitment that was endorsed by various UN entities, the World Bank, IOM, donors, NGOs and crisis-affected states, amongst others. Bringing these diverse actors together may be hard, as recognized by OCHA (2017) itself when proposing a new way of working to address the World Humanitarian Summit. The first step is to remove unnecessary institutional and funding barriers to such interagency collaboration. Cooperation spanning the humanitarian–development divide should be based on collective outcomes that each involved actor draws on their respective comparative advantage in operational work, that interventions are context-sensitive and planned over a multi-year timeframe. Achieving this will require broader partnerships among a wide and diverse spectrum of actors – UN agencies, multilateral development banks, international and local NGOs, private sector, civil society and governments on both the traditional donor and recipient sides. Their partnership and the stipulation of collective outcome require improved coherence, complementarity and alignment in all phases, from the level of analysis, to planning and programming, to leadership and coordination and financing. A shared situation and problem analysis are needed to develop joint problem statements and priorities. Humanitarian and development actors need joint planning and programming procedures centring on shared objectives and where actors’ respect each other comparative advantages. A designated leader and coordinator need to be appointed in each operation, and this actor needs to be empowered and control financing mechanisms to ensure all work towards the collective outcomes. The call for greater coordination and cooperation between humanitarian and development actors reflects new crises formations and new perspectives on how to manage crises and comes as a function of how the international society is organized. The international society as it evolved after the Second
World War and with the creation of the United Nations is organized into different institutional and practical segments, such as development aid, humanitarian action, diplomacy and military action. The various segments are built on different mandates, which produce distinct identities that are reproduced through organizations’ institutional practices. For instance, the UN system spans all four segments, but they are compartmentalized into different entities, such as OCHA, UNDP, political affairs and DPKO, respectively. The inevitable and recurring debate about UN reform pivots on how to better integrate these entities. Efforts seeking to coordinate and harmonize approaches, policies and operations spanning the various segments predates the World Humanitarian Summit. Debates about civil–military coordination (CIMIC), UN’s Delivering as One and Integrated Missions, Whole of Government approaches and the 3D approach (which seeks to integrate development, diplomacy and defence) to conflict, are just a few initiatives seeking to transcend institutionalized boundaries. While the idea of bridging humanitarian action and development cooperation in response to emergencies has existed since the early 1990s (Slim, 2000), the adoption of the 2030 Agenda produced renewed interest and initiatives pertaining to the humanitarian– development nexus in stating the need to not only meet new humanitarian needs but also to reduce risks and vulnerability, and improve reconstruction efforts. The nexus’s rationale is fairly straightforward: as the war-to-peace transition is understood in terms of a continuum and not compartmentalized phases, one should motivate otherwise distinct actors to cooperate regardless, if the situation is defined as one of conflict, emergency or reconstruction. This is reflected in more recent policy initiatives. For instance, the World Bank, which is a multilateral bank for reconstruction and development, has embarked on collaboration with the UNHCR to provide a framework for how the Bank’s development initiatives can support refugees and internally displaced, being the scope of humanitarian action (World Bank, 2017). Similarly, a joint UN and World Bank flagship study addresses how to make development work to prevent conflict (UN and World Bank, 2018). A policy initiative within the UN’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, is Jon Harald Sande Lie
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itself seeking to expand the humanitarian scope from today’s crises to include tomorrow’s concerns (OCHA, 2014), which arguably compel thinking anew of operational practices (OCHA, 2017). As already stated, OCHA itself acknowledges this may be easier said than done due to long-standing and engrained attitudinal and institutional differences. The section below highlights these differences, in order to better understand why cooperation across the aisle is so hard in practice, despite good intentions and ambitions and that the nexus is in the policy limelight with the attention of world leaders.
The challenging nexus of humanitarianism and development
The fields of humanitarian action and development aid represent two different segments of the international system, operating side-by-side, with distinct discursive origins, institutional trajectories, organizational manifestations and temporalities (Hilhorst, 2018). The self-representation of the humanitarian origin typically pivots around Henry Dunant’s call for alms after witnessing the Battle of Solferino in 1859 (part of the second War of Italian Independence), which led him to campaign for establishing a permanent relief agency for humanitarian aid and a government treaty recognizing the neutrality of this agency for it to operate in a war zone. Following a broad grassroots movement, this eventually led to the establishment of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Geneva conventions. This created a notion of humanitarianism around a set of guiding principles that still epitomize and shape humanitarian action today, despite being reaffirmed in 1949 to account for the lessons of the two world wars and the establishment of the United Nations. These principles have later become formally enshrined in two UN General Assembly resolutions. The principles of humanity (that human suffering must be addressed when and wherever it is found), neutrality (meaning that humanitarian actors must not take sides) and impartiality (assistance should be based on needs alone) were adopted by the General Assembly in 1991.2 This resolution marked the (re‑)creation of the humanitarian system and the international community’s collective commitment to help the world’s most vulnerable Jon Harald Sande Lie
when they need it the most. The principle of independence (that humanitarian action must be autonomous to any other concerns, such as political, military and economic objectives) was added in 2004,3 and can be seen as a clarification of the original intent as humanitarianism increasingly was being used as an instrument in the war on terror. Humanitarian assistance and those delivering it need to comply with the four humanitarian principles (OCHA, 2012). Development aid has a more intentional and political origin. Emerging in the wake of the Second World War and the ensuing geopolitical struggles, aid and economic support were seen as means to establish and secure political interests. Inspired by and extending beyond the Eurocentric Marshall plan, scholars usually associate the origin of development with President Truman’s 1949 inaugural speech, where he stated that ‘we must embark on a bold new programme for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas’ (Porter, 1995, p. 66). The speech says not only what development is, but also that it is something to be actively conveyed to ‘them’ by ‘us’ – ideas which later would be manifested in the modernization theory drawing on Rostow’s guide to unilineal progress via different qualitative stages with the US as the beacon on the hill (Escobar, 1995). While the modernization theory has been criticized by scholars and practitioners alike for its Western paternalism, the basic notion that aid implies an active intervention in society by someone external who also controls the means and objectives of development persist. Intentionally changing societies is an undeniable political activity. This is further underpinned by the dominating human rights-based approach to development, which provides a normative framework that centres on the universal declaration of human rights which set standards to be realized through development cooperation, policies and technical assistance.4 The goal of the rights-based approach is to empower the individual and collective right holders and to strengthen the capacity of and hold accountable institutions and governments obliged to fill these rights. The content and mechanisms of aid have changed over time, notably from a strict view on economic growth to poverty reduction and from top-down conditionality approaches to
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bottom-up participatory approaches, respectively. Despite the ubiquity of the partnership concept throughout the development sector, donor institutions still use aid for political purposes (Stokke, 1995; Molenaers, Dellepiane & Faust, 2015). Development aid and humanitarian assistance, in their basic and caricature forms, highlight important differences that materialize in attitudinal, institutional and funding obstacles. These differences and the challenges they create for the nexus are also recognized by OCHA itself (OCHA, 2017). Humanitarian action is exogenous, meaning that its principles and ideas come from outside the affected area, while development aid aims to provide support to and empower beneficiaries’ own ideas and initiatives. Development aid is long term, political in its orientation, centres on rights-based approaches and seeks through inclusive partnerships and participatory programming mechanisms to stimulate local processes and empower beneficiaries. Humanitarian action, on the other hand, is nominally a short-term and apolitical practice, triggered by the needs of vulnerable people regardless of when and where these needs emerge. The latter points to concerns with the temporal dimension: in the traditional war-to-peace transition different segments of the international apparatus were designated separate tasks. Here, humanitarians were meant to provide support to those in need during and immediately after the crises, while development actors would concentrate on post-crises reconstruction. However, due to the protracted nature of many crises and scarce development action in many vulnerable contexts, policymakers started to think anew about the transition and to see it not as composed of distinct stages with designated actors but as phases along a continuum which would need to be responded to by both humanitarian and development actors alone and together. To humanitarian actors it meant operating outside their humanitarian space with the legitimacy provided by the humanitarian principles. By engaging in conflict prevention and reconstruction – being activities occurring before and after the crises and originally being the scope of diplomacy and development – humanitarian actors expanded their operations beyond the humanitarian present. As Barnett (2011) holds, this illustrates an ongoing humanitarian mission creep, and ‘as humanitarians began imagining how to build peace after [or before]
war, they slipped into building states’ (Barnett, 2011, p. 3), which undeniably verges on politics and development activities, and has a poor fit with the humanitarian principles and apolitical mandate.5 Jon Harald Sande Lie
Notes 1.
OCHA, The humanitarian–development nexus: the new way of working. Available at https://www .unocha.org/es/themes/humanitarian-development -nexus (accessed 23 September 2021). 2. See Resolution 46/182 adopted by the UN General Assembly on 19 December 1991. 3. See Resolution 58/114 adopted by the UN General Assembly on 17 December 2003. 4. https://u nsdg. un. org/2 030- agenda/u niversal -values/human-rights-based-approach. 5. This research was written as part of the ‘Developmentality and anthropology of partnership’ project funded by the Research Council of Norway (grant no. 262524) and NUPI’s SIS-research programme (grant no. 304516).
References
Barnett, M. (2011). Empire of humanity: a history of humanitarianism. Cornell University Press. Eade, D. & Vaux, T. (eds) (2007). Development and humanitarianism: Practical issues, A Development in Practice reader. Kumarian Press. Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering development: the making and unmaking of the Third World. Princeton University Press. Hilhorst, D. (2018). Classical humanitarianism and resilience humanitarianism: making sense of two brands of humanitarian action. Journal of International Humanitarian Action 3(15). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41018–018–0043–6. IDS (2018). The humanitarian–development nexus. Institute of Development Studies. Lie, J.H.S. (2020). The humanitarian–development nexus: humanitarian principles, practice, and pragmatics. Journal of International Humanitarian Action 5(18). https://doi.org/10 .1186/s41018–020–00086–0. Molenaers, N., Dellepiane, S., & Faust, J. (2015). Political conditionality and foreign aid. World Development 75(November), 2–12. OCHA (2012). What are humanitarian principles? UN OCHA. OCHA (2014). Saving lives today and tomorrow. Managing the risk of humanitarian crises. OCHA Policy and Studies Series. OCHA (2017). New way of working. UN OCHA. Porter, D.J. (1995). Scenes from childhood: the homesickness of development discourses. In J. Crush (ed.), Power of development (pp. 63–86). Routledge.
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350 Elgar encyclopedia of development Slim, H. (2000). Dissolving the difference between humanitarianism and development: the mixing of a rights-based solution. Development in Practice 10(3–4), 491–4. Stokke, O. (ed.) (1995). Aid and political conditionality. Frank Cass. Strand, A. (2020). Humanitarian–development nexus. In A. de Lauri (ed.), Humanitarianism: keywords (pp. 104–6). Brill.
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UN (2016). Outcome of the World Humanitarian Summit: report of the Secretary-General. A/71/353. 23 August 2016. UN. UN and World Bank (2018). Pathways for peace: inclusive approaches to preventing violent conflict. World Bank. World Bank (2017). Forcibly displaced: toward a development approach supporting refugees, the internally displaced, and their hosts. World Bank.
I
Immanuel Wallerstein The American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019) was the central figure in the development of world-systems analysis (WSA). A global and historical sociology, WSA was shaped by Wallerstein’s early scholarly work on African independence movements, the anti-imperial and countercultural rebellions of the 1960s, dependency theory (colonialism and imperialism as crucial in global inequality), Marxism (the centrality of conflict, accumulation, contradiction), German political economy (business cycles, status groups), and the Annales School (total history, the longue durée) (Chase-Dunn and Inoue, 2011; Goldfrank, 2000; Wallerstein, 2005). These influences are visible in two major contributions from 1974, in which Wallerstein (1974, 1980a) sets his work against ahistorical and reifying social sciences, modernization theory’s notion of a series of universal stages of development, and, particularly, the assumption that national societies are the appropriate unit of sociological analysis. Wallerstein’s alternative unit of analysis is that of totalities: mini-systems (simple agricultural or hunter-gatherer orders); world-empires (political centralization and the forcible extraction of tribute); and world-economies (multiple cultures joined primarily by trade and a division of labour). In the first volume of The Modern World-System, Wallerstein explores the origins of the modern capitalist world-economy, challenging the conventional sociological narrative of modernity’s emergence in a ‘long nineteenth century’ through intertwining industrial, intellectual, and political revolutions (Pitts, 2012). Instead, Wallerstein maintains that capitalism emerged in Europe from around 1450. This capitalist world-economy appropriated surplus on ‘a more efficient and expanded productivity … by means of a world market
mechanism … and with the … assistance of state machineries’ (Wallerstein, 1974: 38). In thinking the capitalist world-economy, Wallerstein (1974, 1980a) draws on systems language, emphasizing the centrality of internal dynamics in development and a functional division of labour. Within this world-economy, crucially, certain tiers can be identified and are of decisive importance. Here, Wallerstein developed the dependency paradigm focus into a threefold division: the core (strong states, increasing variety and specialization in production, profitable production processes, monopolization); the periphery (weak states, tending to monoculture, producing lower ranking, less profitable goods); and the semi-periphery (in between forms of production) (Wallerstein, 1974, 2005). Wallerstein (1974, 2005; Goldfrank, 2000) insists upon the relational, functional, and dialectical aspects of connections between these tiers, and on a sort of circulation of elites between them. According to Wallerstein (1974: 15), the modern world-system was, above all, a world-economy, in that the ‘basic linkage between the parts of the system is economic’. He was later to emphasize, in particular, the systemic imperative of the endless accumulation of capital (for instance, Wallerstein, 2005). Locating the origins of capitalist modernity in the Iberian expansion of the fifteenth century, Wallerstein (1974, 1980a) emphasizes a shift from trade in luxuries to ‘basic bulk goods’ (Wallerstein, 1974: 20), as well as the emergence of capitalism as a means of dealing with the crisis of feudalism. The first phase of this emergence occurs in ‘the long sixteenth century’, 1450–1640, and Wallerstein (1974, 1980a) captures this phase as one of ‘agricultural capitalism’, in which emerges a single division of labour, a world market, and production for sale and profit, the early world-economy encompassing North-West Europe, the Christian Mediterranean, Central Europe, the Baltic
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region, certain regions of America, and some enclaves of Africa. With these contentions, Wallerstein (1980a) shifts from the strict Marxist focus on industrial labour as a defining feature of capitalism and insisted instead on a range of modes of labour within capitalism – tenancy, slavery, coerced cash-cropping – with different modes characteristic of different tiers or geographic units in the overall division of labour. On this score, still thinking from the wider Marxian tradition, Wallerstein emphasized the important role of class (exploitation and inequality) within the division of labour (Boli and Lechner, 2009), but status groups are, from the beginning, given significant weight as ‘elements’ in the system (Wallerstein, 1974: 351), connected to the struggle within the world-economy for power, wealth, and status. For Wallerstein (1989), the working class was not ‘liberated’ as an actor until around the 1830s in Europe, and, in his estimation, classes and status groups are not ‘eternal essences’ but are social creations, constantly forming, dissolving, and re-forming (Balibar and Wallerstein, 1991; Wallerstein, 2011a: 166), in ‘constant movement’ (Wallerstein, 1980a: 224). Wallerstein also extends the orthodox Marxist focus on the extraction of surplus, not only from the labourer, but also from semi-peripheral and peripheral states through unequal exchange, drawing on the work of Arghiri Emmanuel. With respect to the political realm, Wallerstein (1974: 16) views the increasingly powerful modern state as a ‘means of assuring certain terms of trade in economic transactions’ in the battle between different owner-producers in the world-economy, despite lending the state a ‘certain autonomy’ (20). At a world-systemic level, the interstate system is to the political realm what the international division of labour is to the economic sphere. Within this modern system of states, hegemony is of key importance (Wallerstein, 1980a). As later glossed by Wallerstein (2005: 58), the hegemonic state is one that is able to establish the rules of the game in the interstate system, to dominate the world-economy (in production, commerce, and finance), to get their way politically with a minimal use of military force (which however they had in goodly strength), and to formulate the cultural language in which one discussed the world.
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This hegemony, while necessary, is temporary – because it is expensive and abrasive, because others tend to catch up (innovations and monopolies do not last), and because of struggles within a fundamentally conflictual system (Wallerstein, 2005). Historically, for Wallerstein (1974, 1980a), there had been three hegemons within the world-economy: first, the United Provinces, rising in the last half of the sixteenth century, and dominant from about 1625 to 1675; then, after a struggle for hegemony between Britain and France, Britain, decisively from 1815; then, after a further struggle between America and Germany, America from 1945. At the start of the second volume of The Modern World-System, Wallerstein (1980b; Goldfrank, 2000) notes the importance of secular trends (geographical expansion, commodification, mechanization of production, proletarianization, and bureaucratization) and cyclical rhythms (caused by overproduction) in understanding social change within the world-system. He contends that the next overlapping phase, 1600–1750, is one of slowdown and consolidation in the world-economy, where the boundaries changed little, and a B-phase of contraction was felt across the system. Here, Wallerstein (1980b, 2005) draws on work around Kondratieff waves of expansion and contraction of around 50 years in length, and on Simiand’s notion of longer periods/ waves of approximately 250 years, which are bound up with transformations in hegemony. In the next volume, covering the period 1730–1840s, Wallerstein (1989) underscores the incorporation of a range of ‘external’ zones (such as the Indian subcontinent and the Ottoman Empire), which were peripheralized, until, by the close of the nineteenth century, the entire globe was encompassed within the world-economy. British dominance through this period begins weakening from the last quarter of the nineteenth century, new contenders for hegemonic status rise, and, following the Second World War, America arrives at a position of unquestioned dominance. As well as emphases on hegemonic struggle, secular trends, and cyclical rhythms, and attached to these closely, Wallerstein notes a series of contradictions in operation within the system, which are important in systemic transformation. These contradictions, other than supply and demand, are given more
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weight in Wallerstein’s analysis of the period after the late eighteenth century, with the French Revolution given pride of place as a symbolic opening of global significance (Wallerstein, 1989, 2011a). It is at this point that we see the creation of a geoculture (broadly shared and dominant ideas, values, and norms) across the world system, the third major part – alongside the international division of labour and the interstate system – of the world-economy, and the focus of Wallerstein’s (2011a) more recent, fourth volume of The Modern World-System. From the French Revolution, we see, Wallerstein argues, the emergence of the three big modern ideologies – conservatism, liberalism, and radicalism/socialism. Centrist liberalism – conscious, intelligent reformism; a strong state as the instrument of this reform; the language of individualism; themes of rationality, science, and economic progress (Wallerstein, 1995, 2005, 2011a) – emerged as the predominant force within the geoculture, so that both conservatives and radicals became, over time, variants of centrist liberalism. In addition, the Revolution shapes the emergence of the historical social sciences. These sciences sought to comprehend ‘what generated normal social change in order to be able to limit the impact of popular preferences’ (Wallerstein, 2011a: 220), they split into ‘two cultures’ (science and humanities), and the social sciences, pulled between these cultures, divided into disciplines – economics (the market), political science (the state), and sociology (civil society). Further, the French Revolution set in motion the anti-systemic movements – social democracy, communism, and national liberation – which emerged as important social forces onto the political stage with the ‘world-revolution of 1848’ (Wallerstein, 1990). Outside of the four volumes comprising his major contribution to historical sociology, much of Wallerstein’s work was devoted to the changes within the world-system since the 1960s and the prospects that might lie ahead. Here, Wallerstein (2000a) charges that the world-economy had entered into another B-phase of stagnation and chaos, an ‘age of transition’. A central part of this was the irreversible decline of American hegemony, relative destructuring, and multipolarity within the world-system (Wallerstein, 2003a, 2003b, 2006). In addition, following a period
of remarkable success, 1945–1968 – construction of welfare states, decolonization, socialization of the means of production, and planned economies (Arrighi, Hopkins, and Wallerstein, 1989) – we see the significant decline of the anti-systemic movements. In particular, the ‘world-revolution of 1968’ expressed fundamental challenges to these movements: that they had not transformed life as they had promised, that they had been co-opted and become agents of oppression, and that they had left certain people out (Arrighi, Hopkins, and Wallerstein, 1989; Wallerstein, 1990, 1991a, 1991b, 2002, 2010). Further, following the world-revolution of 1968, liberalism as a governing geoculture weakens significantly – signalling the end of developmentalism, the rise of neo-liberalism, a decline in the power, and faith in the state (Wallerstein, 1995, 2005). Alongside and connected to this are fundamental shifts in the structures of knowledge, a veritable ‘crisis in the sciences’ (Wallerstein, 1991a: 113): complexity analyses, cultural studies, post-modern thought, feminism; profound questionings of science, linearity, rationality, progress, inevitability, and Eurocentrism (Wallerstein, 1991a, 1991b, 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000b, 2004). In terms of the future prospects of the world-system, as Chase-Dunn and Inoue (2011: 407) suggest, Wallerstein tended to be, ‘apocalyptic and … millenarian’, boldly predicting that a number of secular trends were reaching asymptotes, exacerbating the crisis tendencies of the system. These include the deruralization of the world, and the impossibility of running away from growing workers’ power; the growing cost of inputs – for instance, ecological exhaustion and the possibility of future ‘supercalamities’ (Wallerstein, 2011b); the rising infrastructure bill; and the burdensome costs associated with growing democratization (health, education, and guaranteed life-time income) (Wallerstein, 2000b, 2005). For Wallerstein (2000a), a bifurcation out of our transitional age was likely in the next 25–50 years, which he framed as a split between ‘the spirit of Davos’ and ‘the spirit of Porto Alegre’ – that is, a world-system marked by the intensification of inequality, domination, and violence, or a new pluralistic, democratic, emancipatory socialism. Chamsy el-Ojeili
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Wallerstein’s immensely ambitious and bold body of work has incited robust scholarly criticism. From a Marxian direction, Brenner (1977) argued that Wallerstein had focused on the trade-based division of labour and exchange relations, rather than on the more fundamental realm of production, class, commodification, and exploitation – a focus that had shaped a too-early dating of capitalism’s emergence. In a connected vein, Martin (2000) contended that Wallerstein’s emphasis on system logics and dynamics, as well as the prioritization of First World–Third World exploitative relations, had diminished the importance of class struggle; and other critics (Sanderson, 2005) have suggested that struggle, more generally, receives little attention in WSA. Here, Gill (2008), for instance, takes a more Gramscian route in approaching global political-economy, criticizing WSA for failing to offer a more expansive and detailed approach to hegemony. From more Weberian and culturalist vantage points, Wallerstein’s work has been criticized as too deterministically Marxist. For Skocpol (1977), Wallerstein’s treatment of the political realm allowed little autonomy for political, geopolitical, and military factors, which simply flowed from economic power. In a quite opposed complaint, some critics have argued that Wallerstein’s WSA remains too state-centric in an age of globalization (Robinson, 2011a, 2011b; McMichael, 2000). With respect to culture, a number of critics have argued that WSA’s totalizing economic determinism does not allow for a properly specific treatment of culture (Robbins, 2011; Moretti, 2011), and that Wallerstein’s embrace of post-modern-inflected challenges to the human sciences sits uneasily alongside his very modernist analytical commitments to universalism, totality, functionalism, and determinism. Each of these broad critical thrusts raises crucial issues. Nevertheless, WSA offers compelling replies to many of these questions (So and Hikam, 1989; So, 1990), and the paradigm has been developed in other directions in order to address such issues (for instance, Chase-Dunn, 1998; Friedman, 1995). Pioneering a historical and global sociology, attentive to both inter- and intra-state processes, seeking to reflect on politics and culture as well as economy, Chamsy el-Ojeili
and to emphasize a systemic and conflictual understanding of change, WSA is undoubtedly a macro-narrative, a theory of enormous scope and ambition, marked by Wallerstein’s characteristically ‘daring questions and provocative statements’ (Therborn, 2000: 266). WSA does precisely what the best social and political theory seeks to do – help us impose cognitive order on a messy, complex, and unequal world, so that we might change it for the better. Chamsy el-Ojeili
References
Arrighi, G., Hopkins, T., and Wallerstein, I. (1989) Anti-Systemic Movements. Verso, London. Boli, J., and Lechner, F.J. (2009) ‘Globalisation theory’. In Turner, B.S. (ed.), The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory. Wiley-Blackwell, Cambridge. Balibar, E., and Wallerstein, I. (1991) Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. Routledge, London. Brenner, R. (1977) ‘The origins of capitalist development: A critique of neo-Smithian Marxism’. New Left Review I/104: 25–92. Chase-Dunn, C. (1998) Global Formation: Structures of the World-Economy (updated edition). Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD. Chase-Dunn, C., and Inoue, H. (2011) ‘Immanuel Wallerstein’. In Ritzer, G. and Stepmisky, J. (eds), The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists: Volume II, Contemporary Social Theorists. Cambridge: Wiley-Blackwell. Friedman, J. (1995) Cultural Identity and Global Process. Sage, London. Gill, S. (2008) Power and Resistance in the New World Order (revised edition). Palgrave, London. Goldfrank, W.L. (2000) ‘Paradigm regained? The rules of Wallerstein’s world-systems method’. Journal of World-Systems Research VI (2): 150–95. Martin, W.G. (2000) ‘Still partners and still dissident after all these years? Wallerstein, world revolutions and the world-systems perspective’. Journal of World-Systems Research VI (2): 234–63. McMichael, P. (2000) ‘World-systems analysis, globalisation, and incorporated comparison’. Journal of World-Systems Research VI (3): 68–99. Moretti, F. (2011) ‘World-systems analysis, evolutionary theory’, weltliteratur. In Palumbo-Lio, D., Robbins, B., and Tanoukhi, N. (eds), Immanuel Wallerstein and the Problem of the World: System, Scale, Culture. Duke University Press, Durham, NC.
Immanuel Wallerstein 355 Pitts, J. (2012) ‘A liberal geoculture?’ New Left Review 78: 136–44. Robbins, B. (2011) ‘Blaming the system’. In Palumbo-Lio, D., Robbins, B., and Tanoukhi, N. (eds), Immanuel Wallerstein and the Problem of the World: System, Scale, Culture. Duke University Press, Durham, NC. Robinson, W.I. (2011a) ‘Globalisation and the sociology of Immanuel Wallerstein: A critical appraisal’. International Sociology 26 (6): 723–45. Robinson, W.I. (2011b) ‘Global capitalist theory and the emergence of transnational elites’. Critical Sociology 38 (3): 349–63. Sanderson, S.K. (2005) ‘World-systems analysis after thirty years: Should it rest in peace?’ International Journal of Comparative Sociology 46 (3): 179–213. Skocpol, T. (1977) ‘Wallerstein’s world capitalist system: A theoretical and historical critique’. American Journal of Sociology 82 (5): 1075–90. So, A.Y. (1990) ‘How to conduct class analysis in the world economy?: Reply to Dawson’. Sociological Perspectives 33 (3): 423–7. So, A.Y., and Hikam, M. (1989) ‘“Class” in the writings of Wallerstein and Thompson: Toward a class struggle analysis’. Sociological Perspectives 32 (4): 453–67. Therborn, G. (2000) ‘Time, space, and their knowledge: The times and place of the world and other systems’. Journal of World-Systems Research VI (2): 266–84. Wallerstein, I. (1974) The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. Academic Press, New York, NY. Wallerstein, I. (1980a) The Capitalist World-Economy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Wallerstein, I. (1980b) The Modern World-System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600–1750. Academic Press, New York, NY. Wallerstein, I. (1989) The Modern World-System III: The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730–1840s. Academic Press, San Diego, CA. Wallerstein, I. (1990) ‘Culture as the ideological battleground of the modern world-system’. Theory, Culture and Society 7: 31–55.
Wallerstein, I. (1991a) Geopolitics and Geoculture: Essays on the Changing World-System. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Wallerstein, I. (1991b) Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of Nineteenth Century Paradigms. Polity, Cambridge. Wallerstein, I. (1995) After Liberalism. The New Press, New York, NY. Wallerstein, I. (1997) ‘Eurocentrism and its avatars: The dilemmas of social sciences’. New Left Review I/226: 93–107. Wallerstein, I. (1998) Utopistics, or Historical Choices of the Twenty First Century. The New Press, New York, NY. Wallerstein, I. (1999) ‘The heritage of sociology, the promise of social science’. Current Sociology 47 (1): 1–37. Wallerstein, I. (2000a) ‘A left politics for the twenty first century? Or, theory and praxis once again’. New Political Science 22 (2): 143–59. Wallerstein, I. (2000b) ‘Intellectuals in an age of transition’. http://www.networked-politics.info/ wp-content/uploads/2008/12/wallerst.rtf. Wallerstein, I. (2002) ‘New revolts against the system’. New Left Review 18. https:// newleftreview.org/issues/ii18/articles/ immanuel-wallerstein-new-revolts-against-the -system. Wallerstein, I. (2003a) ‘Entering global anarchy’. New Left Review 22: 27–35. Wallerstein, I. (2003b) The Decline of American Power: The US in a Chaotic World. New Press, New York, NY. Wallerstein, I. (2004) The Uncertainties of Knowledge. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, PA. Wallerstein, I. (2005) World-systems Analysis: An Introduction. Duke University Press, Durham, NC. Wallerstein, I. (2006) ‘The curve of American power’. New Left Review 40: 77–94. Wallerstein, I. (2010) ‘Structural crises’. New Left Review 62: 133–42. Wallerstein, I. (2011a) The Modern World-System IV: Centrist Liberalism Triumphant, 1789–1914. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Wallerstein, I. (2011b) ‘Structural crisis in the world-system: Where do we go from here?’ Monthly Review 62 (10): 31–9.
Chamsy el-Ojeili
Inclusive research Inclusive research is an umbrella term that encompasses a range of approaches to conducting research following concerns about the need to democratize the research process. Community-based/participatory research, participatory rural appraisal, emancipatory research, community research, activist scholarship and decolonizing or indigenous research all fall within what can be understood as inclusive research. Each of these reflects a particular response to a particular set of power dynamics, but they all place emphasis on their value and respect for the people the research is about who also take on active roles in the research process – in this way the research is inclusive.
In their context, the answer to these questions needs to be disabled people. Of course, we might substitute this with local people, Indigenous people, people experiencing poverty or whoever the community at stake might be. More recently, Walmsley, Strnadová and Johnson (2018, p. 758) refined their definition of inclusive research as: Research that aims to contribute to social change, that helps to create a society, in which excluded groups belong, and which aims to improve the quality of their lives. Research based on issues important to a group, and which draws on their experience to inform the research process and outcomes. Research which aims to recognize, foster and communicate the contributions [… the excluded group] can make. Research which provides information which can be used by [… the excluded group] to campaign for change on behalf of others. Research in which those involved in it are ‘standing with’ those whose issues are being explored or investigated.
Defining inclusive research
Inclusive research has a particular orientation that makes it distinctive from what we might think of as traditional research. It ‘changes the dynamic between research/researchers and the people who are usually researched: it is conceived as research with, by or sometimes for them in contrast to research on them’ (Nind, 2014). Inclusive research is grounded in the experiences and views of those people who shape more than just the findings of the research, often informing the questions that are asked, and how the data are generated and communicated. The term inclusive research dates back to work in the field on intellectual disabilities (known as learning disabilities in the UK) by Walmsley (2001), referring to elevating people from being just subjects or respondents in research. Walmsley and Johnson (2003) went on to identify the key principles underpinning inclusive research as being about: ● who owns the research problem? ● whose interests are furthered by the research? ● who conducts – or collaborates in conducting – the research? ● who has control over the processes and outcomes? ● who can access the process and reports of the research?
Walmsley and Johnson (2003) wanted to get away from preoccupation in the field of disability studies with distinguishing between participatory research and emancipatory research – the latter being less a matter of collaboration and more one of total control by disabled people and, as some people with intellectual disabilities would find this unachievable, an unhelpful ideal. In other fields, other priorities and dimensions are foregrounded. One example is dialogue between academics and community members so that each respects and learns from the other’s way of knowing, which means the de-privileging of academic knowledge. Another example is the key element of doing research in a more participatory or democratic way, not just for fairness or because people’s voices are important but for the purpose of bringing about change; it is social transformation that is the goal in Fals-Borda et al.’s (1991) South American version of participatory action research. A third example is inclusive research as grass roots or bottom-up research, such as in participatory rural appraisal where underprivileged people and political action are supported by outsiders/academic researchers acting as facilitators or catalysts (Chambers, 1992). The field of the particular inclusive research, its particular roots and the key priorities tend
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to influence the language that is used, both for the research itself and for the actors involved who may be deemed ‘co-researchers’, ‘peer researchers’, ‘lay researchers’, ‘community partners’ and so on. Inclusive research usually has a values-based component associated with redressing wrongs or disrupting power hierarchies. More than a set of participatory methods, inclusive research depends on a set of underlying assumptions or ways of seeing, an expectation that the status quo will be challenged, oppression confronted and new possibilities and dynamics created. Oliver (1997), for example, saw emancipatory research not as permitting the inclusion of previously excluded groups but as creating something in which ‘no one is excluded in the first place’ (p. 26). For many inclusive researchers, the commitment to researching with is an ethical matter and inclusive research is regarded as ethically or morally superior (Holland et al., 2008).
Debates in inclusive research
How involved in the research the co-researchers (to choose just one term) need to be, or what constitutes active participation, is one of the major controversies in inclusive research. There are debates about whether inclusion extends beyond the methods used to the political philosophy (Cleaver, 1999). Some argue that involvement in all stages of the research is necessary to avoid tokenism. Others highlight the decisions or stages that are most critical for dialogue and involvement of grass roots knowledge, thereby stressing inclusion in designing as much as conducting the research. When the emphasis is placed on engagement in critical decision-making, inclusive research may be defined by who leads it, as in ‘user-led’, ‘child-led’ or ‘community-led’ research. There are debates about which model of inclusive research is most suitable too. Models of working practice include the advisory or reference group model, the leading or taking charge model and the collaboration or co-researching model (Walmsley & Johnson, 2003), or formalized, improvised, support, negotiation or interdependent ways of working (Nind & Vinha, 2014). This connects with the debates about how much ground inclusive research shares with other (largely qualitative) research and how much
it is distinct. Practice models also connect with the contested issue of whether it is the quality of the participation or the quality of the research that matters more and how these may be balanced (see Nind & Vinha, 2014). Another controversy is about who gets to be included in inclusive research. There have been growing criticisms of new elites formed of, for example, the least disabled people becoming the familiar faces in repeated projects while those without the support of advocacy or community groups or whose participation presents more challenges remain excluded. Inevitably it is easier to do research with community members who are motivated, skilled and share values with the academic researchers, raising questions about just how diverse the perspectives are that are included in shaping the research. Mostly though, the stress is on people from the researched group making a worthwhile contribution to the research and helping to ensure that the research makes a worthwhile contribution to the community. Sometimes, training for co-researchers is provided to build common ground and common skills and as part of the social transformation agenda. Inclusive research has been criticized for civilizing as much as empowering those included. Academic researchers can co-opt lay members to be or think like them, or they can open themselves up to the challenge of entering different ways of thinking about and doing research.
The growth of inclusive research
Inclusive research has grown for different reasons. These mostly relate to what ‘can be seen as part of what some commentators regard as a wider turn to democracy in society’ (Edwards & Alexander, 2011, p. 271). In the wider context, social movements globally have influenced the concern in research with social justice perspectives, social reform, community development and political action. Walmsley (2004, p. 69) argues that, ‘Wherever there are socially excluded groups there are moves towards inclusive research.’ Inclusive research is often a reaction against the poor treatment of people by research (most explicit perhaps in the fields of Indigenous research and disability studies) or against their exclusion from research. ‘Nothing about us without us’ is a powerful and now familiar call among Melanie Nind
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disabled people and spreading among other marginalized groups. More pragmatic drivers have also played a part in the growth of inclusive research, with academic researchers keen to enjoy the instrumental benefits of access to different sets of networks and knowledge from stakeholder community members that are involved. There are also intrinsic and extrinsic rewards associated with making impact beyond the academy. There is an extensive literature on how to do research inclusively, how to manage the relationships, what methods are particularly effective and the value that is added. While this supports and testifies to the growth of inclusive research, the phenomenon is not growing uniformly or universally. Doing research inclusively has become accepted practice, even required in some fields and by some funding bodies, while for others it remains risky and new. Nonetheless, while the term inclusive research is newer than some kinds of research that might fall under its umbrella, such as feminist research, participatory action research and collaborative ethnography, it is the democratization of research that is the unifying trend. In most recent developments, the response of social researchers to the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic has underlined the value of community researchers on the ground who have taken on even more importance and leadership in international development projects. Regardless of the challenges, as long as there are growing concerns about people having a voice and making a difference there will continue to be a growth in inclusive research. Melanie Nind
Melanie Nind
References
Chambers, R. (1992). Rural Appraisal: Rapid, Relaxed and Participatory. IDS Discussion Paper 311. Institute of Development Studies. http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/ handle/123456789/774/Dp311.pdf?sequence= 1. Cleaver, F. (1999). Paradoxes of Participation: Questioning Participatory Approaches to Development. Journal of International Development, 11, 597–612. Edwards, R., & Alexander, C. (2011). Researching with Peer/Community Researchers. In M. Williams & W.P. Vogt (eds), The Sage Handbook of Innovation in Social Science Research Methods (pp. 269–92). Sage. Fals-Borda, O., & Rahman, M. (eds) (1991). Action and Knowledge: Breaking the Monopoly with Participatory Action Research. Apex. Holland, S., Renold, E., Ross, N., & Hillman, A. (2008). Rights, ‘Right On’ or the Right Thing to Do? A Critical Exploration of Young People’s Engagement in Participative Social Work Research. NCRM Working Paper Series 07/08. http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/460/. Nind, M. (2014). What Is Inclusive Research? Bloomsbury Academic. Nind, M., & Vinha, H. (2014). Doing Research Inclusively: Bridges to Multiple Possibilities in Inclusive Research. British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 42, 102–9. Oliver, M. (1997). Emancipatory Research: Realistic Goal or Impossible Dream? In C. Barnes & G. Mercer (eds), Doing Disability Research (chapter 2). Disability Press. Walmsley, J. (2001). Normalisation, Emancipatory Research and Inclusive Research in Learning Disability. Disability & Society, 16, 187–205. Walmsley, J. (2004). Inclusive Learning Disability Research: The (Nondisabled) Researcher’s Role. British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 32, 65–71. Walmsley, J., & Johnson, K. (2003). Inclusive Research with People with Learning Disabilities: Past, Present and Futures. Jessica Kingsley. Walmsley, J., Strnadová, I., & Johnson, K. (2018). The Added Value of Inclusive Research. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 31, 751–9.
Indigenous peoples and development There has been little focus on Indigenous people in international development until the latter part of the twentieth century, though their lives have been dramatically disrupted by colonization, and ‘development’ has often seriously violated their rights. But Indigenous people are asserting their own ideas about development that would improve their well-being and advocating globally to protect their rights.
Defining indigenous peoples
There is no globally agreed definition of Indigenous peoples. The closest to an international definition was developed by Jose R. Martinez Cobo, the Special Rapporteur of the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, who undertook a ‘Study on the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Populations’ for the United Nations in 1982. His ‘working definition’ is often referred to: Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal system. This historical continuity may consist of the continuation, for an extended period reaching into the present of one or more of the following factors: (a) Occupation of ancestral lands, or at least of part of them; (b) Common ancestry with the original occupants of these lands; (c) Culture in general, or in specific manifestations (such as religion, living under a tribal system, membership of an indigenous community, dress, means of livelihood, lifestyle, etc.); (d) Language (whether used as the only language, as mother-tongue, as the habitual means of communication at home or in the
family, or as the main, preferred, habitual, general or normal language); (e) Residence on certain parts of the country, or in certain regions of the world; (f) Other relevant factors. On an individual basis, an Indigenous person is one who belongs to these Indigenous populations through self-identification as indigenous (group consciousness) and is recognized and accepted by these populations as one of its members (acceptance by the group). This preserves for these communities the sovereign right and power to decide who belongs to them, without external interference. (United Nations, 2004)
Thus, an Indigenous ‘people’ generally claim continuing sovereignty over their ancestral lands over which their colonizers have created states and asserted a modern sovereignty. It is important to note though, that in some countries (for example, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru) Indigenous people make up the majority population. In Asia, Indigenous people are often referred to as ‘tribal’ or ethnic minority peoples; in some high-income countries they may be known as First Peoples or First Nations. Globally, there are between 370 million and 500 million Indigenous people, comprising around 5 per cent of the global population but some 95 per cent of global cultural diversity (World Bank, 2021; Hall & Fenelong, 2009, p. 1). Their territories are found within some 90 countries – often extending beyond modern borders. Some examples of the peoples include the Maori of New Zealand; the Maya and Quechua in Central and South America, respectively; the San of Southern Africa; the Inuit, Navaho and Cree in North America; and the Ainu, West Papuans and Tibetans in Asia. Indigenous people are disproportionately numbered among the world’s poorest people, accounting for 15 per cent of those in extreme poverty. However, it is important to recognize that this is based on non-Indigenous indicators of poverty. Indigenous peoples within high-income settler colonial countries in North America, Northern Europe and Australasia also have poor socio-economic outcomes relative to other citizens. A 2007 study of the Human Development Index (HDI) score for Indigenous people in four high human development countries (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) found that their Indigenous
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populations had HDI scores equivalent to only medium levels of human development.
History of indigenous peoples and development
From the late fifteenth century, colonization often decimated Indigenous peoples, through open conflict, the spread of imported diseases, and by dispossession from the lands that had sustained them. The post-Second World War project of ‘development’ is seen by many Indigenous peoples as a new form of colonialism or imperialism. This is because those promoting ‘development’ or ‘modernization’ often patronisingly viewed Indigenous people as in need of ‘improvement’, and brutally displaced them in a process of land-grabbing for modern development. Indigenous peoples’ courageous resistance to major infrastructure development projects such as roads, dams or mining operations on their lands, and massive logging and deforestation to make way for monoculture plantations for export crops, brought them into sharp conflict with governments and international institutions such as the World Bank. Indigenous peoples challenged the very nature of ‘development’; the idea of endless growth driving development in the 1960s and 1970s is, and remains, at odds with the values underpinning Indigenous peoples’ cultures and ways of life.
Activism to protect indigenous rights
Non-government organizations like the Aborigines Protection Society, which merged with the Anti-Slavery Society in 1909, Survival International (formed in 1969) and Cultural Survival (formed in 1972) spoke out earliest in solidarity with Indigenous peoples and continue to advocate against the colonial dispossession, forced relocation, suppression and genocide of Indigenous and tribal minorities caused by colonial expansion and development itself, and for their right to self-determination and enjoyment of human rights. Indigenous people themselves began their twentieth-century international advocacy when Chief Levi General Deskaheh took his dispute with the Canadian government to the League of Nations in 1923, soon followed in 1924 by Maori leader Tahupōtiki Wirema Rātana, who had a grievance with the New Janet Hunt
Zealand government about the Treaty of Waitangi. International Indigenous organizations like the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (formed in 1973), and the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, (formed in 1975) reflected a growing awareness of the common challenges facing Indigenous peoples worldwide. The movement grew across all continents, and international Indigenous advocacy across a whole range of international bodies and forums has grown in strength since. Some of the most notable advocacy efforts have been around the UN human rights bodies, as well as the World Conferences held during the 1990s and early 2000s, and the World Bank and other banks that finance development on Indigenous lands (Tauli-Corpuz, n.d).
International response and the UN declaration
In response to this Indigenous activism, many global institutions have gradually developed new policies and mechanisms relating to Indigenous people. The International Labour Organization (ILO) was the first United Nations organization to take up an Indigenous issue, responding to concerns about forced labour among Indigenous people in the 1950s. This led in 1957 to an early precursor to the current 1989 ILO Convention 169, the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention. Today, the ILO Convention 169 states the following: The peoples concerned shall have the right to decide their own priorities for the process of development as it affects their lives, beliefs, institutions and spiritual well-being and the lands they occupy or otherwise use, and to exercise control, to the extent possible, over their own economic, social and cultural development. In addition, they shall participate in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of plans and programmes for national and regional development which may affect them directly. (Article 7.1)
In 1982 the UN established a Working Group on Indigenous Populations within the human rights system, which worked tirelessly, gradually lifting the profile and importance of Indigenous issues. The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, which advises the UN Economic and Social Council, was created in
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2000, and eventually an Expert Mechanism on the rights of Indigenous People to advise the Human Rights Council was established in 2007. In a highly significant development, following over 20 years of concerted Indigenous advocacy and negotiations between Indigenous people and the member states of the United Nations, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was adopted in 2007 (Davis, 2008). This now provides a strong international framework for the rights of Indigenous peoples to self-determination in relation to development and requires States and others to seek Indigenous peoples’ free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) to development on their lands. FPIC involves decision-making without coercion or manipulation and in the fullest possible knowledge of the likely environmental, social, cultural and economic impacts of a development that is proposed. The Declaration’s clauses also emphasize many aspects of Indigenous rights, such as to culture, language, lands and intangible heritage that Indigenous people have long struggled to protect. Despite this Declaration, Indigenous rights are routinely violated around the world, and though various development agencies claim to support FPIC, in practice it rarely occurs (IWGIA, 2021). The UNDRIP nevertheless provides a valuable standard that Indigenous people are using to call governments and other actors to account. Indigenous lobbying also led to an important clause in the Convention on Biological Diversity (Article 8j) which requires the signatories to: ‘respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity’, promote these practices and ‘encourage the equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the use of such knowledge, innovations and practices’. The concept of benefit-sharing agreements has become important for Indigenous people, though many agreements are still negotiated from a position of extreme power inequality.
Conflicts over development
Among the earliest conflicts over development were those around the Chico River Dam in the Philippines’ Cordillera region in the
1970s, impacting hugely on the Igorot people whose resistance was met with violent force; also the huge Brazilian road project, the Polonoreste, which opened up vast tracts of Amazon rainforest to commercial coffee and cocoa plantations in the early 1980s, massively impacting on the lives of around 40 tribal peoples. Both projects were funded by the World Bank. The enormous controversy generated by the Chico River Dam, and other major projects of this type, led to the World Bank developing a policy on resettlement and then an initial policy on Indigenous people in 1982. Since the 1980s and 1990s, neo-liberal development has accelerated market-driven development and globalization. This approach to development continues to threaten the ways of life of Indigenous people in many parts of the world. Economic, political and cultural globalization have brought global systems of capitalist production, consumption and exchange into the remotest places, and liberal individualism has pushed up against the collective concerns of Indigenous peoples about their land rights and the health of their environments. Yet, Indigenous peoples survive and often resist dominant development models which rest on the primacy of private property rather than communal ownership of land (Hall & Fenelong, 2009). Unfortunately, Indigenous people are now often at the forefront of the impact of climate change and loss of global biodiversity, and while recognition of the value and importance of traditional knowledge is growing, particularly in relation to environmental management, the ability to combine this with science on an equal basis remains critical. Urgent action is needed to protect Indigenous traditional knowledge systems and languages, to ensure they are transmitted to future generations. Indigenous peoples’ intellectual property has to be protected, and conflicts over all these issues continue. Meanwhile, Indigenous resistance to coal seam gas, oil pipelines, dams, logging and highways continues and is frequently linked not only to communal and customary land tenure but also to the impacts of developments on biodiversity and the climate crisis, not to mention the social and cultural impacts on the Indigenous people themselves. Examples of such resistance over many years are seen in the activities of the Zapatisas in Chiapas, Janet Hunt
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Mexico, the Navaho in the USA, the Mohawk of Quebec and the Aymara in Bolivia (Hall & Fennelong, 2009).
Indigenous concepts of development
Recognizing the damage being done to Indigenous peoples and their environments by the dominant market development model, in 2010 the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues discussed a report compiled by Indigenous experts from around the world, on the concept of ‘Development with culture and identity’. As that report lamented, … the focus on GDP as a main measure of progress has distorted the true meaning of progress and wellbeing. The national accounting systems that mainly use GDP as a measure do not account for environmental and social costs. The damage to ecosystems, for example, that has resulted in the irreversible loss in biological diversity and the erosion of related cultural and linguistic diversity and indigenous knowledge, is not factored into the national balance sheet. Ecological, cultural, social and spiritual indicators, which will provide more comprehensive measurements of the national and global situations, are still not used. (United Nations, 2010)
It went on to explain, Indigenous peoples’ concept of development is based on a philosophy underpinned by the values of reciprocity, solidarity, equilibrium and collectivity, that humans should live within the limits of the natural world. Development with culture and identity is characterized by a holistic approach that seeks to build on collective rights, security and greater control and self-governance of lands, territories and resources. It builds on tradition with respect for ancestors, but also looks forward. (United Nations, 2010)
Many Indigenous people globally have found allies in post-development writers like Arturo Escobar (1995), who reject the notion of development and argue instead for alternatives to development. In this view, ideas of progress and modernity do more harm than good by undermining vernacular cultures. Their focus is to rely on people’s attempts at constructing culturally and ecologically sustainable worlds. Mario Blaser (2004) similarly argues that Indigenous people do not Janet Hunt
simply resist state-defined development, they aim to sustain their own place-based ‘life projects’ which reflect their visions of the world – visions not defined by the state or the market but built on a relational ontology – with relationships with the earth as well as other human and non-human living creatures assuming prominence. And he emphasizes that development can make it difficult for Indigenous peoples to pursue their life projects, as market development surrounds and interacts with them, yet the unsustainable nature of most modern consumerist development is stretching the earth’s resources beyond sustainable levels. In Latin America, in particular, Indigenous people in the Andean region have defined their own approach to development and well-being. In contrast to the goal of expanding incomes or even enhancing human development more broadly defined, their ideas of ‘living well’ involve a more relational ontology, including with the planet and all living things. Buen Vivir is a Spanish translation of Indigenous language terms such as Sumak Kawsay (Quechuan), – where Sumak means ‘full of plenitude, sublime, excellent, magnificent, beautiful and superior’ and Kawsay means ‘life, existing in a dynamic, changing and active manner’ (Villalba, 2013, p. 1429). These and similar concepts in other Indigenous Andean languages reflect an Indigenous ‘cosmovision’ in which nature has rights; there is an ethic of reciprocity and social solidarity; the metric for quality of life is happiness, spiritual life, and good relationships; and production and reproduction are simply to satisfy needs (Villalba, 2013). In Ecuador and Bolivia in particular, since the early 2000s, the concept of Buen Vivir (Ecuador) or Vivir Bien (Bolivia) gained traction and became official policy. The constitutions of Ecuador (2008) and Bolivia (2009) embraced these concepts and incorporated them into their national development plans. However, there is considerable debate about how adequately these Indigenous concepts have been operationalized, and criticism that, in both countries, extractive development still underpins their economies. Adoption of these Indigenist frameworks leads to questions about measuring achievement of Indigenous goals. The Permanent Forum suggested some proposed indicators in 2008 which included ‘security of rights to territories, lands and natural resources’,
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‘integrity of indigenous cultural heritage’ and ‘fate control (self-determination or ability to guide one’s destiny)’ among the eleven indicators. At the national level, in New Zealand/ Aotearoa, a Maori Statistics Framework, encompassing indicators for areas of concern such as Maori language, Maori knowledge and social connections and attachments, has been developed. The Yawuru people of Western Australia have also developed a measure of ‘Mabu Liyan’, their own relational and holistic concept of living well. Along with these developments, a global movement for ‘data sovereignty’ is emerging which insists that Indigenous people control all data about themselves. However, Indigenous people interacting with development projects do not always reject modernism – people may reshape and accommodate state or other interventions for their own purposes, using access to Western technology (such as the internet or geographic information system (GIS)) in ways that strengthen their cultural heritage and land management or protect their human rights. People can at times shape development to their purposes, through expressing ‘Indigenous modernities’. And as Indigenous people increasingly live in urban areas, emergence of Indigenous modernities in these settings is occurring.
Indigenous people, the MDGs and SDGs
Returning to global approaches to development of the last 20 years, Indigenous people’s concerns were largely invisible in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but they advocated for a human rights-based and culturally sensitive approach to their implementation as well as participation in monitoring and reporting and adequate disaggregation of data to track impact on Indigenous peoples. In the more recent Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), there are a few more references to Indigenous people, but concerns remain about the implied model of development; the need to protect Indigenous peoples’ collective rights, especially rights to self-determination as well as to land, territories and natural resources; the need for culturally sensitive policies, especially in education and health and inclusion of the indigenous view of development with
culture and identity and the right to free, prior and informed consent in all matters affecting indigenous peoples in advancing the SDGs. Another concern with the SDGs is the specific needs of women, children and youth, and people with disabilities. Such intersectionality can doubly disadvantage such groups. For example, Indigenous women experience gender discrimination, which intersects with their Indigeneity. They often suffer high rates of poverty, lack access to health, education and other services, may have their ancestral lands or their children taken away and are subjected to high rates of violence.
Conclusion
Indigenous peoples’ experiences of development have often been negative, so they have fought hard locally and through global mobilization for the protection of their human rights, particularly their right to self-determination and free prior informed consent to development on their lands and waters. Their own concepts remain on the margins of development but may gain greater acceptance in future in addressing the critical environmental crises caused by unsustainable development. Janet Hunt
References
Blaser, M. (2004). Life projects: Indigenous peoples’ agency and development. In M. Blaser, H.A. Feit, & G. McRae (eds), In the Way of Development: Indigenous Peoples, Life Projects and Globalization. Zed Books. Davis, M. (2008). Indigenous Struggles in Standard-Setting: The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Melbourne Journal of International Law, 9, 439–71. Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton University Press. Hall, T.D., & Fenelon, J.V. (2009). Indigenous Peoples and Globalization. Paradigm Publishers. IWGIA [The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs] (2021). The Indigenous World 2021. IWGIA. Tauli-Corpuz, V. (n.d.). Thirty Years of Lobbying and Advocacy by Indigenous Peoples in the international Arena. http://www.columbia.edu/ itc/polisci/juviler/pdfs/tauli.pdf. United Nations (2004). Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division for Social Policy
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364 Elgar encyclopedia of development and Development, Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, The Concept of Indigenous Peoples, Background paper prepared by the Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues for Workshop on Data Collection and Disaggregation for Indigenous Peoples. PFII/2004/WS.1/3. United Nations. United Nations (2010). Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues Indigenous peoples: develop-
Janet Hunt
ment with culture and identity: articles 3 and 32 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Report of the international expert group meeting, E/C.19/2010/14. United Nations. Villalba, U. (2013). Buen Vivir vs Development: A paradigm shift in the Andes? Third World Quarterly, 34(8), 1427–42. World Bank (2021). Indigenous Peoples. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/ indigenouspeoples.
Infrastructure and economic development Introduction: defining infrastructure
Infrastructure refers to physical human-made structures and frameworks that enable firms and households to operate in a given geographical area. These structures and frameworks are fundamental to economic development and economic growth. Infrastructure includes a number of subsectors like transportation, communication, water and sanitation, and power. It is an integral part of a nation’s wealth and may be financed publicly, privately, or via partnerships (public–private partnerships (PPPs)). The delivery of infrastructure services can be provided by the same three modes and it is usually deemed to facilitate economic growth and improve welfare. The subsectors are often interconnected and require substantial planning to take advantage of complementarities and to address market failures,1 which are prevalent in infrastructure financing, construction, operation, maintenance, and provision. This short entry discusses the basis of infrastructure and economic development. The next section defines the role of infrastructure in the concept of the wealth of nations, discussing complementarities and substitutability between infrastructure and different forms of capital. The third section details the role of infrastructure in economic development, including goals, priority setting methodologies, forms of financing, and service delivery. The last section concludes the entry.
Infrastructure and the wealth of nations
Four types of capitals primarily compose the wealth of nations. Human capital refers to skills and knowledge acquired by humans over their lifetime in their quest for understanding. Alternatively, it is augmented by the investments one makes on oneself via education and other means. Natural capital includes natural resources and the environment’s assimilation capacity. This encompasses not only marketed exhaustible like hydrocarbons and renewable resources like fisheries but also resources such as biodiversity, which are not easily traded. Natural capital may
include a natural rate of growth such as in the case of renewable resources. Social capital incorporates the interaction between individuals, between institutions, and among them; that is, it is augmented or depleted by the dynamic interactions within one’s social network. Finally, man-made capital contains machinery and other produced goods such as infrastructure and buildings. All forms of capital are subject to depreciation and may be complements or substitutes to each other, though there is ample literature discussing the degree of substitutability.2 The different forms of capital may also generate additional depreciation or foster better use. Technology has major impacts on how these capitals are utilized by societies. The concept of the wealth of nations is dynamic and thus plays a major role as in sustainable development.3 This entry covers primarily infrastructure as part of a man-made capital role in development. Infrastructure: enabler of development or a source of degradation Infrastructure is built primarily to enhance other forms of capital and augment quality of life and therefore economic development. For example, electricity as part of infrastructure enhances access to education and health and thus may augment human capital. Roads facilitate commerce and exchange, thereby potentially enhancing social capital. A particular infrastructure subsector may complement the use of another subsector such as in the case of data transmission improvements on virtually all infrastructure subsectors. While the primary objective of infrastructure provision is to enhance economic development via improving access to services and increased economic growth, building infrastructure may also deplete natural and social capitals beyond their capacity of regeneration, essentially leading to extinction. There are a number of examples where building infrastructure generated degradation beyond intended and to unsustainable levels: one can think of forests vanishing because of road-building facilitating rapid unsustainable extractivism and communities disappearing since easier transportation enables people to move to other areas or come from other areas. These societal costs are beyond the actual transformation of one capital into another. For instance, it may take some natural capital
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to generate power and enhance human capital, but power generation may also generate pollution, negatively affecting human capital. Finding the right balance is not trivial given that infrastructure investments and their consequences are long term, influencing choices but also being susceptible to significant uncertainty. Climate change may offer a further illustration of the issue’s complexity. While particular types of infrastructures such as transportation can directly (e.g. increased greenhouse gas emissions) and indirectly (e.g. facilitating land conversion) augment climate change, the same infrastructure may be severely impacted by weather-related disasters such as fires and floods.
Infrastructure and economic development
The trade-off above creates a significant challenge in economic planning. For example, a country may have invested significant resources on expanding fixed-line telecommunications just prior to the technological advancement, leading to the expansion of more cost-effective mobile networks. Recently, the sharp decrease in the costs of renewable forms of energy such as solar and wind poses a significant challenge to the financial viability of older existing thermal power plants. Yet, since infrastructures are long-term investments, substitution doesn’t occur seamlessly. Moreover, since a significant portion of these investments is either public or guaranteed by governments, societies may face higher costs than originally envisaged when they locked in a specific choice. While this does not justify maintaining outdated technologies, at the minimum it may lead to frictions exacerbating rent seeking.4 Rapid technological change in what is in essence a long-term investment with strong public good characteristics highly reliant on scarce public budgets may act as a disincentive for adequate levels of investments in infrastructures. This in turn may create large long-term infrastructure gaps that hinder economic growth and development via significant infrastructure bottlenecks. Since the early 2000s, there has been as growing literature dedicated to estimate this infrastructure gap in large developing countries. Dan Biller and Luis Alberto Andres
There are mainly three ways of estimating such gaps: (a) costing set targets, (b) estimates based on sectoral analysis, and (c) macroeconomic models. Method ‘a’ assesses physical needs as the difference between a baseline and planned targets. The targets may be defined using indicators and commitments such as universal service access, sustainable development goals, cross-country comparisons, ‘optimal’ standards, and ‘expert’ recommendations, among others. Method ‘b’ relies on micro-sectoral analysis, building estimates based on sector data and sector specialists’ views such as the minimum requirement to maintain the integrity of the systems or reliability of service. Finally, method ‘c’ uses either macro-econometric models, or micro-engineering economic models. Macro-econometric models could look at, for example, the infrastructure coverage needed to achieve an economic growth target using econometric models based on cross-country panel data to estimate the relationship between infrastructure stocks and social and economic variables, including GDP and population. Using GDP and population projections, the model would allow estimating the future infrastructure investment needs. Evidently, these different methods may produce different results but may provide lower- and upper-bound estimates, besides providing important inputs in the planning process of decision-makers. They also complement each other by enabling reality checks and budgetary estimates (Andres et al., 2016). Methodologies for choosing among economic development goals A common debate on economic development is the perceived tradeoff between equity and economic growth. This broad tradeoff can be defined in the infrastructure space as making infrastructure investments to improve welfare or to augment economic growth. In addition to the tradeoff in the infrastructure space, policymakers need also to take into account the tradeoffs and complementarities between infrastructure and other sectors in the economy. The resulting complexity indicates that currently most developing countries and a few developed ones experience infrastructure gaps. Nonetheless, there is evidence that a few countries may be over-invested at least in some infrastructure subsectors.
Infrastructure and economic development 367
As indicated, infrastructure has a major role in enabling other forms of capital. Infrastructure investments may boost productivity in an economy by enabling trade, thereby facilitating agglomerations. It may also assist in improving health and education, thereby augmenting human capital and welfare and over longer periods improving productivity. Both factors magnify long-term economic growth. Infrastructure investments may also have a positive impact on short-term economic growth by boosting consumption, investment, government purchases, and trade. One could be tempted to think that a country can develop and grow solely by investing in infrastructure in the short-term, but this potential is limited by budget constraints and by the substitutability among capitals, particularly for potentially degrading natural and social capitals. Choices have to be made in the path to achieving long-term growth and economic development via productivity increases. There is no golden rule to determine investment allocations and their order in the path for economic development. Since infrastructure decisions commonly involve large sums under often severe budget constraints and lock-in technologies, planners are faced with difficult choices, particularly where significant infrastructure gaps exists. While no single methodology of priority setting can incorporate all facets of societal needs, there are different methodologies that facilitate establishing priorities. The goal is ultimately equating trade-offs among different policy objectives per key infrastructure sectors. Andres et al. (2017) discuss in detail infrastructure priority-setting methodologies and propose a raking methodology by infrastructure subsector according to economic development goals and challenges. Table A1 in the Appendix (taken from Andres et al., 2017) summarizes the ranking methodology and illustrates the complexities of the planning process. These are inputs to the policymaking process that is also heavily influenced by institutional and political constraints normally present in countries. Infrastructure finance and provision: private, public or public–private partnerships Given the importance of infrastructure investments in ameliorating economic devel-
opment, a frequent public debate around infrastructure regards the source of financial resources for its investments and the responsibility for providing its services. A common conclusion is that infrastructure services primarily constitute ‘public goods’ and thus should be publicly financed and provided. As an additional factor for supporting public financing and provision, supporters of this view also underscore the market failures associated with infrastructure provision. Infrastructure services are indeed associated with market failures but encompass a myriad of subsectors. Considering infrastructure solely as a public good can easily lead to misallocation of resources and government failures. At this point, it is important to differentiate all types of goods associated with infrastructure provision. The classification of goods depends on their excludability and rivalry in consumption. Private goods and services, for example, are excludable and rival in consumption; that is, one person’s consumption depletes its availability to others (rival) and one could exclude others from consuming it. Public goods and services are neither rival in consumption nor excludable constituting a market failure; therefore, their underprovision may need to be compensated by society via other means like publicly financing it and regulating their provision in order to achieve societal optimum. Goods may also display one of the two characteristics, becoming clubs (excludable but non-rival) or open access (rival but non-excludable – the latter when well managed are common property resources). Infrastructure goods and services can display all four characteristics.5 In reality, the private sector provides a number of infrastructure services in developing countries due to the institutional and fiscal/financial constraints prevalent in public sectors. For example, the urban poor often pay significant portions of their income to procure water from water vendors. As this service is largely unregulated, water quality may be below standards, causing sicknesses and/or forcing consumers to boil water, thus generating additional expenses. This in turn causes additional market failures like air pollution and public health problems. Water for human consumption is rival and excludable; therefore, private sector like water vendors may provide it for a profit. Yet, when unregulated, society experiences a number of market Dan Biller and Luis Alberto Andres
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failures associated with this provision. Given its high fixed costs, piped water may also be close to a natural monopoly, further underscoring the need to be adequately regulated. Yet, none of this implies that water for human consumption necessarily needs to be provided by governments. The above discussion establishes a simple rule of thumb. Given public budget constraints and competing demands, infrastructure private goods and services can be privately financed and provided but need to be adequately regulated due to market failures associated with their provision. Discussing regulatory instruments is beyond the scope of this entry, but it is key to avoid potential government failures. So why engage in PPPs? As indicated, large infrastructure projects are costly, often involve lock-in technologies, and require long-term commitments. As such, they are subject to significant risks and uncertainty. PPPs have as key role in the sharing of risks. While often focused on financial risks, other forms of risk like economic, environment, or social may also be included. Additional roles for PPPs may include alleviating constrained public budgets and bringing private sector efficiencies and innovation in the delivery of infrastructure services. While private or public provision implies separate responsibilities and ownership, PPPs are a joint effort and thus entail at least shared responsibilities. Although generally complex requiring well-established institutional frameworks, PPPs can be an effective way of delivering infrastructure services depending on the size of the project and the level of risk involved (Andres et al., 2014).
Conclusion
Infrastructure is fundamental for economic development primarily because it increases productivity, improves well-being of societies and generates prosperity. It facilitates agglomeration economies and enables economic growth. It is an integral part of the wealth of a nation. Yet, its creation, operation, management, and provision often require significant resources, long-term commitments, and careful regulation. Over or under investing in infrastructure and poorly designed and enforced regulations may bring about unsustainable use of natural and social capitals, ultimately leading to increased poverty and Dan Biller and Luis Alberto Andres
inequality. Careful infrastructure planning that takes advantage of market forces and has a long-term view is key to securing sustainable development. Both public and private sectors have a role to play in infrastructure financing and provision. The degree of involvement likely depends on the infrastructure subsectors, the length and financial requirements of the investment needed, the feasibility of private sector involvement and the institutional capacity of a given country. Given the associated market failures, unregulated provision is unlikely to reach societal optimum. Alternatively, sole public provision is unrealistic and undesirable. In this entry, we discussed the key aspects of infrastructure and economic development. Given the constraints in space, it is presented as an introduction to a topic that has a vast literature in scale and scope. Dan Biller and Luis Alberto Andres6
Notes
1. A market failure occurs when the allocation of goods and services by the free market is not efficient generating under- or over-provision from society’s perspective. This definition does not imply that only governments can necessarily solve market failures. Rather, it implies that public and private players (when property rights are clearly established, enforced and tradable, and only a small number of parties are involved with low transactions costs – the Coase theorem) may have a regulatory role. There are four main sources of market failures: (1) public good, (2) externality, (3) imperfect information, and (4) natural monopoly (market control). These are all prevalent in infrastructure provision. 2. Please refer to the literature covering strong and weak sustainability briefly discussed in Biller (2002). 3. Wealth of nations has been amply discussed in the literature. For a recent discussion and measurements, see Lange et al. (2018). 4. Rent-seeking can be defined as the effort to increase or maintain one’s wealth without increasing society’s wealth, thereby reducing economic efficiency. 5. It is important to note that a public service in the institutional sense (i.e. provided by governments) is different from a working economics definition. This is important for ascertaining provision, as private sector may not be interested in providing services that are non-excludable because of the free-riding problem. 6. Senior authorship is not assigned. The paper carries the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.
Infrastructure and economic development 369
References
Andres, Luis, Dan Biller and Matias Herrera Dappe (2014). ‘Infrastructure Gap in South Asia: Infrastructure Needs, Prioritization, and Financing’, Policy Research Working Paper #7032, The World Bank. Andres, Luis, Dan Biller and Jordan Schwartz (2016). ‘The Infrastructure Gap and Decentralization’, in Frank, J. and Martinez-Vazquez, J. (eds), Decentralization and Infrastructure in the Global Economy: From Gaps to Solutions, Routledge Studies in the Modern World Economy, Routledge.
Andres, Luis, Dan Biller and Matias Herrera Dappe (2017). ‘A Methodological Framework for Prioritizing Infrastructure Investment’, Journal of Infrastructure Development, 8(2): 111–27. Biller, Dan (2002). Towards Sustainable Consumption: An Economic Conceptual Framework, OECD, Paris. Lange, Glenn-Marie, Quentin Wodon, and Kevin Carey (eds) (2018). The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018: Building a Sustainable Future. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://doi.org/ 10.1596/978–1–4648–1046–6.
Dan Biller and Luis Alberto Andres
Water
Power
2
2
2
3
3
2
Biofuels
Diesel
Small hydro
Wind
Solar
Biofuels
1
1
2
2
Protected spring
Water well
dwelling
Piped water into
grid
Distribution
grid
Transmission
generation
2
2
Geothermal
3
Off-grid
3
Wind
Generation
2
Grid-connected Hydro
(gas, coal, etc.)
Fossil fuels
3
3
2
1
1
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
2
1
Capital Labour Land
Services1
Infrastructure
Inputs Intensity2
3
3
3
1
1
2
3
3
3
3
2
3
3
3
3
Resources
Natural
1
1
3
3
3
1
2
1
1
2
1
1
1
1
2
Urban
3
2
1
1
1
3
2
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
2
Rural
Manifestation
Spatial
1
1
1
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
Growth
3
3
3
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
Economic Welfare
Outputs
Ranking of prioritization of infrastructure investments (scale: 1–3)
Table A1
Appendix
2
1
3
3
3
1
1
1
1
1
3
3
3
3
3
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
3
1
1
1
1
3
Pollution
Agglomeration Local
Development Challenges
1
1
1
2
2
1
1
1
1
3
1
1
1
1
3
(Climate Change)
2
2
3
2
2
3
3
3
3
1
3
3
3
3
1
Global Pollution Green Growth
Externalities
370 Elgar encyclopedia of development
Ports
Airports
3
3
3
2
Highway
Railways
2
2
1
1
Urban
Rural
2
1
2
2
2
2
3
3
2
1
1
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
3
3
2
2
3
1
3
2
3
Urban
1
1
2
2
1
3
1
2
1
Rural
Manifestation
Spatial
3
3
3
3
3
3
2
1
1
Growth
1
1
2
2
2
2
3
3
3
Economic Welfare
Outputs
3
3
3
3
3
3
1
1
3
3
1
1
2
3
2
2
3
2
Pollution
Agglomeration Local
Development Challenges
3
1
1
2
3
2
2
1
1
(Climate Change)
1
2
2
2
1
2
2
2
2
Global Pollution Green Growth
Externalities
Notes: (1) The provision modalities considered for each infrastructure service are the best available technologies (BAT) to provide the specific infrastructure service. The BAT for a specific infrastructure service is the best-ranked technology according to a CBA. In the case of power generation, the BAT varies by location; hence the different options. (2) Inputs intensity is based on BAT to provide the specific infrastructure service and the BAT for building the infrastructure needed to provide the infrastructure service. Source: Authors’ elaboration. Enrico Camilli’s formatting assistance is gratefully acknowledged.
Transport
processing
Waste
Roads
Collection and
Solid
Septic tank
Sanitation system
2
1
Piped sewer
Natural Resources
Capital Labour Land
Services1
Infrastructure
Inputs Intensity2
Infrastructure and economic development 371
International child sponsorship Significance
Child sponsorship (CS) is one of the most recognizable and controversial facets of international non-government organization (INGO) fundraising and programming. Usually, CS involves pairing individual donors in the global North with disadvantaged children in the global South. Most organizations using CS encourage regular (often monthly) payments from individual donors in return for letters, photos, cards, school reports or project updates featuring specific children. Since it was pioneered in post-First World War (WWI) Europe, this process has personalized giving for millions of donors while generating a unique sense of reciprocity. Often criticized within the development sector as a time-consuming and costly process, CS, or at least some variants, may lead to greater confidence for children (Feeny et al., 2017) and a sense of accountability and personal impact for individual donors. The genius of CS lies in its relational approach to fundraising. This is rooted in the Christian tradition of ‘godparenting’ and historic practices of adoption and fostering. Remarkably, early use of CS in the 1920s was short term and largely in the context of humanitarian crises. Over a period of approximately 100 years, CS has enabled a multi-billion dollar flow of flexible funding for a wide range of INGO activities spanning emergency relief, welfare, development and advocacy. CS is acknowledged in the development sector as ‘one of the most enduring success stories in private aid agency fundraising’ (Smillie, in Sogge et al., 1996, p. 99). However, while CS is a well-understood term in many English-speaking countries, few English dictionaries acknowledge this. One identifies a sponsor as ‘someone who vouches or is responsible for a person or thing’, ‘someone who makes an engagement or promise on behalf of another; a surety’ or ‘someone who answers for an infant at baptism, making the required professions and promises; a godfather or godmother’ (Macquarie Dictionary, 2017). This lack of formal definition of CS as a fundraising tool for INGOs is indicative of
a broader misunderstanding of its importance as a social phenomenon. The sheer number of lives impacted by INGOs utilizing CS is remarkable. When critique of CS emerged in the 1980s, an estimated one million children were being assisted yearly by sponsors or international ‘foster parents’ (Stalker, 1982, p. 1). This ballooned to between eight and twelve million in 2009, with annual CS income exceeding US$3.1 billion (Wydick, 2009, p. 1). In 2020, ChildFund reported income of US$128 million from CS alone (ChildFund, 2020, p. 12). Similarly, that same year, PLAN estimated its supporters were assisting 1.2 million children directly, to the benefit of 26.9 million additional children (PLAN International, 2020, pp. 6–7). Likewise, World Vision worked with 3.4 million children in 1,250 Area Development Programs (World Vision, 2020, p. 12). Remarkably, ChildFund has previously reported that nearly 50,000 of its sponsors supported children for 25 years or more (ChildFund, 2013). Despite its remarkable successes as a fundraising tool, some variants of CS have been the subject of significant critique since the 1980s, evidenced in the emergence of a fragmented counter-narrative that emphasizes, among other issues, degrees of concern over paternalistic direct support of individual children, costly overheads to meet the needs of donors, a heavy widespread use of guilt-based marketing and historic use of colonial tropes that perpetuated a ‘white saviour complex’ in the absence of sustainable community development. However, many CS INGOs have evolved considerably in recent decades and a diversity within the sector requires caution when generalizing about efficacy, impact and cost. Origins of CS The Save the Children Fund (SCF) and the Society of Friends Relief Mission in Austria (a humanitarian arm of the Quakers) jointly pioneered CS in 1919 and 1920, respectively. Outraged by the spectre of mass starvation in Europe, Eglantyne Jebb and Dorothy Buxton established SCF on 15 April 1919, at a London meeting of the executive committee of the Fight the Famine Council. By some estimates, 3.5 million ill, waif, undernourished or orphan children were expected to starve by the winter of 1920 (European Relief
372
International child sponsorship 373
Council, 1921, p. 4). SCF literature warned of the likelihood of a ‘… million children dead in Germany from hunger and consumption …’ (SCF, 1920a, p. 5). This was largely due to blockades, political instability and massive disruptions to European economies arising from WWI. In response to the multi-faceted crisis, the American Relief Administration (ARA) was established under the leadership of Herbert Hoover to purchase and distribute cocoa, sugar, milk, flour and fats on an unparalleled scale. With US$29 million in hand (European Relief Council, 1921), Hoover promoted a kind of adoption scheme where American families could subsidize food for family members in war-torn Europe (Hoover, 1919, p. 1). Hoover, himself an orphan, prioritized children who had lost or were separated from parents. The ARA prioritized one meal a day to eligible children, often distributed via schools, orphanages and other institutions. In Austria, child-feeding began in May 1919 (National Museum of American History, 2014). The members of the early SCF committee were more capable than the eclectic group described by one founder as ‘… the queerest collection of cranks, fools, and vassals which could well be imagined’ (Mulley, 2009, p. 256). The recruitment of Margaret Lloyd George, wife of the British prime minister, legitimized an ambitious fundraising goal of £1 million by August 1921 (SCF, 1922, p. 13). Ideas included ‘… asking workers for a day’s wages, companies for a day’s profits, or the public to sponsor a child …’ (Mulley, 2009, pp. 261–5). Prominent supporters included Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Hardy and George Bernard Shaw. Remarkably, SCF was endorsed by Pope Benedict XV, who issued a Papal encyclical in November 1919 urging Catholics worldwide to support both SCF and the broader famine response (SCF, 1921, p. 61). By accessing the British government’s pound-for-pound scheme, SCF disbursed approximately £150,000 to the Friends in Austria, who fed 70,000 children in the winter of 1920–21 utilizing depots where mothers could ‘… purchase fortnightly rations of flour, condensed milk, sugar and other essentials for their children’ (Jebb, 1922, p. 18). The majority of donations disbursed from SCF came from ‘… small contributions
from English middle and working classes’ (SCF, 1920b, p. 38). Additional feeding programmes were later established by SCF in Armenia, China and Turkey (SCF, 1922, pp. 12–13). Demand for sponsored children was robust, with SCF reporting in 1921 ‘The adoption scheme is going forward rapidly …’ and ‘The promises of adoption number 15,045’ (SCF, 1921, p. 60). Referring to its own programme, the Friends in Vienna marvelled that adopters existed in ‘… England, America, Canada, or Australia …’ (Anon., 1922a, p. 1). SCF also found global appeal, describing subscribers scattered all over the world, including in South Africa (SCF, 1923, p. 149). Eager to defend the adoption of individual children as an SCF initiative, Jebb declared that it was ‘widely copied by other organizations …’ (Jebb, 1922, p. 19). Features of the early SCF and Friends CS programme Both SCF and the Friends initially referred to child participants in their programmes as ‘god-children’ and to sponsors as ‘god-parents’ (SCF, 1920b, p. 45). Over time this shifted to the more neutral and less religious ‘adopted children’ and ‘foster-parents’. British sponsors were encouraged to choose the nationality of their godchild and donate weekly after ‘pairing’ had taken place (Gilmore, 1922, p. 1). Mutual letter-writing was encouraged, along with gift-giving, including soap and clothing (SCF, 1921, p. 62). Some Austrian children received home visits while institutionalized children received subsidized daily meals or fresh milk (Mulley, 2009, p. 260). Three-, six-, and later twelve-month adoptions were offered by SCF, especially as donors expressed desire for longer-term sponsorship. Eager to encourage a personal touch, the Friends in Austria insisted to their SCF peers that cards written by adopted children would make ‘… more real the connection between children, and those who have contributed’ (Henderson, 1921, p. 1). Faced with criticism that it was not doing enough to help disadvantaged British children, SCF began to promote the ‘adoption’ of children in England in the mid-1920s using a photo-card adoption scheme in which donors received a picture of their sponsored Brad Watson
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child. The successfully paired children were sent to the country or seaside for a holiday, with longer-term rations of cod liver oil or milk supplied as a nutritional intervention (SCF, 1925, p. 36). At the time SCF began providing photo-cards, SCF pointed out that it helped some godparents who took ‘… great interest in selecting their children – not only by nationality but by personal circumstances and characteristics’ (SCF, 1925, p. 36). This time-consuming and expensive part of CS has remained an enduring and much-loved feature of CS for the better part of a century. Clearly, by 1925, international CS was a well-established fundraising tool utilizing three key ingredients: linkage of individual children to individual donors; provision of letters and photos to create a sense of personal connection; and facilitation of regular, albeit short-term giving for food, clothing, and welfare services. This was not without obvious challenges. One insider acknowledged that because of the personal touch involved, ‘The work is extraordinarily complicated: it is like pieces of a puzzle together’ (Anon., 1922b, p. 1). Hinting at the need for flexible funding for the neediest children, and emergence of new crises in Europe, Jebb insisted that CS was to be temporary. Rather than support children in institutions, she preferred assisting them in their homes (Houghton, 1922, p. 4).
A typology of CS INGOs
CS can be classified into two broad groups of programmatic activity; those that benefit all children in a given community, and those that focus on the individual participants (Brehm & Gale, 2000, p. 2). Clearly, CS INGOs have morphed through Korten’s First Generation (emphasizing relief and welfare) to Second Generation (focusing on community development and poverty reduction). Further, select organizations have embraced development of sustainable systems regional or national level (Third Generation) and a small number have dabbled in Fourth Generation attempts to develop social movements (hinging, at least in part on advocacy and rights) (de Senillosa, 1998, pp. 2–3). ActionAid’s evolution is a case in point. In 1972, its education activities were funded by linking individual children to individual donors in order to subsidize school fees, uniforms and equipment. Increasingly Brad Watson
alarmed that this support of individual children was random, inequitable and ineffective, ActionAid pivoted funding to support better schools and improved service delivery in the 1980s, for the benefit of all children in those catchment areas (Archer, 2010, p. 612). Eventual provision of pro-poor community schools, culminating in rights-based interventions targeting duty bearers, suggests progression towards Korten’s Third and perhaps Fourth Generation of INGO (Korten, 1987).
Individual or institutional CS (IICS)
Individual or institutional child sponsorship (IICS) pairs children directly with a sponsor. Students, orphans or children with a disability or strong level of social disadvantage are typically supported in an institutional setting or via one, whether it be a school, church, orphanage or other service provider. As was the case in SCF’s feeding programme in Europe, individual children in IICS programmes are identified, photographed and paired with an individual donor or sponsoring organization in the global North. Notably, in some CS INGOs, individual donors sponsor several hundred children, while businesses, church groups and schools may collectively sponsor just one. A sense of immediacy, accountability and relational giving is encouraged in IICS through ongoing exchange of letters, school reports, photos, cards, gifts and updates, or other information, though critics continue to suggest this is often one-sided and costly. Despite ongoing concerns about high overheads, paternalism, unfairness to non-sponsored children and potential commodification of children, IICS remains an enduring part of the CS landscape, especially with small and mid-sized faith-based organizations (FBOs). In IICS programmes, a significant amount of the sponsorship dollar benefits an individual child and the institution supporting the child, rather than family or community members. Emerging critique in the 1980s, most visible in a series of articles by the New Internationalist, associated IICS with welfare, rather than community development approaches, and with potential for religious coercion, especially when CS was through FBOs. This is not to say that IICS was entirely debunked or discredited. Many large CS
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INGOs continue to support individual children in some way, including through scholarships, subsidization of children’s school fees and other services. SOS Kinderdorf continues to sponsor orphans and prides itself on high standards of institutional care for very vulnerable children, utilizing family-home models with exceptional parent/child ratios.
Individual/family child sponsorship (IFCS)
Family Helper programmes run by Plan and ChildFund in the 1970s identified needy children using a case-work approach (PLAN International, 1998). Rather than funding support of children in orphanages, boarding schools or institutional settings, CS funds were used to provide welfare services of benefit to the families and children within the community and may have involved cash transfers or direct gift giving. Usually, in Individual/family child sponsorship (IFCS) programmes, children remained in their families and communities. Compassion’s sponsorship programme in the late 1950s and 1960s prioritized monthly support of children in Korean orphans, providing ‘Biblical lessons, food, clothing, shelter and medical aid on a regular basis …’ By 1968, a new Family Helper Plan had begun in India, Indonesia, Haiti and Singapore. In a move away from institutional care, this supported children and their families. Another shift in 1970 saw Special Care Centres established to treat children with physical handicaps and medical illness. Additionally, from 1974, sponsorship extended to children unlikely to receive an education (Compassion, 2013). In more recent years, Compassion sponsors paying between US$25 and 40 per month typically support children’s school tuition and uniforms, several nutritious meals per week, healthcare and tutoring. Children may spend eight hours per week or more in after-school programmes emphasizing their spiritual, physical and socio-emotional development, or participate in retreats and camps designed to raise self-esteem and personal aspirations (Wydick et al., 2017, pp. 394–5). Changes in Compassion’s programmatic approach make it difficult to classify it predominantly as IFCS at time of writing.
Community development child sponsorship (CDCS)
‘CDCS supports a broad range of development programs to benefit all children in the community’ (Brehm and Gale, 2000, p. 2). As such, funds are often pooled for interventions, including economic development (microcredit and loans), WASH, agriculture, education (primary and secondary) and health projects (including nutrition, primary healthcare and risk reduction). This necessitates communicating to donors the reality of community development projects for which individual children may not always receive direct benefits, while maintaining the marketing advantages of individual CS. For World Vision, this shift began in 1979 when it pledged to move 50 per cent of its childcare projects to development projects by 1984 (Watkins, 1998, p. 5). At this time, most children were firmly involved in IICS or IFCS activities. Although World Vision is now pioneering reverse sponsorship, in which children choose their donors, individual relationships remain important. Area development programmes prioritize local partners and actors as primary stakeholders, with the Citizen Voice and Action component present in 209 ADPs in 29 countries by 2011 (World Vision, n.d., p. 2). Such rights-based approaches seek to influence decision-makers using advocacy tools.
Rights-based child sponsorship (RBCS)
A rights-based CS model (RBCS) utilizes CS fundraising to promote the human rights of children and other community members, positioning them or their adult family members as advocates and activists. While many INGOs address human rights to some extent, and give lip service to such, few have attempted the painful transition away from service provider to direct action and grass-roots advocacy targeting powerful duty bearers. The high costs of activism, slow nature of progress, risk of potential political backlash and ethical challenges of activating children as political actors makes it challenging to leverage CS funds for such work. Couching its work in terms of Child Centred Community Development (CCCD), Plan Guatemala noted an intentional deparBrad Watson
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ture from welfare and development work to an activist model. Under CCCD, Plan redefined its role as enhancing the ‘… ability of local stakeholders, including state actors, communities, and domestic civil society organizations, to create the changes necessary for sustained development progress’ (Vijfeijken et al., 2011, p. 5). This experiment with an ‘activist’ model of sponsorship is consistent with ActionAid’s emphasis on grassroots advocacy and the empowerment of local agency in the quest to hold duty bearers accountable. A critical question for CS INGOs is the extent to which CS as a fundraising tool is compatible with, and adaptable to, community mobilization and rights-based activism. This may explain why the focus of Plan has been less on grassroots activism and more on the practical exercise of human (and child) rights by local communities and participation in democratic processes (Vijfeijken et al., 2009, pp. 76–7).
Conclusion
Significant diversity within CS INGO programming and fundraising, combined with evolution in programmatic approaches over the past 100 years, necessitates a nuanced approach to understanding the characteristics and impact of this enduring phenomenon. At heart, CS is rooted in the Christian tradition of godparenting and a more general understanding of fostering and adoption, in itself a paternalistic relationship with a significant power imbalance. The linkage of individuals in a relationship is at once the greatest achievement of CS, a fundraising phenomenon par excellence. However, the very expectation of individual relationships is also the Achilles heel of many an INGO seeking more radical interventions. Brad Watson
References
Anon. (1922a). Friends Relief Mission Adoption Scheme. 8 February 1922 (pp. 1–2). SCF Box A398 EJ32. Anon. (1922b). Letter to Miss Houghton. 12 April 1922, (p. 1) SCF Box A398 EJ32. Archer, D. (2010). The evolution of NGO-government relations in education: ActionAid 1972–2009. Development in Practice, 20(4–5), 611–18.
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Brehm, V., & Gale, J. (2000). Child sponsorship: A funding tool for sustainable development? Informed: NGO Funding and Policy Bulletin – NGO Sector Analysis Programme, 3(November), 2–6. ChildFund International (2013). 2013 Annual Report: Learning and Growing. http://www .childfund.org/about_us/. ChildFund International (2020). 2020 Annual Report. https://www.childfund.org/ uploadedFiles/NewCF/Impact/ChildFund _2020_Annual_Report_FINAL.pdf. Compassion (2013). Compassion’s History – 1970s. http://www.compassion.com/about/ history/1970s/default.htm. de Senillosa, I. (1998). A new age of social movements: A fifth generation of non-governmental development organisations in the making? Development in Practice, 8(1), 40–53. European Relief Council (1921). Interim Report of European Relief Council Including Statement of Contributions by States and Auditor’s Preliminary Report on Accounts. http://libcudl .colorado.edu/wwi/pdf/i73698155.pdf. Feeny, S., Westhorp, G., Jennings, M., Clarke, M., Donohue, C., Boxelaar, L., Mackintosh, A., NavezJohn, K., Nyanhanda, T., Castro, J., & Wheatley, N. (2017). World Vision’s Child Sponsorship: An Evaluation of Five Area Development Programmes, Report for World Vision International, May 2017. World Vision. Gilmore, E.J. (1922). Letter to Miss Sidgwick. 29 October 1922 (pp. 1–2). SCF Box A399 EJ33. Henderson, J.B. (1921). Letter from Friends’ Emergency & War Victims Relief Committee. 18 February 1921 (p. 1). SCF Box A398 EJ31. Hoover, H. (1919). Letter to the Bankers of America about the American Relief Administration Food Draft. 27 December. Houghton, M. (1922). A Letter addressed to the Adopters who have helped the CHILDREN of VIENNA. May 1922 (pp. 1–6). SCF Box A398 EJ32. Jebb, E. (1922). British Relief in Austria. The Record of The Save The Children Fund, 3(1), 18–20. SCF Box A670. Korten, D. (1987). Third Generation NGO strategies: A key to people-centered development. World Development, 15, 145–59. Macquarie Dictionary. (2021). ‘Sponsor’. https:// www.macquariedictionary.com.au/. Mulley, C. (2009). The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb, Founder of Save the Children. Oneworld Publications. National Museum of American History (2014). Guide to the American Relief Administration, European Children’s Fund Collection, Administrative Information NMAH.AC.1199. http://amhistory.si.edu/archives/AC1199.html.
International child sponsorship 377 PLAN International (1998). A Journey of Hope – The History of Plan International 1937–1998. Plan International. PLAN International (2020). Worldwide Annual Review 2020. https://plan-international.org/ publications/plan-international-worldwide -annual-reviews-2010-2020/#2020. SCF (1920a). The Record of the Save The Children Fund 1,1. October 1920 (pp. 1–16). SCF Box A670. SCF (1920b). The Record of the Save The Children Fund 1,3. December 1920 (pp. 33–48). SCF Box A670. SCF (1921). The Record of The Save the Children Fund 1,4. January 1921 (pp. 49–64). SCF Box A670. SCF (1922). The World’s Children: A Quarterly Journal of Child Care and Protection Considered from an International Viewpoint 3,1. October 1922 (pp. 1–66). SCF Box A670. SCF (1923). The World’s Children: A Quarterly Journal of Child Care and Protection Considered from an International Viewpoint 3,4 (pp. 148–9). SCF Box A670. SCF (1925). The World’s Children: Journal of Child Care and Protection Considered from an International Viewpoint 5,2 (pp. 21–38). SCF Box A670. Sogge, D., Biekart, K., & Saxby, J. (eds) (1996). Compassion and Calculation: The Business of Private Foreign Aid. Pluto Press. Stalker, P. (1982). Please do not sponsor this child. New Internationalist. http://www.newint.org/ issues/1982/05/01/.
Vijfeijken, T.B., Gneiting, U., & Schmitz, H.P. (2011). How Does CCCD Affect Program Effectiveness and Sustainability? A Meta Review of Plan’s Evaluations. Transnational NGO Initiative, Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs. http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/ moynihan/tngo/Publications/. Vijfeijken, T.B., Gneiting, U., Schmitz, H.P., & Valle, O. (2009). Rights-based Approach to Development: Learning from Plan Guatemala. Transnational NGO Initiative – Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs Syracuse University. http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/uploadedFiles/ moynihan/tngo/PLAN_guatemala_strategy _evaluation.pdf. Watkins, S. (ed.) (1998). Understanding Child Sponsorship: A Historical Perspective. WVUS Archives. World Vision International (2020). Global Annual Report 2020. https://www.wvi.org/ publications/annual-report/2020-global-annual -report-world-vision-international. World Vision International (n.d.). Citizen Voice and Action – Helping Communities Discover the Power Within. World Vision internal documentation. Wydick, B., Glewwe, P., & Rutledge, L. (2017). Does child sponsorship pay off in adulthood? An international study of impacts on income and wealth. The World Bank Economic Review, 31(2), 434–58. Wydick, B., Routledge, L., & Chu, J. (2009). Does eml .berkeley child sponsorship work? https:// .edu/~webfac/bardhan/wydick.pdf. Accessed: 11 September, 2013.
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International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Introduction
Many of the core institutional arrangements of the current international system emerged at the end of the Second World War. The Bretton Woods (BW) Conference in 1944 led to creation of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF, or the Fund). The IBRD became the core of the World Bank Group, known colloquially as the World Bank (WB, or the Bank). The Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs) play a central role in the post-war international financial system. The BWIs embodied ‘embedded liberalism’ (Ruggie 1982) wherein international economic relations were to balance liberalized international markets with state capacity to pursue their own national economic policies. Orthodox liberal economic policy has been a key, though often controversial, dimension of the BWIs. The World Bank was designed to provide development financing to poorer countries while the IMF was to oversee a stable international monetary and exchange rate system. The BW system was seen by wealthier countries as key to the prosperity of all nations, and thus conducive to world peace.
Structure and evolution
The World Bank is the world’s premier development bank, with 189 member countries. Its core activity is mobilizing financial capital for its poorer members. The Bank’s resources come primarily from funds raised in private financial markets at relatively low interest rates due to the capital guarantees provided by its member governments. It then lends this money to poorer countries at rates lower than those countries could obtain on their own from private markets, but with a sufficient spread to make the WB both self-financing and able to finance additional activities.1 The IBRD provides loans for projects that are co-financed by member governments. It was joined in 1956 by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which provides co-financing for the private sector of poorer countries. The third main component
of the WB, the International Development Association (IDA), was created in 1960 to supplement IBRD activity with concessional (low or zero interest) long-term lending financed primarily out of occasional contributions (‘replenishments’) by wealthier WB members. Two additional entities encourage private investment flows to developing countries. The International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (since 1966) provides a forum for redress when investors believe they have been harmed by unfair host country policies, while the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (since 1988) provides political risk insurance. These five organizations, especially the first three, have similar and often overlapping membership, administrative structures and executive personnel. In addition to its core activities, the Bank has also taken on an important role as a repository and creator of economic and social data of members states, as a producer of development research, and as a source of development policy advice (often in conjunction with its lending). The World Bank divides its history into four phases2 that reflect the evolution of mainstream development thinking generally: an emphasis on financing infrastructure projects (1946–67); a focus on poverty and basic human needs (1968–81); the prioritization of economic transition and structural adjustment through programme-based lending (1982–94); and financing for sustainable development with a wide variety of programmes to deal with governance, conflict, the environment, as well as traditional poverty alleviation and growth (since 1995). As exemplified by its motto (‘Working for a World Free of Poverty’), the WB is explicitly a development-oriented organization. The same is not true of the IMF, where the ‘primary mission is to ensure the stability of the international monetary system’.3 In practice this mission is accomplished primarily through surveillance of the international monetary system, and lending to countries with an international payments imbalance. It also shares important duties with the WB in terms of data collection, research, policy advice, and capacity development. The IMF’s resources initially came from contributions by its (now 190) member states, which are assigned ‘quotas’ on the basis of a ‘formula’ linked to economic variables
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such as GDP, international openness, and reserves. These resources make up the bulk of the Fund’s General Resource Account, which can be supplemented temporarily during crises by borrowing from its larger and wealthier members either bilaterally or through the General Arrangements to Borrow (GAB, from 1962 to 2016) or the New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB, since 2016). Currently, quotas make up almost half of the Fund’s roughly USD 1 trillion potential resource base. Assistance to members has been occasionally expanded through the creation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs, first issued in 1969) to supplement members’ foreign reserves in proportion to their quota. The SDR’s value is tied to a basket of key currencies and serves as the Fund’s internal accounting unit. The explicit development orientation of the IMF emerged only in the mid 1970s. Until then IMF lending was overwhelmingly to its wealthiest members by virtue of their economic size and financing needs. After the collapse of the original Bretton Woods exchange rate system in the early 1970s, most wealthy countries adopted flexible exchange rates that facilitated automatic balance-of-payments adjustment, thus obviating IMF assistance. Concurrently, developing countries (including what are now called emerging market countries) started relying more heavily on the Fund due to their growing numbers and economic size, their unique economic vulnerabilities, and the need to balance the volatile private capital flows that had expanded dramatically in the aftermath of the oil shocks and financial market expansion in the 1970s. This engagement was accelerated by the 1982 developing country debt crisis due to the IMF’s central role in debt rescheduling. From 1980 until the 2007 Global Financial Crisis, essentially all IMF lending was directed towards low- and middle-income countries. The increased engagement with poorer countries shaped the research, lending, and surveillance agendas at the Fund from the 1980s onwards. The most apparent manifestation of this new orientation has been the creation of various concessional lending facilities available exclusively for poor countries, funded primarily by contributions by richer countries.4 These contributions finance key IMF’s special purpose trust funds, especially the Poverty Reduction and Growth
Trust, which subsidize financial support for poor members. Initially these lending windows were often ad hoc and temporary, but a core set of instruments has now emerged which mirror the non-concessional lending windows.5 The organizational structure of the Bank and the Fund are similar, and reflect their financing structures. Each has a chief executive (President at the World Bank, Managing Director at the IMF), with day-to-day decisions and oversight provided by a Board of Directors (WB, with 25 Directors) or Executive Board (IMF, with 24 Directors). Countries with large economies (and thus larger financial contributions) appoint their own Executive Directors (US, Japan, China, Germany, Japan, UK, France, Russia and Saudi Arabia). Other countries vote to appoint their constituency’s Executive Director, though some constituencies have a dominant member that effectively appoints a representative (e.g. Brazil, Canada, India). The management boards of the BWIs report to their Board of Governors to which each member country appoints a representative. The WB and IMF have a joint Development Committee that meets bi-annually to discuss development issues. Voting at the BWIs is weighted to reflect a country’s economic importance and financial contributions, thus replicating global economic power structures and ensuring that those providing resources retain control over the most critical decisions. The traditional dominance of Western countries is reinforced by the US uniquely having a veto over several key decisions or fundamental changes in the BWIs. The voting share required for the veto is currently 15 per cent, but occasional adjustments have perpetuated the US veto despite its eroding share of weighted votes. In addition, by tradition the US appoints an American World Bank President, while Europe appoints a European IMF Managing Director; these extraordinary privileges have recently been challenged.
Financial activities of the BWIs
The BWIs, and especially the WB, are key but not dominant providers of financial resources to developing countries. In the late 2010s, the World Bank provided roughly USD 10 billion in resources annually to developing (low and middle income) countries. By way Dane Rowlands
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of comparison, official bilateral development assistance amounted to around USD 110 billion, and net private financial flows were roughly USD 210 billion.6 The largest financial flows to low- and middle-income countries are private remittances, which the World Bank estimates as nearly USD 550 billion in 2019.7 Because of the rotating nature of its financing, IMF resource flows are more volatile. In 2019 it disbursed roughly USD 26 billion and received repayments of about USD 10 billion, for a net contribution of USD 16 billion. By contrast, in 2017 net flows were about USD 13 billion.8 Most of these recent flows have been to middle-income countries. Though small in relative terms, World Bank and IMF financing is also seen as catalysing flows from other lenders. IMF agreements, in particular, are alleged to provide a ‘seal of approval’ that signals to other lenders the seriousness of a governments economic reform policies (Mody and Saravia, 2006). While the evidence for catalysing private capital flows is mixed and nuanced, there is fairly strong evidence that BWI flows are associated with additional official development assistance (Stubbs, Kentikelenis and King, 2016; Bird and Rowlands 2007). The process of debt rescheduling and relief for developing countries has also seen heavy involvement by the BWIs. Both institutions participate in official debt negotiations at the Paris Club, and an IMF programme is essential for any debt rescheduling to occur. More critically, the BWIs played central roles in coordinating and managing the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative (launched in 1996) to reduce the official bilateral debt burden of low-income countries to sustainable levels. HIPC was followed by the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative that reduced the repayment burdens arising from debt owed primarily to the BWIs and some regional development banks.
Critical development debates and the BWIs
The WB and IMF have overlapping activities, and consequently have become embroiled in similar debates. Many of the associated controversies have their origin in their founding orthodox principles and their governance structure. Dane Rowlands
A fundamental complaint against the BWIs is the legitimacy of their structure and operations. As a product of the post-war dominance of the US and its allies, both the WB and the IMF reflect and perpetuate the political influence of wealthy market-oriented countries. The dominance of the BWIs has declined more slowly than their share of the global economy, leading to significant underrepresentation of rapidly growing low- and middle-income countries such as China. The institutional hegemony of wealthy countries in the BWIs has been tolerated in large part because they are the primary source of bilateral and multilateral development finance. Consequently, both BWIs have been accused of operating in the geopolitical and economic interests of its dominant Western members, and particularly the US (Breen, 2013). Extensive empirical research has largely supported this claim, though the extent and modality of this influence is nuanced and remains open to some debate.9 In some cases, influence is formal (through executive board voting) while in other cases it is informal and at the staff level. Extensive research suggests that political bias is nuanced and inconsistent.10 Another key controversy is the policy conditions BWIs attach to their loans in order to preserve the integrity of their resources and to facilitate the stabilization and adjustment of borrowing states required for a return to economic health. The traditional package of macroeconomic conditions, dubbed the ‘Washington Consensus’ by Williamson (1989), has attracted much criticism and debate (Mosley, Harrigan and Toye, 1995) due to perceived political manipulation, erosion of member sovereignty, and neoliberal orientation. In many cases senior government officials actually agreed with the need for reforms, and used the BWIs as scapegoats to escape the political disapproval of their citizens (Vreeland, 1999). Perhaps more problematic is the lack of clarity regarding the efficacy of BWI programmes generally, and conditionality specifically. There is mixed evidence generally (Stubbs et al., 2020; Dreher and Vaubel, 2004; Bird, 2001), with regard to the purported positive catalytic effect on other financing (Bird and Rowlands, 2000; Edwards, 2006), and in terms of economic growth, poverty reduction, governance improvements, and social development (Barro and Lee, 2005; Butkiewicz
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and Yanikkaya, 2005; Evrensel, 2002; Santiso, 2001; Przeworksi and Vreeland, 2000). Although the BWIs have claimed that conditionality has been reformed, these claims remain controversial (Kentikelenis et al. 2016). The analysis of programme effectiveness is complicated by the fact that most developing countries are involved with the World Bank and IMF precisely because their economic circumstances are difficult, especially in the case of Fund programming. Identifying appropriate counter-factuals and correcting for selection bias can be technically challenging, and results are often sensitive to the methodologies adopted by researchers.
Conclusion
Both the World Bank and the IMF have important roles to play in development. In addition to the provision of financial support, they profoundly affect the economic and social policies of their sovereign members. The BWIs have adapted activities to reflect new thinking in development and the evolution of economic conditions. Both institutions face challenges of resource adequacy, legitimacy and governance, and while they are evolving, the room for developing country voices has remained relatively restricted. Dane Rowlands
Notes
1. An excellent review of the Bank’s 50 years is provided by Kapur et al. (2011). 2. World Bank, https://www.worldbank.org/en/ archive/history, accessed 25 August 2021. 3. IMF, https://www.imf.org/en/About/Factsheets/ IMF-at-a-Glance , accessed 25 August 2021. 4. When a country borrows at regular interest rates from the Fund it is called a ‘purchase’, since formally they provide their own currency and buy the hard currency they require; repayments of these loans are called ‘repurchases’. Concessional lending windows use the standard ‘loan’ and ‘repayment’ terminology. 5. See https://www.imf.org/en/About/Factsheets/IMF -Support-for-Low-Income-Countries. 6. According to OECD data found at https://stats.oecd .org/, total flows by donor. 7. See https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/migra tionremitta ncesdiaspo raissues/b rief/m igration -remittances-data. 8. IMF data from https://www.imf.org/external/np/ fin/tad/extrep1.aspx. 9. See Woods (2003).
10. Important analyses of BWI behaviour include Andersen, Harr and Tarp (2006), Bird and Rowlands (2001), Dreher, Sturm and Vreeland (2009, 2015), Frey and Schneider (1986), Kilby (2009), Andersen, Hansen and Markussen (2006), Stone (2004, 2008) and Thacker (1999).
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Stone, R.W. (2004). The political economy of IMF lending in Africa. American Political Science Review, 98(4), 577–91. Stone, R.W. (2008). The scope of IMF conditionality. International Organization, 62(4), 589–620. Stubbs, T.H., Kentikelenis, A.E., & King, L.P. (2016). Catalyzing aid? The IMF and donor behavior in aid allocation. World Development, 78, 511–28. Stubbs, T.H., Reinsberg, B., Kentikelenis, A., & King, L. (2020). How to evaluate the effects of IMF conditionality. The Review of International Organizations, 15(1), 29–73. Thacker, S.C. (1999). The high politics of IMF lending. World Politics, 52(1), 38–75. Vreeland, J.R. (1999). The IMF: lender of last resort or scapegoat. Yale University. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ The-IMF%3A-Lender-of-Last-Resort-or -Scapegoat-Vreeland/531eb65210ed1aa8ed0f a11df99d66740bb43bc5. Williamson, J. (1989). What Washington means by policy reform. In Williamson, J. (ed.), Latin American Readjustment: How Much has Happened, Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics. Woods, N. (2003). The United States and the international financial institutions: power and influence within the World Bank and the IMF. In Foot, R., McFarlane, S.N. and Mastanduno, M. (eds), US Hegemony and International Organizations (pp. 92–114). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
International trade and economic development The history of international trade in commodities chronicled over at least two millennia reached a defining moment with reconsideration of Adam Smith’s interpretation of international trade. Hla Myint (1977), a well-known development theorist, commented that Smith’s idea of international trade was deeply interwoven with domestic development and each cannot be treated in isolation. Regardless of the fact that Smith did not discover the comparative cost advantage dictating the direction and pattern of trade, unlike David Ricardo, the long-run implications of international trade in expanding domestic factor resources and productivities closely resemble the main tenets of Heckscher–Ohlin theorems of the 1940s. Indeed, implications of trading the ‘superfluities’ of a country’s output for something in demand from another source is discussed in several chapters of the 1776 Wealth of Nations – namely that on rent, on various uses of capital and even with regard to town and country, one that can be re-categorized as urban planning in present parlance. If this can be considered as the inception, one must agree that international trade and development as a subject has come a long way by incorporating at various stages Ricardo’s doctrine of comparative advantage and gains from trade; productivity and dynamic gains from trade; development strategy and world trading patterns in the post-Second World War period; export-pessimism, infant industry argument and protectionism; development crises and globalization as a universal development strategy in recent times; and certainly the critical concerns about sustainable development and green protectionism. By the time the Mercantilists shaped the modern forms of international trade, albeit believing in trade surpluses only and unaware of immiserizing growth, surplus accumulations in the manner the world recognizes these aspects now were supporting prosperity and development in the richer colonizing countries of the time. While brief turnabouts were witnessed during the two world wars, pushing the richer nations in Europe to ‘man-made’ distresses, the general direction that the study of international trade and eco-
nomic development would adopt had been principally about lifting relatively weaker nations out of poverty via access to international mobility of goods and factors. Apart from a handful of evidence, such as the rich debate on the ‘transfer paradox’ – an outcome of the reparations sent to war-devastated Europe, Japan and the US – the subject of trade and economic development has been a monopoly of the Third World nations. The transition had been from prosperity through trade, to colonial extraction and impoverishment back to efforts in accumulating the gains from trade. The phase from wealth to poverty for the countries of the South, as Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2002) articulated as the ‘reversal of fortune’, remained a persistent feature owing to the evolved trading patterns. The low terms-of-trade facing developing country exporters of primary commodities restricted accumulation of wealth capable of the big push. The Singer–Prebisch hypothesis of the 1950s highlighted this feature as the mainstay of trade and development (Prebisch, 1950; Singer, 1950). Subsequently, the prevalence of internal revenue deficits and external trade deficits (Basu, 1998) accentuated the miseries of the developing countries that naturally opened up to inflow of foreign capital and foreign aid, but none without critical debates regarding the path of development and political inclinations of the country in question. The role of foreign direct investments (FDI) and multinational corporations even now remains as a challenging issue for several governments in the South as much as the subject of labour migration often measuring factor flows, stretches developed countries beyond comfort zones. The effects of capital inflow in developing countries, evidence suggests, have miscellaneous impact through direct and indirect channels. On the one hand it relaxes capital constraints and on the other leads to skill-biased growth and rising wage inequality. The urban-centric technological advancement associated with FDI generally leads to agglomeration and industrial expansion à la Sir Arthur Lewis, but often not enough to reverse the terms-of-trade against more rapidly developing state-of-the-art production and service bases in the North. The demographic imbalance that has a lot to do with poverty in the South while providing prosperity and low fertility in the North,
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allows some adjustment through demand and supply of both skilled and unskilled workers between such countries. In order to cover the length and breadth of issues related to factor mobility, Jagdish Bhagwati has offered several dimensions. The complex dynamics involving labour, capital and technology is part of the concurrent literature in trade and development. Of these, the impact of labour mobility is substantial for both the source and the host countries. The impact, as this literature claims, depends crucially on how the productivity of mobile labour is interpreted across countries. It simultaneously determines the choice of location, the occupational patterns, the scope of remittances back to the source countries, of investments in physical and human capital, and so on. The major issues around trade and development, namely, one-sided or two-sided wage inequality, economic growth, poverty alleviation and various conduits of these effects respond significantly to factor movements across countries. No less important is the political economy surrounding these negotiations between developed and developing countries. The supranational institutions like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, reconstituted as the World Trade Organization, as well as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund offer forums for negotiations on multilateral trade and factor flows. The various ‘modes’ signed by member countries create specific regulations for trade in goods and services and factor flows, and over time the general tendency has been to ‘free up’ international trade to a greater degree. In the process, it is also observed that foreign aid, once a largely accepted source of development for the poorest of countries has yielded to foreign investments. Nevertheless, foreign aid, a deeply researched subject, shall always find an important place in discussions surrounding trade and development because it too has been responsible for growth of infrastructure, reduction of poverty, adoption of newer technologies and even wage inequality, in varying degrees. Indeed, the measurement of economic welfare for poor countries is based itself on such economic
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fundamentals. Similarly, economic integration between countries, despite seeming aberrations from the free trade regimes, continues to be part of the discussions in trade and development. The need to integrate economic policies for rather critical matters like climate change and environmental protection are also integral to trade and development especially in view of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). The EKC postulates that, with rising per capita income, environmental degradation rises and then falls, although it does not state the connection with trade explicitly. However, trade drives growth and rise in per capita income, and that in turn leads to higher preferences for imported commodities, including energy-intensive commodities and services. Conversely, evidence shows that despite EKC being not very robust statistically, developing countries document a fall in emissions, with their own exports being less pollution-intensive. Overall, the inroads of international trade into multiple dimensions of development have influenced various policy choices at the national and international levels with strong implications for output, employment and welfare. Saibal Kar
References
Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson (2002), Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117, 4, 1231–94. Basu, Kaushik (1998), Analytical Development Economics: The Less Developed Economy Revisited, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Myint, H. (1977), Adam Smith’s Theory of International Trade in the Perspective of Economic Development, Economica, New Series, 44, 175, 231–48. Prebisch, Raul (1950), The Economic Development of Latin America and Its Principal Problems, reprinted in Economic Bulletin for Latin America, 7, 1, 1962. Singer, Hans (1950), U.S. Foreign Investment in Underdeveloped Areas: The Distribution of Gains Between Investing and Borrowing Countries, American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 40, 473–85.
International volunteering International volunteering has grown significantly since the 1990s in response to rising popular awareness about development challenges and global agendas to address them. The Millennium Development Goals (2000–2015) popularized poverty as global challenges that are shared international responsibility and need urgent action. Building on this, the Sustainable Development Goals (2016–2030) call upon a multitude of development actors, including ordinary citizens, to tackle myriad problems throughout the world and improve equality and well-being. With millions of people engaged in international volunteering, and hundreds of millions contributing unpaid work in their own countries throughout the world, volunteering is considered as ‘a massive resource … to deliver the SDGs’ (UN Volunteers 2021). While volunteering is found in all human societies, international volunteering has mostly involved people from wealthier countries of the global North volunteering in poorer countries of the global South through a variety of formal volunteer programmes. Since the first international volunteer organizations emerged in the 1950s and 1960s to complement the development assistance provided by Northern governments to decolonizing countries of the global South, volunteering practices and organizations have changed and diversified. As international volunteering has expanded, so has research. Since the mid-2000s, many studies have been published on various aspects but focusing mostly on Northern international volunteers. The literature shows that significant differences exist between volunteer programmes in terms of aims and objectives, duration of service, skill level of volunteers, and other factors, including the type of volunteer coordinating organization, its primary funding base, and the directionality and origin of volunteer flows (Lough and Tiessen 2018). These factors can significantly influence whether and how international volunteering practices contribute to development and the public good, and it is therefore important to distinguish between different kind of international volunteering and avoid generalizations. There is considerable debate over the benefits and challenges associated with international volunteering; and this debate intersects with
broader debates about development which some scholars have argued are constructs expressing a Northern interpretation of the world and power to define and enact development and humanitarian interventions. Current research focuses on ways in which international volunteering can foster equitable and reciprocal partnerships between Northern and Southern organizations, work against problematic understandings of development, and forge a future in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
What is international volunteering?
International volunteering forms part of a much wider practice involving hundreds of millions of people throughout the world who mostly volunteer within their own countries (UN Volunteers 2021). In this broader context, volunteering consists of voluntary engagement in unpaid activity for the benefit of others who are not part of the volunteer’s family (Ganta 2021). The 2002 UN General Assembly (UNGA) elaborates that volunteering entails ‘a wide range of activities, including traditional forms of mutual aid and self-help, formal service delivery and other forms of civic participation, undertaken of free will, for the general public good and where monetary reward is not the principal motivating factor’ (UN Volunteers 2021, 30–31). These basic criteria – voluntary, unpaid, benefiting others – are variously interpreted. For example, people may do unpaid work to avoid informal penalties, such as being ostracized by their community, or they may engage in volunteering as part of their formal university education to gain useful work experience and intercultural skills. Volunteers may receive a monetary stipend or in-kind support to enable their participation in unpaid volunteering activities. The criterion ‘benefit of others’ and ‘for the public good’ raises questions about what counts as a contribution to the public good, how ‘others’ is defined, and whether this applies when the volunteers benefit more than the people they aim to assist. What sets international volunteering apart from volunteering in general is that it involves the volunteer crossing an international border. In the dominant form of international volunteering, this is usually an individual living in a country of the global
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North travelling to a country in the global South volunteer to assist a community or organization with broadly defined development activities. While much volunteer work, particularly in developing countries, is informal and entangles individuals in direct interaction with (often their own) communities, international volunteering is formally organized through various types of providers. A distinction is often drawn between international volunteering for development (IVD) organized through not-for-profit or government-funded international volunteering and cooperation organizations, and international volunteering in the context of tourism (also called ‘volunteer tourism’ or ‘voluntourism’) and/or learning (also called ‘international and experiential service learning’ (IESL) or ‘global citizenship education’) facilitated by for-profit organizations.
Diversity in international volunteering
IVD programmes focus on development and expect volunteers to contribute to a process of social change that is of value to the local community/host organization (McGloin and Georgeou 2016). This usually requires an extended period of engagement of six months or longer, which allows the volunteer to become immersed in the host community or organization and build mutual trust and understanding to pursue development work that is appropriate to local conditions and fills a genuine need. IVD typically involves living and working under local conditions, demonstrating long-term commitment and accountability to local organizations and communities (Devereux 2008). Some IDV programmes emerged in the 1950s as civil society initiatives and started to receive government support in the 1960s, such as Australia’s Volunteer Graduate Scheme or Volunteer Service Overseas in the UK, while others such as the US Peace Corps began as governmental programmes (Sobocinska 2017). Firmly rooted in the development era, these programmes have continued to evolve and change but still work towards development and public diplomacy objectives under two broad areas: offering skilled human capital to support the work of Southern development organizations, and enhancing cross-cultural knowledge and understanding among people of different countries. Susanne Schech
In contrast, volunteer tourism and IESL are phenomena of the third millennium. These types of international volunteering usually involve shorter engagements in the global South that focus primarily on intercultural understanding and on the personal development of the volunteer. Emerging out of a desire for more meaningful tourism that benefits local people, volunteer tourism typically combines holidays abroad with a few weeks of volunteer activities that can take many forms. Organized through for-profit tour operators, non-government, or community organizations, participants pay for the opportunity to contribute to ‘activities ranging from assisting with mass eye surgeries to constructing a rainforest reserve’ or teaching English and working on social development projects in disadvantaged communities (Wearing and McGehee 2013, 121). Sitting between long-term development volunteering and short-term volunteer tourism, IESL combines unpaid international internships and placements in development organizations of the global South with learning and study. Numerous programmes are offered in Northern universities in response to university students’ demands for opportunities to combine study with work practice and global work competencies in programmes that usually involve a volunteer commitment of between three and six months (Tiessen 2018). While these distinctions by duration and programme aims are a useful starting point, recent scholarship identifies significant blurring between these types of international volunteering. For example, some tourism operators may specialize in offering volunteering for development, while NGOs and social enterprises may offer volunteer travel opportunities to support their development projects (Kinsbergen et al. 2021). The contrast often made between long-term/skilled/ impact-full volunteering and short-term/ inexperienced/self-focused volunteering is blurred by short-term skilled volunteers, who can be just as effective and useful in the eyes of their host organizations as long-term skilled volunteers (Lough and Tiessen 2018). As development actors are diversifying across the globe and new volunteering opportunities emerge in diverse organizations and contexts, the international volunteering landscape is becoming more complex, and generalizations are difficult to sustain.
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Debates about international volunteering
There is considerable debate on what volunteering is about, why people volunteer, who gets to volunteer, and what the impacts are. These questions are connected to similar debates about development. One conceptual lens on volunteering views it as a form of civil society participation. For example, UN Volunteers (2021) highlight that volunteering activates individuals socially and politically to become involved in efforts to build equal and inclusive societies. As people’s everyday lives are largely produced and shaped by globally interdependent processes that national governments are unable to control or mitigate, non-governmental actors have become ‘the advocates of the needs, interests, and values of people at large’ in what Castells calls ‘global civil society’ (Castells 2008, 83). Applying this lens to the international development context, volunteering is conceptualized as mobilizing people globally to work for mutual understanding between North and South and transformative change towards more equitable development (Devereux 2008). When international volunteers work with local civil society actors to tackle social problems, defend basic human rights, or leverage resources for the benefit for disadvantaged groups, they contribute to global civil society. While some scholars argue that volunteering is inherently political, others question whether it can promote transformational change towards a more equal, socially just world. According to the latter, the pervasive influence of neoliberal ideology and governance has led to a depoliticized view of international volunteering as ‘service’ and ‘technical assistance’ that discourages critical assessment of social, political and economic institutions and structures (Georgeou and Engel 2011). The reasons why people volunteer are multifaceted as multiple motivations usually coexist. Volunteering with the aim of benefiting strangers is often motivated by human impulses such as altruism, empathy, and solidarity, which are both universal and learnt through socialization. But there are also benefits derived by volunteers, such as new experiences for personal or career development, or the desire to meet and learn from people from another culture. The balance between self-interested and altruistic motives can vary
in different types and contexts of volunteering, affecting the extent to which such volunteer action is judged as benefiting others. Even if volunteering is valued by those who are meant to benefit, the desire to help, or ‘helping imperative’, takes on a political twist. Scholars have examined how motivations to help are constructed and sold by international volunteer coordinating organizations (Tiessen 2018), and how altruism relies on the privileged position of the Northern helper and the positioning of Southern people as being available for and requiring help. The identity-affirming, emotional impact on volunteers of believing they are making a difference, however small, momentary, or individual, explains the growing demand for volunteering experiences in the global North (Mostafanezhad 2014). In short, Northern identity is reaffirmed through experiences of volunteering, along with the problematic representations of the South relying on Northern interventions and solutions. On the other hand, direct encounters and mutual collaboration between international volunteers and local community members have been found to disrupt hierarchical binary logic of the Northern/developed/helping – Southern/ developing/helped equation (Heron 2016). More equal partnerships happen when organizations in the global South have the power deploy volunteers strategically in their existing programmes and make them accountable. The question of who gets to volunteer raises broader discussions about unequal material relations and power–knowledge relations operating on a global scale. Through the lenses of critical development theory and postcolonial theory, the predominance of North–South volunteering is a manifestation of global inequality which puts Northern volunteers – regardless of their social positioning at home – in a position of privilege and power that enables them not only to be aware of poverty and other crises but also to act upon them. In this perspective, international volunteering does not challenge but instead reinforces unequal geographies of development where ‘the South is a place to which things are done, and the North is a place from which action emanates’ (Baillie Smith, Thomas and Hazeldine 2021, 1354). Implicit in the concept of development is the assumption that European societies (including the European settler colonies in North America) Susanne Schech
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are ideal models and set the standard by which the inferiority of the less-developed societies of the global South is measured (Ziai 2015). The underlying structural and historical inequalities are concealed by a depoliticized discourse of development which reduces complex social, economic, and political issues in societies of the global South to ‘development problems’ that can be addressed with superior Northern knowledge and technical assistance. Volunteer programmes can work against this development discourse by educating volunteers about the colonial histories and ideologies of development and encouraging them to recognize their own involvement in contemporary structures of inequality (Talwalker 2016).
Futures of international volunteering
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted mainstream patterns of volunteering through travel restrictions but also highlighted shared challenges and unequal burdens across the globe. Most international volunteers were repatriated and unable to continue their volunteer engagement or resorted to online volunteering. At the same time, the pandemic revealed the importance of local and national volunteering, and this realization may lead to resources and support being shifted towards national and community volunteering being more integrated with international volunteering (Perold et al. 2021). This can assist in designing more diverse and inclusive volunteering programmes that embrace a decolonial perspective on well-being and social justice. Susanne Schech
References
Baillie Smith, Matt, Nisha Thomas, and Shaun Hazeldine. 2021. ‘Rethinking volunteering and cosmopolitanism: beyond individual mobilities and personal transformations’. Geopolitics 26(5): 1353–75. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/ 10.1080/14650045.2019.1666106. Castells, Manuel. 2008. ‘The new public sphere: global civil society, communication networks, and global governance’. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 616(1): 78–93.
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Devereux, Peter. 2008. ‘International volunteering for development and sustainability: outdated paternalism or a radical response to globalisation?’ Development in Practice 18(3): 357–70. Ganta, Vladimir. 2021. ‘Different contexts, different data: a review of statistical sources on volunteering and some steps beyond’. In Guidi, R., Fonović K. and Cappadozzi, T. (eds), Accounting for the Varieties of Volunteering, Cham: Springer. Georgeou, Nichole, and Susan Engel. 2011. ‘The impact of neoliberalism and new managerialism on development volunteering: an Australian case study’. Australian Journal of Political Science 46(2): 297–311. https://doi.org/https:// doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2011.567970. Heron, Barbara. 2016. ‘Southern perspectives on ISL volunteers: reframing the neo-colonial encounter’. In Marianne Larsen (ed.), International Service Learning: Engaging Host Communities, New York: Routledge. Kinsbergen, Sara, Esther Konijn, Simon Kuijpers-Heezemans, Gabriëlle op ʼt Hoog, Dirk-Jan Koch, and Mieke Molthof. 2021. ‘Informalisation of international volunteering: a new analytical framework explaining differential impacts of the “orphanage tourism” debate in the Netherlands’. Journal of International Development 33(8): 1304–20. Lough, Benjamin J., and Rebecca Tiessen. 2018. ‘How do international volunteering characteristics influence outcomes? Perspectives from partner organizations’. Voluntas 29: 104–18. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11266–017–9902–9. McGloin, Colleen, and Nichole Georgeou. 2016. ‘“Looks good on your CV”: the sociology of voluntourism recruitment in higher education’. Journal of Sociology 52(2): 403–17. Mostafanezhad, Mary. 2014. ‘Volunteer tourism and the popular humanitarian gaze’. Geoforum 54: 111–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum .2014.04.004. Perold, Helene, Cliff Allum, Benjamin J. Lough, and Jacob Mwathi Mati. 2021. COVID-19 and the Future of Volunteering for Development. International Forum for Volunteering in Development. Sobocinska, Agnieszka. 2017. ‘How to win friends and influence nations: the international history of development volunteering’. Journal of Global History 12: 49–73. https://doi.org/doi: 10.1017/S1740022816000334. Talwalker, Clare. 2016. ‘Fixing poverty’. In Ananya Roy, Genevieve Negron-Gonzalez, Kweku Opoku-Agyemang, and Clare Talwalker (eds), Encountering Poverty: Thinking and Acting in an Unequal World, 121–48, Oakland: University of California Press.
International volunteering 389 Tiessen, Rebecca. 2018. Learning and Volunteering Abroad for Development: Unpacking Host Organization and Volunteer Rationales. Abingdon: Routledge. UN Volunteers. 2021. 2022 State of the World’s Volunteerism Report: Building Equal and Inclusive Societies. https://swvr2022.unv.org/.
Wearing, S., and N. G. McGehee. 2013. ‘Volunteer tourism: a review’. Tourism Management 38: 120–30. Ziai, Aram. 2015. Development Discourse and Global History: From Colonialism to the Sustainable Development Goals. Abingdon: Routledge.
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Internet governance Internet governance (IG) is a lively, emerging field, and the body of research that explores it is no less emerging and varied. The Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG, 2005), following the United Nations-initiated World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) – two entities we will come back to later – has provided the following ‘working definition’ of IG: ‘Internet governance is the development and application by Governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet’ (WGIG, 2005). The definition, beyond the acknowledgment that IG is about regulating the Internet, is perhaps too broad to be ‘operationally’ useful in drawing precisely the boundaries of the field; however, it has reached wide consensus because of its inclusiveness, and provides several useful, albeit debatable, elements.
A controversial definition
First, the definition implies the involvement of a plurality of actors, who deploy a plurality of governance mechanisms (e.g. Malcolm, 2008; Mueller, 2010; Weber, 2010). IG has been described as a mix of technical coordination, standards development, and public policies. Technical coordination is conducted, through norms and the market, by the institutions that manage the Internet’s technical architecture and resources. Standards development is the set of processes by which, through norms and architecture, technical standards are agreed upon and implemented for the operation of the Internet. Public policy governance relates to the development of international policy instruments – laws, treaties, conventions – and addresses, in particular, matters of regulation of issues such as online privacy or other user rights. Internet policies are implemented at the domestic and supra-national levels and discussed at the global level in non-decision-making venues such as the United Nations-promoted Internet Governance Forum (IGF). Second, the definition hints at both actor-specific ‘roles’ and ‘shared’ principles and norms. This reflects the idea that every ‘holder of interests’ in the Internet should be
able to have their voice heard in the shaping of the network of networks; and processes and arenas should be provided for them to do so in a coordinated way. In the context of IG, this concept, called multi-stakeholderism, was first applied in the context of the IGF. Hailed in the early 2000s as the ‘twenty-first-century way’ of engaging in world politics, the multi-stakeholder model has subsequently been re-assessed by practitioners and researchers alike (Drake, 2011). While its capacity to bring about tangible policy change remains unclear, it continues to be implemented, both in the IGF and in other institutions such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Historically, the technical community of internet architects and engineers has focused mostly on infrastructure issues. As access to the Internet expanded globally, a number of regulatory issues around content gained importance and paralleled those related to infrastructure; states, civil society, and businesses increasingly look at the Internet as a battlefield where access to, and control of, content is crucial to building and maintaining legitimacy. Internet infrastructure questions today are related to both architecture and content – and increasingly, to architecture as a means to perform content mediation functions. On one hand, the arguments of infrastructure providers frequently focus on the associated costs of providing equal service to customers without regard to usage, and free speech advocates advance concerns on discriminatory pricing as a way to silence online voices. Symmetrically, content-related questions take on aspects of architecture: identifying and eliminating spam, viruses, and other unwanted and malicious content; and enabling law enforcement to take appropriate action where possible, often require architectural interventions – which may be overplayed or misused to the detriment of the Internet’s stability, security, and openness. Different groups contest the definition and the perimeter of IG across political and ideological lines. One of the main debates concerns the authority of specific actors, such as national governments, corporate entities, and civil society. Governments perform certain IG functions such as regulating abuses, overseeing antitrust measures, and responding to security threats – and they also use content filtering and blocking techniques for surveillance and censorship. Their role in
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IG remains central and often ambiguous. However, other areas of IG, such as internet protocol design and coordination of critical internet resources, have historically been delegated to transnational, institutional entities, and to private ordering (DeNardis, 2014). Moreover, some scholars argue (Goldsmith & Wu, 2006; Mueller, 2010) that one should be careful about subscribing to two opposing ideological positions, an enthusiastic but naïve technological determinism or belief in the ‘digital revolution’, and the mere reproduction of traditional forms of state sovereignty as applied to the Internet. One should also refrain from excessively reducing the IG debates to one of its components or arenas; for example, the United Nations-promoted processes that have led to the establishment of the IGF, or the ICANN, which has occasionally been presented as ‘running the Internet’.
A brief history of internet governance
IG has emerged simultaneously ‘as a label, a field of research and academic study, and a real-world arena where stakeholders and interest groups clash and cooperate’ (Mueller & Badiei, 2020). While it has been argued that embryos of at least one of these three aspects were already present in the discussions over early internetworking principles, or in the convergence of computing and information and communication technologies (ICTs), it is arguably only in the early-to-mid nineties that it became apparent that the Internet posed unique governance problems, both because of its specific underlying protocols and its own standardizing organizations and institutions. Interestingly, the state of the art in the academic field demonstrates that seminal research work has contributed to co-shape the concept of global governance of the Internet. From Milton Mueller, Lawrence Lessig and Tim Wu’s pioneering approaches to Laura DeNardis’ The Internet in Everything (DeNardis, 2020), the IG notion has evolved in practice also due to the analytical questions scholars have been asking through the years about its perimeter, nature, and actors. While there are differences in the ways in which periodizations of IG as a concept have been established (see e.g. Bradshaw et al., 2015; Mueller & Badiei, 2020), a few key periods and moments appear to be consensual.
Early debates on ‘internet exceptionalism’ (1996 to late 1990s)
The first of these debates revolves around the understanding of the Internet as being a space of its own, notably from the standpoint of law and jurisdictions. While the first document that comes to mind as a symbol of this phase is the flamboyant 1996 ‘Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace’ by John Perry Barlow, this phase was marked by broader and more grounded discussions about whether the Internet should develop its specific regulation system, more decentralized and multi-centred, and not primarily based on state-centred control (Johnson & Post, 1997), and about ‘cyberspace sovereignty’ (Wu, 1997). These debates informed the analysis of the nascent commercial internet, with issues such as trademark law, intellectual property law, and online dispute resolution becoming central.
ICANN, a controversial newcomer (1998 to mid-2000s)
In the late 1990s, discussions on internet exceptionalism became ‘incarnated’ in a debate on constructing a new IG institution, or an ensemble of them. Indeed, if there was a consensus about the inadequacy of existing governments and/or intergovernmental organizations to take on internet policy, the question became how to build a novel IG framework, and who should control or coordinate it. These issues became particularly salient with the creation of ICANN in 1998 (Mueller, 2002). ICANN, while novel for its ability to globally coordinate actors around problems posed by critical internet resources, was controversial due to the US’ role in its birth and prerogatives. As a private, yet global, nonprofit corporation, ICANN was empowered by the US to issue private contracts as a way to solve public policy issues, and to have sole authority over the domain name root and internet address spaces, while at the same time attempting novel ‘democratic experiments’ such as global elections for its Board. Scholars have in turn highlighted ICANN as the epitome of new networked governance for the digital age (Levinson, 2002); examined how nation states and their governments have played a role in its formation and development, especially its ambiguous Governmental Francesca Musiani
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Advisory Committee (Weinberg, 2011); and critiqued the legality – and most strongly, the legitimacy – of its proposed governance model (Froomkin, 2000). This phase was also witness to landmark judicial decisions, such as the Yahoo! vs France case, where a French court ordered internet giant Yahoo! to block French web users from a number of its auction sites selling Nazi memorabilia (Goldsmith & Wu, 2006).
The WSIS, a global discussion space on internet governance (2003 to early 2010s)
The WSIS, a United Nations summit, held in two phases in 2003 (Geneva) and 2005 (Tunis), likely epitomizes the third phase in IG periodization – a process around which IG in practice, and the structuration of IG as a field of study, converged. Heavy debates on the IG definition took place during the entire WSIS process, with a variety of positions, ranging between the extremes of critical internet resources management by ICANN on the one hand, and the regulation of the whole ICT spectrum on the other. A central contribution in the definitional efforts was provided by the WSIS-mandated WGIG in 2004, mentioned in the introduction to this entry. Multi-stakeholderism as a novel governance arrangement soon became a prime subject of multi-disciplinary IG research (see Raymond & DeNardis, 2015), with particular attention paid to the ability of civil society to meaningfully participate in IG processes (Hintz, 2005). WSIS originated a global IG discussion space which carries on to this day, not without criticism of its own, the IGF (see Malcolm, 2008 for an analysis of its early days). Interestingly, the main scholarly IG association, the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet), was born out of the IGF and still holds its annual conference on the day preceding its official start.
A ‘post-Snowden internet policy’: rethinking perimeters and emerging issues (mid-2010s to present day)
Discussions about the definition of IG keep on being a core issue in itself. Indeed, the ongoing phase of a hypothetical periodization of IG is marked by a discussion about its Francesca Musiani
perimeter, and the inclusion of several issues as they took centre stage in the global political arena. For several scholars, including Laura DeNardis (2014), IG per se should be distinguished from user practices, uses and content creation, and distribution on the Internet, while other scholars argue that IG could meaningfully include the agency of technology designers, policymakers, and some users as they can lead to unintended consequences with pragmatic effects for power balances on the Internet (Musiani, 2015). Scholars have also argued that the distributed and diffused nature of internet power may lead to a lack of clarity on where actual authority resides, on ‘where is the governance in Internet governance’ (van Eeten & Mueller, 2013). Regardless of where scholars may stand in these debates, they reflect a crucial evolution in IG: while political arenas such as WSIS or IGF were closely scrutinized by academics, several issues that de facto pertain to internet governance increasingly developed ‘in the largely non-institutionalized space formed by transnational Internet services and commerce’ (Mueller & Badiei, 2020), including network neutrality; internet content regulation; censorship and circumvention; private sector-led intermediation and regulation of both content and infrastructure; cybersecurity and information security; and intermediary liability in defamation, copyright violations, and disputes over e-commerce practices. The pre-eminent IG-related issue of the last decade is perhaps – catalysed by the Edward Snowden revelations but having its roots in long-standing debates about personal data, identity, and cryptology – that of online surveillance and privacy. Revealing the extent of pervasive online global surveillance, the former NSA contractor arguably opened the era of a ‘post-Snowden Internet policy’ (Pohle & Van Audenhove, 2017), where the world took full measure of the US’ de facto global authority on the Internet and of the depth of the US government’s ‘dangerous liaisons’ with private intermediaries (Musiani, 2013). This opened up a crisis of legitimacy for the US to keep on acting as the foremost actor in IG. Arguably – even if the process was already underway before Snowden – it contributed to the so-called ‘IANA transition’, the process during which the US relinquished their control of the DNS root, and which originated substantial reforms within ICANN.
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In parallel, the 2010s have also witnessed the rise and/or the stabilization of new IG ‘superpowers’, notably Russia and China (see e.g. Litvinenko, 2020; Negro, 2017), pursuing ‘digital sovereignty’ – the idea that states should reassert their authority over the Internet and protect their nation’s self-determination in the digital sphere by increasing their independence and autonomy at the technical, economic, and political levels. Legal instruments such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (entered into force in May 2018) posed new conditions to both data protection and platform governance, incarnating a major regulatory challenge for business models based on the harvesting of data and offering ‘free’ services as a counterpart.
Conclusion
Today, IG is an ensemble of techno-political controversies and battles over ‘control points’, from the deepest layers of internet infrastructure to the ‘last mile’ of user access to the network, and lead to reconsider the de facto public policy role assumed by private information intermediaries as they gather, collect, aggregate, select, and present data to actors of the Internet value chain – thereby enacting governance over privacy, freedom of expression, cultural diversity, and reputation (DeNardis, 2014). In the wake of surveillance revelations, privacy, security, anonymity, and the ‘right to be forgotten’ issues have become even more prominent discussion topics. Hovering over these issues is the advent of big data and the use of large complex data sets to ascertain facts about groups and individuals. A whole new class of non-human users is also coming to the forefront, such as the ‘Internet of things,’ devices with unique IP addresses which communicate with one another. Combined with filtering technologies and the willingness of commercial companies to supply such technologies to governments that seek to limit access to or production of content by citizens, these features may enhance censorship, manipulation, and espionage, which is illustrated by scandals ranging from Cambridge Analytica (2018) to Pegasus (2021). Internet governance is a ‘regulative idea in flux’ (Hofmann, 2007). Indeed, the search for concepts and tools to make sense of twenty-first-century IG, as a set of practices
and technologies and an academic field of study, is open-ended and problematic. IG technologies and political arrangements will likely continue to be subjected to a variety of ‘stress factors’ in the immediate future: increasing pressure to introduce additional regulation at interconnection points; greater governmental control; technology-embedded threats to privacy; reduction of anonymity and its consequences for freedom of expression; loss of platform interoperability; and finally, ‘creative’ uses and misuses of internet infrastructure and their impact on the Internet’s security and stability. Francesca Musiani
References
Bradshaw, S., DeNardis, L., Hampson, F., Jardine, E., & Raymond, M. (2015). The emergence of contention in global internet governance. Paper, 56th Annual ISA Convention New Orleans, USA, 9 February. International Studies Association. DeNardis, L. (2014). The Global War for Internet Governance. Yale University Press. DeNardis, L. (2020). The Internet in Everything. Yale University Press. Drake, W. (2011). Multistakeholderism: external limitations and internal limits. In MIND: Multistakeholder Internet Dialog, Collaborative Discussion Paper Series, No. 2 Internet Policymaking, 68–72. Froomkin, A.M. (2000). Wrong turn in cyberspace: using ICANN to route around the APA and the Constitution. Duke Law Journal, 50(1). https:// scholarship.law.duke.edu/dlj/vol50/iss1/4. Goldsmith, J., & Wu, T. (2006). Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World. Oxford University Press. Hintz, A. (2005). Activist media in global governance: inputs and outputs of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). RE:activism: Re-drawing the boundaries of activism in a new media environment conference, Budapest, Hungary. Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Central European University, The Open Society Institute, and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Hofmann, J. (2007). Internet governance: a regulative idea in flux. In R. Kumar & J. Bandamutha (eds), Internet Governance: An Introduction (pp. 74–108). The ICFAI University Press. Johnson, D., & Post, D. (1997). And how shall the net be governed? A meditation on the relative virtues of decentralized, emergent law. In B. Kahin & J.H. Keller (eds), Coordinating the Internet (pp. 62–91). MIT Press.
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394 Elgar encyclopedia of development Levinson, N.S. (2002). Internet governance and institutional change. The Tocqueville Review, 23(2), 125–41. Litvinenko, A. (2020). Re-defining borders online: Russian concept of internet sovereignty in the context of global internet governance. Media and Communication, 9(4). https://doi.org/10 .17645/mac.v9i4.4292. Malcolm, J. (2008). Multi-stakeholder Governance and the Internet Governance Forum. Terminus Press. Mueller, M. (2002). Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace. MIT Press. Mueller, M. (2010). Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance. MIT Press. Mueller, M., & Badiei, F. (2020). Inventing internet governance: the historical trajectory of the phenomenon and the field. In L. DeNardis, D. Cogburn, N.S. Levinson & F. Musiani (eds), Researching Internet Governance: Methods, Frameworks, Futures (chapter 3). MIT Press. Musiani, F. (2013). Dangerous liaisons? Governments, companies and internet governance. Internet Policy Review 2(1). https://doi .org/10.14763/2013.1.108. Musiani, F. (2015). Practice, plurality, performativity and plumbing: internet governance research meets science and technology studies. Science, Technology and Human Values, 40(2), 272–86.
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Negro, G. (2017). Internet in China. Palgrave Macmillan. Pohle, J., & Van Audenhove, L. (2017). Post-Snowden internet policy: between public outrage, resistance and policy change. Media and Communication, 5(1), 1–6. Raymond, M., & DeNardis, L. (2015). Multistakeholderism: anatomy of an inchoate global institution. International Theory, 7(3), 572–616. van Eeten, M., & Mueller, M. (2013). Where is the governance in internet governance? New Media & Society, 15(5), 720–36. Weber, R. (2010). Shaping Internet Governance: Regulatory Challenges. Springer. Weinberg, J. (2011). Governments, privatization, and privatization: ICANN and the GAC. Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review, 18(1), 189–218. WGIG [Working Group on Internet Governance] (2005). Report of the Working Group on Internet Governance. Château de Bossey. http://www .wgig.org/docs/WGIGREPORT.pdf. Wu, T. (1997). Cyberspace sovereignty? The internet and the international system. Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, 10(3), 647–66.
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Labour migration Labour migration is deeply embedded in human history. Humans have moved physically to work in other places, whether within the country (internal migration) or across countries (international migration) for a very long time. However, the speed and spatial reach of labour migration has increased exponentially post-Industrial Revolution. Global labour migration comprising all countries in the world is a recent phenomenon. This entry focuses on labour migration across countries through discussing key theories of international migration, the global labour market and temporary labour migration.
Key migration theories
In thinking about labour migration, two broad types of theories exist: functionalist theories and critical theories. Functionalist theories suggest that society is a complex system and social processes are a constant balancing act to preserve and improve stability. Functionalist theories have an economic focus such as thinking about how individuals try to maximize (economic) utility, that is, their earnings, which leads to labour migration from less to more developed countries. Functionalist theories suggest that labour migration can ease unemployment in sending countries, alleviate labour shortages in receiving countries and enable remittances to be sent to the country of origin for economic development. As such, functionalist theorists believe labour migration can restore demographic and economic balance and potentially benefits everyone. The push–pull theory of migration (Lee 1975) is one example of functionalist theories. It suggests that receiving countries have positive factors such as higher wages that attract (‘pull’) people towards
them while sending countries can have negative factors such as lower wages that repel (‘push’) people. Critical theories, however, are more interested in power. Such theories ask: who is in power? Who controls and manages migration? Whose interests are served by the existing structures and processes? Critical theories argue that global labour migration can be seen as an aspect of capitalist globalization where wealthy countries exploit poorer countries. One example of critical theories is the world system theory (Wallerstein 1979) which argues that the wealthy and powerful countries (‘core’) benefit more than poorer countries (‘periphery’). Through receiving labour immigrants, wealthy countries benefit from cheap labour. However, labour migration increases the loss of skilled people (‘brain-drain’) in sending countries and increases economic imbalance between wealthy and poorer countries. Whether functionalist or critical, however, scholars have been caught in debates about whether labour migration leads to development (i.e. the migration–development nexus), especially in sending countries. While some scholars have argued that remittances sent by migrants benefit sending countries, including ensuring families’ survival (Massey et al. 1999; Guarnizo 2003), others have argued that high emigration causes sending countries to suffer from overreliance on remittances, depopulation and neglect of productive activities (Delgado-Wise and Covarrubias 2007). Importantly, scholars have also questioned the migration–development nexus (which migration, what development?) pointing to how attention to different forms of migration and different definitions of development can vary outcomes and conclusions on the migration–development nexus (Skeldon 2002; Portes 2009; Raghuram 2009).
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The global labour market
International labour migration is predominantly South–North, driven by economic and demographic disparities between the global South and the global North. These disparities have become intensified by economic globalization which is mainly driven by capitalist expansion to new markets and cutting costs of production in search of profit. Globalization increases both inequalities and awareness about them; more people are motivated and able to migrate, especially with the increasing accessibility of information, communication and transportation. Globalization has created a global labour market, although it is not a free one. In other words, not everyone has the freedom to move across borders for work. The curb on the freedom to move across borders is unequal and reliant on state policies that seek to sieve out ‘desirable’ migrants from the ‘undesirables’. National migration policies constitute the most important forces operating to influence the volume and composition of contemporary international labour migration, and are shaped by economic and security concerns of nation states. Admission policies are highly bifurcated: major labour-receiving countries tend to admit both high-wage and low-wage labour migrants. However, high-wage labour migrants are often given the red-carpet treatment to attract and retain them as settlers. Low-wage migrants, on the other hand, are often temporary migrants who are tightly controlled and do not have recourse to settlement. Temporary labour migration has been on the rise in recent years and will likely dominate as states’ choice migration policy in the future.
Temporary labour migration
Temporary labour migration programmes are sometimes referred to as ‘guestworker’ programmes and can range from several months to several years. While many migrants are motivated by higher earnings overseas, they may also have non-economic considerations such as a desire to experience work and culture abroad. Temporary labour migration programmes seek to meet the economic needs of a nation state by temporarily adding labour migrants to the state’s labour force
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without allowing them to settle permanently. Temporary labour migrants lead precarious lives and are frequently exploited. Other than being subjected to repatriation during economic decline, they suffer from exploitative visa rules. For example, in Australia, the Working Holiday Maker visa requires at least three months of work in rural Australia where employers may hold unequivocal power over workers. In Singapore, foreign construction workers are only allowed to stay up to a maximum of two years, and are subject to visa renewal according to the employers’ decision; creating a power imbalance between workers and employers. Temporary work visas also frequently restrict migrants from changing employers. Temporary labour migrants may also be vulnerable due to the lack of local language skills, local knowledge and networks as well as lack of control over working conditions. They may be paid extremely low wages and/or below the legal minimum wage. They may also lack basic rights such as medical insurance, free schooling for children and welfare rights. Many countries have become dependent on temporary labour migration. For instance, as of 2022, more than one-third of Singapore’s labour force is made up of migrants on temporary work visas. The proportion of migrant to local workers is amongst the highest in the world in the Arab states region: more than 80 per cent of the population in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates comprises foreign nationals, the bulk of whom are low-wage workers with no recourse to citizenship. There are also large temporary labour migration programmes in Canada and the United States. However, despite many countries’ reliance on temporary workers, there is an unequal balance of power between sending and receiving countries. Receiving countries with strong economies have an advantage in setting the terms for negotiations on migration policy and have little incentive to participate in any potentially binding forms of migration policy in ways that might affect their control over their national economies. In conclusion, this entry has discussed labour migration across countries by highlighting key theories of international migration. It has discussed the inequalities of the global labour market as conditioned by state migration policies. Finally, it has discussed
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temporary labour migration, its exploitative nature and countries’ growing reliance on it. Sylvia Ang
References
Delgado-Wise, R., & Covarrubias, H.M. (2007). The reshaping of Mexican labor exports under NAFTA: Paradoxes and challenges. International Migration Review, 41(3), 656–679. Guarnizo, L.E. (2003). The economics of transnational living. International Migration Review, 37(3): 666–99. Lee, E.S. (ed.) (1975). A theory of migration. In Population Studies. Chicago: Rand Mcnally Publishing Company.
Massey, D. S., Arango, J., Hugo, G., Kouaouci, A., & Pellegrino, A. (1999). Worlds in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millennium. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Portes, A. (2009). Migration and development: reconciling opposite views, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 32(1), 5–22. Raghuram, P. (2009). Which migration, what development? Unsettling the edifice of migration and development. Population, Space and Place, 15(2), 103–117. Skeldon, R. (2002). Migration and poverty. Asia-Pacific Population Journal, 17(4), 67–82. Wallerstein, I. (1979). The Capitalist World Economy, Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
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Land governance The term ‘land governance’ is relatively new. It emerged in the early 2000s as an extension of the concept of ‘land management’ to include also the aspect of governance and the political economy of land. This is seen as highly relevant when addressing current complex challenges such as poverty alleviation, climate change, rapid urbanization, food scarcity, natural disasters, and so on. Many of these challenges have a clear land dimension, such as unequal access to land, insecurity of tenure, unsustainable land use, and weak institutions for dispute and conflict resolution (FAO, 2009). Land governance is about the policies, processes, and institutions by which land, property, and natural resources are managed. It concerns the rules, processes, and structures through which decisions are made about access to land and its use and development, the manner in which the decisions are implemented and enforced, and the means through which competing interests in land are managed. Land governance is basically about determining and implementing adequate and sustainable land policies (FIG/World Bank, 2010). The term ‘land’ relates to the natural surface of the earth, including all physical features attached to it both above and below. The term ‘governance’ represents the process of governing. It is about the way in which society is managed and how the competing priorities and interests of different groups are reconciled. It includes the formal institutions of government but also informal arrangements. Governance is concerned with the processes by which citizens participate in decision-making, how government is accountable to its citizens, and how society obliges its members to regard its rules and laws. In this respect, land governance cannot be separated from governance of other sectors. Good governance means that government is well managed, inclusive, and results in desirable outcomes. This includes features such as accountability, political stability, effectiveness, regulatory equity and rule of law, and, of course, control of corruption. This can be made operational through prin-
ciples of equity, efficiency, transparency and accountability, sustainability, subsidiarity, civic engagement, and security. Governance can be poor if government is incorruptible but tyrannical, or is democratic yet incompetent and ineffective (FAO, 2007). Land governance covers all activities associated with the management of land and natural resources, which are required to fulfil political and social objectives and achieve sustainable development. This relates specifically to the legal and institutional frameworks for the land sector. The operational component of the land management concept is the range of land administration functions: ● land tenure, dealing with identification, registration, and transfer of rights in land and natural resources; ● land value, dealing with valuation and taxation of land and properties; ● land use, dealing with planning and control of the use of land and natural resources; and ● land development, dealing with implementation of urban and rural land use planning, infrastructures, utilities, and constructions works. These four functions are essential to ensure control and management of physical space and the economic and social outcomes emerging from it. The relationship between people and land is of fundamental importance in every society and is evident in the form of property rights. This relationship has evolved over time in many different ways, from full state control, through communal forms of tenure, to the individual property rights. The four functions are interrelated and provide an enabling infrastructure for implementing land policies land management strategies in support of sustainable development. Ultimately, the design of adequate systems of land tenure and land value should support an efficient land market, and the design of systems to deliver land use control and land development should lead to effective land use management. The combination of efficient land markets and effective land use management is then seen as a key component in delivering economic, social, and environmental sustainable development (Enemark et al., 2005).
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The land governance components
The organizational structures for land governance and administration differ widely between countries and regions throughout the world and reflect the cultural and judicial setting of the country and jurisdiction. Furthermore, the judicial and institutional arrangements may change over time to better support implementation of land policies and good land governance. A simple entry point for understanding the land governance issues is a reflection on the hierarchy of land issues from the land governance level down to the individual land parcel (Williamson et al., 2010), where: ● Land Governance is about the policies, processes, and institutions by which land, property, and natural resources are managed. ● Land Policy determines values, objectives, and the legal framework for management of a society’s major asset, its land. ● Land Management includes the management of land and natural resources for achieving sustainable development. ● Land Administration includes the core functions of land tenure, land value, land use, and land development in support of efficient land markets and effective land use management. ● Spatial Data Infrastructure provides access to and interoperability of cadastral and other land-related information on the built and natural environment. ● Cadastre provides the spatial integrity of every land parcel. This parcel identification provides the link for securing land rights and planning and control of the use of land. ● Land Parcel is the key object for identification of land rights and administration of land use restrictions. This hierarchy of land issues and their relationships illustrates the complexity of organizing policies, institutions, processes, and information for dealing with land in any society. However, it also illustrates an orderly approach represented by the seven levels. This conceptual understanding also provides an overall guidance for building, maintaining, and improving land governance
systems in any society, no matter their level of development. All countries need to deal with the management of land. In the more developed parts of the world, the systems for governing and administering land issues have evolved over centuries to an advanced level for coping with cultural and economic development. Looking at the less developed parts of the world, in many countries, and especially in the sub-Saharan Africa region, the basic systems of land registration are still not in place. In these countries, more than 70 per cent of the land and people are outside the formal systems that tend to serve mainly the elites, and the perspectives of human rights and sustainability are largely ignored (Enemark et al., 2014). In such regions, there is a need to improve the land governance systems more generally to cope with current and future challenges.
The importance of effective land governance
Land is a finite resource within a given jurisdiction, whether it is a community or a country. Within any jurisdiction, there are a range of stakeholders and a range of different development objectives leading to competition and conflict over access to land and the use of the land resource. Such conflicts and competitions may relate to neighbours disputing location property boundaries; competition between various stakeholders over the possible use of the same piece of land for residential, commercial, or industrial purposes; urban development versus protection of nature and farmland; or slum dwellers illegally occupying public or private land. Government projects may require purchase of private or community land, and Indigenous communities and environmentalists may compete with timber companies and electrical enterprises over the use of forested lands and water resources. Local communities may be displaced from their land and homes because of violent conflicts, natural disasters, or climate variability and, in their search for new land, are likely to place them in competition with already established communities. These conflicting interests in land call for means of effective land governance in order to provide secure legal rights in land Stig Enemark
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and to enable control of the use of land and natural resources. When land governance is weak, corruption is likely to flourish and the systems benefit mainly the haves rather than the have-nots. The powerful are able to dominate the competition over scarce land resources and may illegally transfer state lands and common lands to themselves and their allies – or profit from land-grabbing arrangements in favour of foreign investors. By contrast, when land governance is effective, it can contribute to improvements in social equity, economic development, and environmental sustainability. Benefits arise from the responsible management of land whilst natural resources are more equitably distributed. In cities, effective land management contributes to reduce social tensions and poverty whilst promoting economic growth. When good governance exists, decision-making is more transparent and participatory, the rule of law is applied equally to all, and most disputes are resolved before they degenerate into conflict (FAO, 2009).
gies within specific areas. Within the land sector, such regulations relate to controlling the rights in land, the valuation and taxation of land and property, the planning and control of land use and natural resources, and the process of land development. The regulatory framework for land is then the infrastructure of such regulations and institutional arrangements forming a land administration system (Williamson et al., 2010). It should be recognized, though, that many countries do not have a comprehensive national land policy; rather, they have different policies for different types of land and other natural resources such as arable land, forestry, water, and so on. This is found in many developed countries, with a long tradition for handling land as a key societal asset. In contrast, most developing countries need to take a more holistic approach to address the land issue, in order to highlight the governmental and political economy dimensions that can be found in any decision-making process related to land.
Land policy
Land reform
As stated by the World Bank: ‘Land policies are seen of fundamental importance to sustainable growth, good governance, and the well-being of and the economic opportunities open to rural and urban dwellers – particularly the poor’ (Deininger, 2003). A national land policy is the set of aims and objectives determined by governments for dealing with land issues. Land policy is part of the national policy on promoting objectives such as economic development, social justice and equity, and political stability. Land policies vary, but in most countries they include poverty reduction, sustainable agriculture, sustainable settlement, economic development, and equity among various groups within the society. All stakeholders, including civil society, should be involved in the identification of issues and potential solutions. The outcomes from this process have far-reaching impacts on who can own and use land and for what development objectives (Enemark, 2019). Policy implementation depends on how access to land and land-related opportunities are allocated through the legal and institutional frameworks. Regulations are legal provisions used as instruments to express and implement government policies and strateStig Enemark
The means of ‘land reform’ differ from ‘land policy’. Whereas land policy sets the aims and objectives for the future governing of land and natural resources, land reform aims at changing the existing pattern of land holdings. Land reform is concerned with the institutional structure governing the people to land relationship through intervention in the prevailing pattern of land ownership and usage in order to change structure, improve productivity, and broaden distribution of benefits. The land reform process may focus primarily on ‘land restitution’ where people are claiming and given back land that was previously taken away from them (e.g. through forced occupation or colonization). Perhaps the most emblematic example is the transition from major collectively managed state farms to minor privately owned land holdings in Eastern European nation states after the Iron Curtain ceased to exist in 1989. Other examples relate to restitution of land rights for indigenous people in various countries such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Land reform may also focus on ‘land redistribution’, aiming at dividing large-scale land holdings and transferring land rights to small-scale producers and settlers for farming
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and living. The objective of such reforms may include political motives such as abolishing feudalism, overthrowing landlords, eradicating poverty, and promoting social justice. Throughout history, such land redistribution reform is perceived in many regions the world over (e.g. in Europe following the French Revolution in the late 1700s). In China, collective farms were dismantled around 1980 and replaced by long-term leases to farming households, which led to the largest reduction of poverty in history. In sub-Saharan Africa, land redistribution reforms are ongoing due to the legacy of colonization and customary tenure regimes. In Latin America, many such reforms were initiated around the mid-1900s but they have often remained incomplete (Deininger, 2003). ‘Land consolidation’, or land readjustment, is another kind of land reform that includes rearrangement of agricultural land in order to optimize cultivation conditions for agricultural production. This kind of rearrangements may be voluntary as well enforced by the state. In some regions, such as Eastern Europe, the infrastructure in rural areas is often inadequate because of inheritance where land is divided into small strips. A land consolidation scheme may then restructure the land into convenient parcels of land suitable for agricultural production. Land consolidation (or readjustment) may also be used for adjusting the structure of agricultural or residential holdings when implementing major infrastructure projects, nature management plans, or schemes of urban renewal.
Land governance assessment
With special reference to land governance and administration, FAO has published the ‘Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure’ (VGGTs) (FAO, 2012). These guidelines are an international ‘soft law instrument’ that represents a global consensus on internationally accepted principles and standards for responsible practices. The guidelines outline principles and practices that governments can refer to when making laws and administering land. The VGGTs also recommend that safeguards be put in place to protect legitimate tenure rights of local people, and to protect human rights, livelihoods, food security and the environment. The guidelines promote secure tenure rights and equitable access to land as a means
of eradicating hunger and poverty, supporting sustainable development and enhancing the environment. Based on the guidelines, a variety of actors can determine whether their proposed actions, and the actions of others, constitute acceptable practices. The World Bank, in conjunction with UN and other partners, has developed a Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF) for benchmarking and monitoring the core areas, such as the legal and institutional frameworks. The LGAF provides a holistic diagnostic review of the country or regional level that can inform policy dialogue in a clear and structured manner, and identify weaknesses for improvement. This quick and innovative tool to assess and monitor land governance within a jurisdiction is built around five main areas for policy intervention: (i) legal and institutional frameworks, including land rights recognition and enforcement; (ii) land use planning, land management, and taxation; (iii) management of public land; (iv) public provision of land information; and (v) dispute resolution and conflict management. The LGAF helps policymakers and other stakeholders to make sense of the technical levels of the land sector, benchmark governance, prioritize reforms in the land sector, and identify areas that require further attention (World Bank, 2012).
Land governance in support of the global sustainable development agenda
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as adopted by the United Nations, provide a framework around which governments, especially in developing countries, can develop policies for sustainable societal development and encourage overseas aid programmes designed to alleviate poverty and improve the lives of the poor. The SDGs also represent a rallying point for NGOs to hold governments to account. Effective land governance relate to a range of the goals and targets of the SDGs. Secure land rights are referred to as a key means of achieving SDGs 1, 2, and 5 on ending poverty, ending hunger, and achieving gender equity, respectively. Land tenure and land use planning are key components in attaining the targets of SGD 11 on achieving sustainable urbanization. Land governance Stig Enemark
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and management are included in targets of SGD 13 on climate action and SDG 15 on promoting sustainable use of land. Finally, land governance is a key component in most of the targets for achieving SDG 16 on promoting peace, justice, and strong institutions (Enemark, 2019). The SDGs are a key driver for countries throughout the world – and especially developing countries – to develop adequate and accountable land policies and regulatory land governance frameworks for poverty reduction, food security, gender and social equity, and sustainable management of urban and rural land use and natural resources. There is a general consensus that governing the people to land relationship is at the heart of this global development agenda. Stig Enemark
References
Deininger, K. (2003), Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction. World Bank, Washington DC, https://documents1.worldbank.org/ curated/en/485171468309336484/310436360 _20050007001644/additional/multi0page.pdf. Enemark, S. (2019), Land Policy and Regulatory Frameworks. Module 6 of the Teaching Essentials for Responsible Land Administration. UN-Habitat, Global Land Tool Network (GLTN). Nairobi. https://elearning.gltn.net/.
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Enemark, S., Hvingel, L., & Galland, D. (2014), Land Administration, Planning and Human Rights, Planning Theory, 13(4), 331–48. Enemark, S., Williamson, I.P., & Wallace, J. (2005), Building Modern Land Administration Systems in Developed Economies, Journal of Spatial Science, 50(2), 51–68. FAO (2007), Good Governance in Land Tenure and Administration, FAO Land Tenure Studies No. 9. https://www.fao.org/3/a1179e/a1179e00 .htm. FAO (2009), Towards Improved Land Governance. http://www.fao.org/3/a-ak999e.pdf. FAO (2012), Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure. https:// www.fao.org/3/a-i2801e.pdf. FIG/World Bank (2010), Land Governance in Support of the Millennium Development Goals. International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) publication no 45. https://www.fig.net/ resources/publications/figpub/pub45/figpub45 .asp. Williamson, I., Enemark, S., Wallace, J., & Rajabifard, A. (2010), Land Administration for Sustainable Development. ESRI Academic Press, Redlands, California, USA. https:// www.esri.com/en-us/industries/government/ departments/land-administration/offers/e-book. World Bank (2012), Land Governance Assessment Framework. Washington DC, USA. https:// openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/ 2376.
Land grabs Land grabs refer to ‘the grabbing of large areas of land by foreign states or corporations, especially illegally, deceitfully or unfairly, through foreign investment in agriculture’ (Goetz, 2021: 347). Also called ‘large-scale land acquisitions’ (LSLAs) or the ‘global land rush’, the concept emerged in response to the worldwide upsurge in land deals by primarily financial investors occurring since the world food crisis of 2007–08. It is important to remember that land grabs are not a new phenomenon, but have been a feature of colonialism, capitalist expansion and globalization since at least the nineteenth century. The central concern is that food-insecure countries are appropriating land overseas in order to secure their own food supply and that, in doing so, they are displacing poor people in host countries, who are generally food insecure themselves, from their lands. (Edelman et al., 2013: 1518)
Estimates of the amount of land currently under the banner of LSLAs fluctuate, which is a key problem associated with land grabs. According to the Land Matrix Initiative – one of few global land grab reporting databases – LSLAs surged around 2007/08, plateaued after 2010, and have been remained moderate since 2013. By 2020, the Land Matrix had recorded 1,560 concluded land deals covering 33 million hectares, with 3 million of these occurring since 2013 (Anseeuw et al., 2021). These numbers reaffirm land grabbing as a significant global phenomenon. This chapter charts the development of land grabs research, highlighting its evolution from initial ‘reactive’ explanations immediately after the 2008 food crisis to more nuanced theorization that has occurred since. Tensions have arisen about what is/is not included in the definition of a land grab, how land grabs should be measured or counted, how to understand the drivers and impacts, what actors are involved, and how to understand the reactions to land grabs by different social groups.
Origins and evolution
The scope and scale of land grabbing was first highlighted by the non-governmental organi-
zation (NGO) GRAIN in their 2008 landmark report Seized! The 2008 land grab for food and financial security. This focused on the actions of ‘grabbers’ from China and the Gulf States in particular, mostly in agricultural land for foreign food security, and almost exclusively in sub-Saharan Africa (Edelman et al., 2013). While food security was positioned as the key driver of land grabs – attributed to declining availability of land and water for food production, growing urbanization and changing diets globally – other drivers more closely related to the nature of economic investment itself were later identified. These include growing demand for biofuels and other non-agricultural commodities (e.g. water), rising agricultural commodity prices and investment policy reforms (i.e. banking, taxation and customs regimes) (Cotula et al., 2009). GRAIN (2008: 3) identified the private sector as the key beneficiary of land grabs, with governments taking the lead through public policy, resulting in ‘foreign private corporations getting new forms of control over farmland to produce food not for local communities but for someone else’. Concerns were initially driven by civil society and policy organizations in the form of alarmist media accounts and anecdotal case studies. NGOs tended to emphasize the role of big banks and development finance, and focused on the numbers of people displaced, the numbers of hectares being purchased, and impacts on livelihoods, food security and environments in the global South. By contrast, multilateral organizations (such as the World Bank) and corporations argued that land acquisitions presented a good opportunity for poorer nations to grow their GDP, especially in Africa. However, critical academics soon drew attention to the tendency for purchasers to ignore existing claims to land by local people, with negative implications for food and livelihoods. Land grabs were shown to be most risky where formal land rights are not recognized or enforced, land markets are informal, there is high corruption and low transparency, and there are few legal or procedural mechanisms to protect local interests (Cotula et al., 2009; Cotula, 2012). Case studies have been conducted mostly in Africa, Asia and Latin America, with very few in Europe or the South Pacific. Where positive impacts are reported, these refer to ‘win–win’ outcomes such as increased
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market access for small farmers or more sustainable production systems. However, the majority of studies report negative or mixed economic impacts of land grabbing for local communities, such as little or no compensation for land or lost farming opportunities; few employment opportunities; increased need to seek off-farm income; no increase in living standards; and gender inequality (Yang & He, 2021). Land grabs can also lead to widespread peasant displacement, declining local food security and deforestation (de L.T. Oliveira et al., 2021). Much of this work called for closer attention to human rights, which remains an ongoing challenge for land deal governance. Oxfam Australia (2016: 7) extended the definition of a land grab to include any LSLA that ● Violates human rights and/or women’s rights ● Does not ensure the principle of free, prior and informed consent ● Takes place without adequate social, economic or environmental impact assessment ● Avoids transparent contracts with clear and binding commitments on employment and benefit sharing ● Fails to ensure democratic planning, independent oversight and participation of affected communities. This ‘first wave’ of research (between 2008 and 2012) successfully put land grabs in the policy spotlight, and was quickly followed by academic research into four main themes: 1. Socio-economic and political conditions and drivers of the global land rush 2. The forms that land-based capital accumulation has taken (when, where and how) 3. Implications and outcomes of land grabs for ordinary people whose lives are disrupted 4. The range of state and non-state actors and institutions that facilitate, expedite, support or legitimize land grabbing. (Borras Jnr et al., 2019) These themes contributed a more nuanced reading of land grab claims and constituted the ‘second wave’ of research from 2012 to 2014. Debates about methodology and theory have deepened, particularly around land grab Kiah Smith
measurement and reporting, food security as a driver and limitations of global governance (de L.T. Oliveira et al., 2021). First, questions about the quality, accuracy, reliability, usefulness and bias of land deal reporting highlight problems with evidence drawn from media reports, as is much of the data from GRAIN and the Land Matrix. Oya (2013; also Edelman, 2013) points out that bias in reporting and a lack of micro-level data have led to an undue emphasis on number of hectares and a select few countries (e.g. China, Middle East), at the expense of other potentially more relevant factors such as what the land is being used for. For example, bias towards land grab definitions involving foreign investors overlooks the important role of domestic investors who are also major players. Tracking land grabs is messy because ‘what counts’ depends on the quality of accessible data – information on land deals is often secretive, differs across sources, and is constantly changing. This highlights the highly political aspects of land grab measurement and reporting. Scholars also ask what is ‘new’ about land grabs. Here, land speculation in biofuels development emerged as a key factor. Research suggests that over 35 per cent of land acquired worldwide between 2001 and 2010 was for biofuels, compared to just 11 per cent of land being for food, with significant impact on rising food prices (Cotula, 2012; Holt-Gimenez et al., 2009). Although biofuels are relatively new, the land commodification underpinning their production is not. Rather, biofuels represent a change in commodification as land previously owned or used by local communities to grow food is turned into a commodity (i.e. biofuels) that can be speculated on by financial actors more interested in profit-making than in productive activities. This is not driven by food security but is part of the process of ‘assetization’ occurring as the food–climate–finance crisis has made farmland more attractive to investors (Visser, 2017; also Clapp, 2014). Asking questions from political economy – who owns what, who does what, who gets what? – has revealed a more complex understanding of power relations surrounding land grabs. For example, public policies such as ethanol mandates and carbon trading targets have been important for the growth of biofuels markets, underpinned by goals around climate change mitigation, renewa-
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ble energy development, energy security and rural development. States are ‘enablers’ of the global land rush because they also often control legal access to land rights, in turn determining how attractive (and profitable) farmland investment is (Cotula, 2012).
Theoretical explanations
A third wave of land grabs scholarship has responded to calls for improved methodology and theory and has emphasized governance and political reactions ‘from below’ (de L.T. Oliveira et al., 2021). In 2016, GRAIN (2016: 2) reflected on their global database, concluding that despite the collapse of many large-scale land deals reported earlier, land grabs were ‘in many ways deepening, expanding to new frontiers and intensifying conflict around the world’. Research describes less direct forms of land takeover, such as ‘responsible investments’ in production rather than land itself, palm oil expansion by pension funds and other new financial actors, and farmland ownership associated with carbon markets, mineral resources, water resources, seeds, soil and ecosystem services (such as forestry). The land grab debate has also become more politicized, due to strong social movement resistance by local affected communities, global food activists and international NGOs. Three main theoretical ideas capture these themes. Food regimes Many theoretical explanations have examined land grabs as part of corporatization, privatization and concentration occurring within global food regime restructuring. Drawing largely on the work of McMichael (2012), this theory argues that land grabs have emerged in response to a crisis of accumulation within the current ‘corporate food regime’; a crisis brought on by the ‘the end of cheap food’. As climate change, water scarcity, peak oil and biodiversity loss present challenges to the profitability of agriculture in the global North, the need to acquire cheap land, water, seeds and labour from the global South has risen. Converting farmland into a source of food, animal feed, agrofuels and biomass for corporate agribusiness is therefore being positioned as the next step in the ‘sustainable intensification’ of agriculture to achieve global food and ecological security. This also
reflects the modernization view of development in which agricultural industrialization and LSLAs are seen as a vehicle for poverty reduction via rural employment, contract farming, global value chains, land renting and ‘climate-smart’ agrifood technologies. The corporate food regime has also involved ‘a proliferation of governance mechanisms to justify and enable a new phase of land investments’ (McMichael, 2013a: 48). Numerous ‘soft’ laws and voluntary regulations have emerged that aim to ensure more ‘responsible investment’, focusing on countries that lack sufficient mechanisms to protect local people’s rights and livelihoods. Two examples are the Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment and the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security. Both aim to address the social implications of land grabbing, but with different purposes, acceptance and efficacy (Clapp, 2020). The RAI has a strong investment focus and has been rejected by key civil society groups, while the Voluntary Guidelines were designed to recognize customary property tenure, gender equity, food sovereignty principles and the participation of international civil society organizations (McMichael, 2013b). Financialization Understanding the governance mechanisms that create and support land grabbing has led financialization scholars to identify how global finance actors (commodity traders, pension funds, private equity firms, retail firms, sovereign wealth funds, farmland trusts and superannuation funds) have combined in new ways to reconfigure power relations. Borras Jnr et al.’s (2019) concept of a ‘transnational land investment web’ captures the complexity of relationships between states and other land grab actors. They identify five institutional spheres that enable and facilitate land grabs: private companies, finance capital, public–private partnerships, development finance organizations and regional policies (i.e. EU). These actors have (a) rapidly moved into land markets; (b) created new financial vehicles to speculate on agricultural credit, land and prices; and (c) invested in agricultural derivatives such as futures and commodity index funds (Clapp, 2014). Kiah Smith
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Financialization has been widely identified as a key driver of land grabs since the 2008 food–economic crisis brought about the need for finance to find new ways to hedge risk. Key to this theory is understanding how farmland has been turned into an asset for investors looking for long-term economic growth, attractive returns on investment, income and capital appreciation, returns uncorrelated with equities markets, and a strong hedge against inflation. Visser (2017: 187) explains that The financialisation of agriculture entails, among other things, that land is made into a financial asset, which can be valued, easily inserted and taken out of investment portfolios, and subsequently speculated on by financial investors.
An important concern is that shareholder value replaces considerations about the physical land itself, or the people (labour) who might be affected. Decisions become purely financial, ‘with little concern for allocations between crops for food or fuels and/or environmental integrity’ (McMichael, 2012: 685). Studies of the social impacts of financialization on farmers’ rights, workers and consumers in different countries reveal that impacts are uneven and depend greatly on governance. While studies of environmental impacts have been less documented, arguments have built on long-standing problems with seeing land through market logics, such as that environmental ‘externalities’ are often not accounted for (Franco & Borras Jnr, 2021). Others have sought to understand how land use change caused by land grabs might be contributing to large-scale transitions in human–environmental systems such as landscapes, soils and hydrology (Lazarus, 2014). Resistance Finally, resistance to land grabs occupies an important counter-narrative in both theory and practice. There is growing consensus around the greater overall productivity, biodiversity and sustainability of small-scale agroecological farming, as well as its food security potential. For example, estimates from the ETC claim that smallholder ‘peasant’ agriculture produces 70 per cent of the world’s food. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food agrees that domestic producKiah Smith
tion (largely by peasants in the global South) is directly responsible for the well-being of over two billion persons globally. This view opposes land grabs that privilege large-scale industrial agriculture and land commodification and instead advocates domestic food production and the ‘preservation of land access for producers for whom land, forests, and waterways constitute collective lifeworlds’ (see McMichael, 2013b). Civil society resistance to land grabs takes many forms, including transnational grassroots peasant movements such as La Via Campesina; increasing civil society representation at UN negotiations via the civil society mechanism of the FAO Committee on Food Security; and growing food and land justice alliances at local, national and regional levels around the world. Since widespread ‘food riots’ alerted the world to protests against food price hikes and land speculation during the 2008 world food crisis, civil society has played a key role in pushing for better regulation and accountability in LSLAs, and in pressuring states to legally embed the Right to Food and the Rights of Peasants into food, climate and development policymaking. These concepts form the basis for the international ‘food sovereignty’ counter-movement and have intensified as land grabs become more visible in light of multiple food, climate and economic crises (McMichael, 2015). Kiah Smith
References
Anseeuw, W., Eckert, S., Flachsbarth, I., Kubitza, C., Nolte, K., & Giger, M. (2021) Taking stock of the global land rush: Few development benefits, many human and environmental risks. Land Matrix Analytical Report III. Bern, Montpellier, Hamburg, Pretoria: Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern. Borras Jnr, M., Mills, E., Seufert, P., Backes, S. Fyfe, D., Herre, R., & Michele, L. (2019) Transnational land investment web: land grabs, TNCs, and the challenge of global governance, Globalizations 17(4): 608–28. Clapp, J. (2014) Financialisation, distance and global food politics, Journal of Peasant Studies 41(5): 797–814. Clapp, J. (2020) Responsibility to the rescue? Governing private financial investment in global agriculture. In Bjorkhaug, H., McMichael, P., & Muirhead, B. (eds), Food or finance: the role of cultures, values and ethics in land use negotiations, University of Toronto Press: Toronto, pp. 124–49.
Land grabs 407 Cotula, L. (2012) The international political economy of the global land rush: a critical appraisal of trends, scale, geography and drivers, Journal of Peasant Studies 39(3–4): 649–80. Cotula, L., Vermeulen, S., Leonard, R., & Keeley, J. (2009) Land grab or development opportunity? Agricultural investment and international land deals in Africa, FAO: Rome/London. de L.T. Oliveira, G., McKay, B., & Liu, H. (2021) Beyond land grabs: new insights on land struggles and global agrarian change, Globalizations 18(3): 321–38. Edelman, M. (2013) Messy hectares: questions about the epistemology of land grabbing data, Journal of Peasant Studies 40(3): 485–501. Edelman, M. Oya, C., & Borras Jnr, S. (2013) Global land grabs: historical processes, theoretical and methodological implications and current trajectories, Third World Quarterly 34(9): 1517–31. Franco, J., & Borras Jnr, S. (2021) The global climate of land politics, Globalizations 18(7): 1277–97. Goetz, A. (2021) Land grabs. In Akram-Lodhi, A.H., Dietz, K., Engels, B., & McKay, B. (eds), Handbook of critical agrarian studies, Edward Elgar: London, pp. 346–56. GRAIN (2008) Seized! The 2008 land grab for food and financial security, GRAIN: Barcelona. GRAIN (2016) Against the grain: the global farmland grab in 2016. How big, how bad? GRAIN: Barcelona.
Holt-Gimenez, E., Patel, R., & Shattuck, A. (2009) Food rebellions: crisis and the hunger for justice, Pambazuka Press: Capetown, Dakar, Nairobi, Oxford. Lazarus, E. (2014) Land grabbing as a driver of environmental change, Area 46(1): 74–82. McMichael, M. (2012) The land grab and corporate food regime restructuring, Journal of Peasant Studies 39(4): 681–701. McMichael, M. (2013a) Land grabbing as security mercantilism in international relations, Globalizations 10(1): 47–64. McMichael, M. (2013b) Rethinking land grab ontology, Rural Sociology 79(1): 34–55. McMichael, P. (2015) The land question in the food sovereignty project, Globalizations, 12(4): 434–51. Oxfam Australia (2016) Still banking on land grabs, Oxfam Australia: Carlton Victoria. Oya, C. (2013) Methodological reflections on ‘land grab’ databases and the ‘land grab’ literature ‘rush’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 40(3): 503–20. Visser, O. (2017) Running out of farmland? Investment discourses, unstable land values and the sluggishness of asset making, Agriculture and Human Values 34: 185–98. Yang, B. and He, J. (2021) Global land grabbing: a critical review of case studies across the world, Land 10: 324.
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Localization Localization is generally understood as the drive towards a more locally led humanitarian response in the contexts of conflict, displacement and natural hazard-related disasters (Barbelet et al. 2021). As such, localization is seen as a way of ‘re-conceiving of the humanitarian system from the bottom-up’ (Featherstone and Mowjee 2020), or of turning the humanitarian system on its head (Gingerich and Cohen 2015). More recently, calls to decolonize humanitarian action have been linked to localization (Barbelet et al. 2021; DuBois 2018). With such an ambitious agenda, localization requires fundamental changes of humanitarian action at the operational, organizational, strategic and system level (Van Brabant and Patel 2018). Thus, and though the importance of local actors was acknowledged before, since the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) in 2016 the concept of localization has taken centre stage in humanitarian action discourse (ICVA 2018) and emerged as a buzzword to inform reform efforts for a more efficient, effective as well as inclusive and equitable humanitarian practice (Roepstorff 2020). Now enshrined in a number of international documents and reflected in commitments such as the Agenda for Humanity, the Charter4Change or the Grand Bargain, the humanitarian sector is implementing new ways of working in order to make the humanitarian response as local as possible and as international as necessary (Barbelet 2018). One suggested definition of localization therefore captures it as ‘a process of recognising, respecting and strengthening the leadership by local authorities and the capacity of local civil society in humanitarian action, in order to better address the needs of affected populations and to prepare national actors for future humanitarian responses’ (Fabre 2017). As such, it calls for changes in funding practices, partnership models and organizational structures to make humanitarian action more efficient, effective and emancipatory. Moreover, through greater participation of local actors in the planning and implementation of the humanitarian response, it is hoped to mitigate the unequal power relations prevalent in the humanitarian sector, where a handful of international actors continue to dominate and determine the allocation of
funds and decide on aid priorities (Roepstorff 2020). Despite broad consensus on the need to localize humanitarian action, the precise meaning of localization remains controversial, with differing views on who, or where, the local is and what the best ways of implementing localization in humanitarian practice are (Barbelet et al. 2021; Roepstorff 2022) – questions shared by the development and peacebuilding sectors, where similar discussions have taken place (Barakat and Milton 2020). In the contemporary aid world, development, peacebuilding and humanitarian action present different forms of international intervention practices to reduce poverty, end wars, save lives and alleviate suffering (Redfield and Bornstein 2010: 5; Roepstorff 2019). While the three sectors differ in their goals, funding channels and ways of working, they also share some fundamental features and concerns. One of these is the interaction of the local and the international, or local– global dynamics, that are characteristic of aid interventions (Barakat and Milton 2021). Whether it being development cooperation, peacebuilding activities or humanitarian action – the relation between the local and the international not only manifests itself in the lived experience of aid practitioners and the affected population, but has gained considerable attention in the scholarly discourse on aid interventions. With many interventions not yielding the envisioned results, a discussion of the shortcomings of standardized forms of intervention practices has exposed how local actors and capacities are systematically marginalized within a system that is dominated by a few actors. Points of tension (Callaghan and Schönborn 2003) in encounters of the local and the international in development cooperation, peacebuilding and humanitarian action interventions have thus become a topical line of scholarly inquiry, a challenge for policymakers and an everyday experience for aid practitioners. Apart from questions regarding the effectiveness and appropriateness of international aid interventions, the unfamiliarity with local knowledge systems and unawareness of local contexts raise issues of the unequal power relations prevalent in the different aid sectors. At a more fundamental level of the critique thus lies uneasiness with prevailing intervention practices that exhibit the power
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dynamics at play and seem to be a continuation of colonial practices and the civilizing mission. Consequentially, emancipatory and inclusive approaches to peacebuilding (Leonardsson and Rudd 2015), development cooperation (Chambers 1983) and humanitarian action (Roepstorff 2020) have been called for across the different sectors. Thus, and though the term localization as such is mainly used in the humanitarian sector, the development and peacebuilding sector have undergone corresponding reform efforts. In the field of development cooperation, the local and international dimensions of aid relationships, as well as calls for local ownership and the inclusion of local knowledge systems, have long been a concern (Chambers 1983; Mosse and Lewis 2005; Mosse 2011; McCann and McCloskey 2015; Keijzer and Black 2020). Similarly, peacebuilding interventions have been criticized for their top-down approach, guided by a liberal peace paradigm. In a critique of standardized forms of peacebuilding interventions, the debate of the two ‘local turns’ has resulted in a vibrant discourse on the international and local encounters in peacebuilding scholarship (Mac Ginty 2011; Jabri 2013; Hellmüller and Santschi 2013; Autesserre 2014; Leonardssen and Rudd 2015). Whereas the first ‘local turn’ of the 1990s promoted transformative and emancipatory approaches in the search for sustainable peacebuilding and reconciliation, the second ‘local turn’ in critical peacebuilding scholarship brought a number of conceptual issues to the fore: the lacking conceptualization of ‘the local’, the underlying binary opposition of the international and the local, as well as a Eurocentic world view became the major points of criticism. Today, the term ‘local’ features dominantly in academic writings and policy papers on peacebuilding, as it did in the development field before and does now in the humanitarian sector (Roepstorff 2019; Barakat and Milton 2021). Indeed, across the sectors, the term ‘local’ is used in reference to a diverse range of actors. Different opinions exists, for example, whether national actors, internationally affiliated local organizations, local branches of INGOs, the private sector, individual volunteers, diaspora organizations or local staff of UN agencies and INGOs should be considered as local. In humanitarian action, a ten-
dency to focus on national and local NGOs in the Global South can be observed, with the danger of neglecting other actors, such as ad hoc volunteer groups, solidarity movements, the private sector local authorities or even non-state armed actors providing humanitarian relief (Roepstorff 2020). Moreover, a common equation of the local with the affected population is problematic, especially in forced migration contexts, where local actors represent the host rather than the displaced community (Pincock et al. 2020). Considering that within the framework of the localization agenda, power and resources are to be channelled to local actors, the question of who is the local is not only of conceptual nature, but also has implications for intervention contexts. Whatsoever the definition of the local, it is commonly understood in opposition to the international. This binary construction of the local has, however, been subject to controversy in development theory, peacebuilding scholarship and humanitarian action. Especially poststructuralist and postcolonial scholars across the development, peacebuilding and humanitarian action field of study have argued that such an understanding is based on an underlying ontological distinction that juxtaposes the Global North as the international, universal, modern and technocratic and the Global South as the local, particular, traditional and parochial. With this comes a tendency to either romanticize or vilify the local (Leonardssen and Rudd 2015). Constructing the local and international as binary opposites is problematic in that it risks reproducing stereotypes through a focus on Western international actors and a blindness towards dominant local or non-Western international elites (Paffenholz 2015). The general confusion of the term ‘local’ and neglect of key social and cultural dimensions have prevented an adequate conceptualization of localization (Apthorpe and Borton 2019: 138). Thus, apart from a weak, or problematic conceptualization of who the local actors are that are to benefit from the localization agenda, there exists no consensus on the meaning of localization and best ways of implementing it in practice (Roepstorff 2022; Barbelet et al. 2021). Having said that, and as stated earlier, various commitments have been made by donor states, INGOs and other actors to localize humanitarian action. Kristina Roepstorff
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These commitments can be clustered in the ‘seven dimensions of localization’: funding, partnerships, capacity, participation revolution, coordination mechanisms, visibility and policy (Van Brabant and Patel 2018). In an attempt to operationalize, measure and evaluate localization efforts, indicators have been developed on the basis of these dimensions. Moreover, humanitarian organizations are increasingly developing localization strategies. While good examples exist, so far the track-record of localization is, however, sobering, for various reasons (Roepstorff 2022). Many open questions remain: how to conceptualize the local and to operationalize localization; how to overcome hurdles for implementing localization in humanitarian practice; and how localization could and should be realized in the context of the Triple Nexus (Roepstorff 2018, 2022; Barakat and Milton 2021). Indeed, while localization is generally considered as beneficial for working better across the humanitarian– development–peace nexus, evidence remains thin (Barbelet et al. 2021). More fundamentally, the question arises whether localization is the best way forward to mend a broken system, considering that it largely remains a top-down process and the very term localization suggests that humanitarian action needs to be transmitted to the local level, instead of recognizing and empowering existing response mechanisms and (vernacular) humanitarian practices (Brković 2020). Kristina Roepstorff
References
Apthorpe, R. and Borton, J. (2019). ‘Disaster-affected populations and “localization”: what role for anthropology following the World Humanitarian Summit?’, Public Anthropologist, 1(2), 133–55. Autesserre, S. (2014). Peaceland: conflict resolution and the everyday politics of international intervention. Cambridge University Press, New York. Barbelet, V. (2018). As local as possible, as international as necessary: understanding capacity and complementarity in humanitarian action. HPG (Humanitarian Policy Group) working paper. ODI (Overseas Development Institute), London. Barbelet, V., Davies, G., Flint, J. and Davey, E. (2021). Interrogating the evidence base on humanitarian localisation: a literature study. HPG literature review. ODI, London.
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Barakat, S. and Milton, S. (2021). ‘Localisation across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus’, Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, 15(2), 147–63. Brković, Č. (2020). ‘Vernacular humanitarianism’, in A. De Lauri (ed.), Humanitarianism: Keywords. Brill, Leiden. Callaghan, J. and Schönborn, M. (eds) (2003). Warriors in peacekeeping: points of tension in complex cultural encounters. A comparative study based on experiences in Bosnia. LIT Verlag, Münster. Chambers, R. (1983). Rural development: putting the last first. Routledge, London. DuBois, M. (2018). The new humanitarian basics, HPG Working Paper. ODI, London. Fabre, C. (2017). Localising the response. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), Paris. Featherstone, A. and Mowjee, T. (2020). Desk review on enhancing the potential of pooled funds for localization. Grand Bargain Localisation Workstream. Gingerich, T.R. and Cohen, M.J. (2015). Turning the humanitarian system on its head: saving lives and livelihoods by strengthening local capacity and shifting leadership to local actors. Oxfam International, Oxford. Hellmüller, S. and Santschi, M. (2013). Is local beautiful? Peacebuilding between international and locally led initiatives. Springer, Cham. ICVA (2018). Localization examined: an ICVA briefing paper. ICVA, Geneva. Jabri, V. (2013). ‘Peacebuilding, the local and the international: a colonial or a postcolonial rationality?’, Peacebuilding, 1(1), 3–16. Keijzer, N. and Black, D. (2020). ‘Special issue introduction. Ownership in a post-aid effectiveness era: comaparative perspectives’, Development Policy Review, 38(1), 1–12. Leonardsson, H. and Rudd, G. (2015). ‘The “local turn” in peacebuilding: a literature review of effective and emancipatory local peacebuilding’, Third World Quarterly, 36(5), 825–39. Mac Ginty (2011). International peacebuilding and local resistance: hybrid forms of peace. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. McCann, S. and McCloskey, S. (2015). From the local to the global: key issues in development studies. Pluto Press, London. Mosse, D. (ed.) (2011). Adventures in aidland: the anthropology of professionals in international development. Berghahn, New York. Mosse, D. and Lewis, D. (eds) (2005). The aid effect: giving and governing in international development. Pluto Press, London. Paffenholz, T. (2015). ‘Unpacking the local turn in peacebuilding: a critical assessment towards an agenda for future research’, Third World Quarterly, 36(5), 857–74.
Localization 411 Pincock, K., Betts, A. and Easton-Calabria, E. (2020). ‘The rhetoric and reality of localisation: refugee-led organisations in humanitarian governance’, The Journal of Development Studies, 57(5), 719–34. Redfield, P. and Bornstein, E. (2010). Forces of compassion: humanitarianism between ethics and politics. SAR Press, Santa Fe. Roepstorff, K. (2019). ‘Chance für den Frieden? Die Lokalisierungsagenda im Humanitären System im Nexus von Humanitärer Hilfe und Friedensförderung’, Die Friedens-Warte/ Journal of International Peace and Organization, 92(1–2), 40–58.
Roepstorff, K. (2020). ‘A call for a critical reflection on the localisation agenda in humanitarian action’, Third World Quarterly, 41(2), 284–301. Roepstorff, K. (2022). ‘Localisation requires trust: an interface perspective on the Rohingya response in Bangladesh’. Disasters, 46(3), 610–32. Van Brabant, K. and Patel, S. (2018). Localisation in practice: emerging indicators & practical implications. Global Mentoring Initiative.
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MDGs and SDGs At the turn of the millennium, the United Nations (UN), at its Millennium Summit, adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to guide its development effort for the next 15 years with a focus on helping poor nations develop faster. At the end of the 15-year period, the MDGs were succeeded by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a global development agenda focused on prosperity, people, peace and the planet. This entry discusses the aims, achievements and shortcomings of both the expired MDGs and ongoing SDGs.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
In 2000, the member states of the UN adopted the MDGs as a development partnership with a 15-year mandate as part of the body’s Millennium Declaration. Despite its popularity, the MDGs is not the first of such development projects. There have been many global development agendas set in the past such as the UN’s 1992 Agenda 21, as well as those set by multinational regional blocs like the 2007 Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS)’s Vision 2020 project. The MDGs, however, were the first most significant and notable global partnership, setting clear goals and timelines that were adopted as a development score card for nations. With 21 developments targets that were stated as eight simple goals, the MDGs were easy to communicate and remember. The goals were aimed at addressing extreme poverty, hunger, universal primary education, gender inequality, child mortality, maternal health, environmental sustainability and diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS (Easterly, 2009; Fukuda-Parr, 2016; Sachs, 2012). Led by the UN, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, the collective and
individual MDGs were adopted in global and national policy narratives, engendering political will and accountability. The MDGs also included an agreement to forgive portions of national debts owed by some poor countries to enable them to commit their funding instead to addressing the MDGs. Achievements The MDGs gave the global economic community a common socio-economic agenda, and many individual countries and the world collectively have made significant progress on the MDGs. In their final report on the MDGs, the United Nations outlined its achievements on each of the MDGs. Among these, they noted that between 1990 and 2015, the rate of extreme poverty – those living on less than $1.25 a day – in developing countries fell from 48 per cent to 14 per cent. During that same period, the number of deaths among children under 5 almost halved, falling from 12.7 million in 1990 to 6 million in 2015. The number of primary school aged children out of school fell from 100 million in 2000 to 57 million in 2015. During the period of the MDGs, many more girls were in school, and the percentage of women in parliament doubled in almost all UN countries. Maternal mortality also fell by 45 per cent worldwide between 1990 and 2015, new HIV infections reduced by 40 per cent between 2000 and 2013, and deaths from malaria infection reduced by 58 per cent between 2000 and 2015. The amount of aid given to developing countries also increased by 66 per cent between 2000 and 2014 (United Nations, 2015). Other achievements noted in the report include increases in literacy rates, sanitation, access to piped drinking water, the number of people entering the middle class, vaccination among children and access to mobile phones and the internet. There were also noted reductions in hunger and undernourish-
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ment, the number of people living in slums in developing countries, people in vulnerable employment and depletion of the ozone layer (United Nations, 2015). Although all MDGs were not entirely achieved by the end of its mandate in 2015, it led to or inspired many important economic and social achievements, which is expected to be continued and accelerated by the SDGs. Criticisms/failings Despite these significant achievements, the MDGs have had many shortcomings and criticisms. The most obvious shortcoming is that it did not achieve many of its goals, such as those related to poverty, hunger and child and maternal mortality, despite the progress made towards these goals as noted above. Various reasons have been offered for these shortcomings, including limited capacities and resources, lack of political will, commitment and accountability for each goal and the failure of the wealthy countries to commit to the goals’ partnership and funding responsibilities. Even the achievements of the MDGs have been uneven among countries across the different goals, with some like China notching significant economic improvements, while some countries in sub-Saharan Africa saw little progress towards the stated goals. The reported outputs of the MDGs were also sometimes based on data that was outdated, unreliable, inaccurate and unavailable (Sachs, 2012). Considering that the UN measured some of its MDG performance metrics between 1990 and 2015, which starts 10 years before the MDGs, it is also difficult to attribute all the noted achievements entirely to the MDGs. The MDGs’ efforts appeared to prioritize the goals related to poverty reduction, while those related to governance, human rights and gender equality were either narrowed or received less attention (Langford, 2010). Consequently, some of the metrics used to measure progress around the MDGs have also been criticized as arbitrary, unreasonable and biased towards a neoliberal agenda that was not informed by lived realties at the local level. Easterly (2009) noted that the MDG metrics were particularly unfair to Africa, which was constantly noted as a failed case because Africa did not meet the MDGs’ targets. This is despite Africa’s commendable progress on the goals from
a worse development baseline compared to other regions, which means that meeting the MDGs will require Africa to attain impossible development metrics. Easterly suggests that the metrics unfairly set up extremely poor countries in Africa and elsewhere to appear as failures. The purpose and structure of the MDGs have also been criticized, with some researchers arguing that the MDGs have reduced development to a bucket list that diverts attention to only some development issues while overlooking others (Langford, 2010). On the one hand, the MDGs were seen as overambitious for their targets, which did not carefully account for commensurate capabilities and resources to deliver on them (Easterly, 2009). On the other hand, they have been labelled as unambitious for setting goals that did not consider or overlooked many pertinent development issues. Additionally, the 15-year mandate is considered insufficient to achieve the goals, and there were also no short-term intermittent timelines within the 15 years to measure progress. They also largely excluded the private sector, instead relying heavily on the public sector and promised government funding from rich countries, which was often not delivered (Sachs, 2012). In short, despite its many achievements, the MDGs have also had many shortcomings and attracted much criticism during and after its term of operation.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
In 2015, the UN launched the SDGs to succeed the MDGs from 2016 as the new global development agenda centring on economic, social and environmental sustainability, sometimes referred to as the triple bottom line (Sachs, 2012; Sachs et al., 2019). Like the MDGs, the SDGs have specific objectives, stated as 17 aspirational goals, broken down into 169 targets, with a 15-year timeline that will expire in 2030. There is a strong overlap between the MDGs and the SDGs, with the new goals retaining almost all the MDGs, addressing poverty, hunger, education, health, gender equality and clean water and protection of the environment. On the one hand, this, to an extent, is an admission that the MDGs had not been fully realized and that these development issues persist. On
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the other hand, this also lends support to the idea that the MDGs were useful enough to inspire its continuity in the more expansive SDGs. The SDGs were, in many regards, aimed at addressing some of the shortcoming of the MDGs by having more inclusive goals and expansive targets. While the MDGs were aimed at helping poor countries develop faster, the SDGs’ core focus on the environment and climate change, well-being, individual freedoms and the rule of law, and innovation, in addition to economic development, implicates both rich and poor countries. Unlike the MDGs, which were seen as a top-down development agenda, the SDGs attempted to involve more nations and stakeholders from the public and private sectors to develop a more inclusive bottom-up agenda that will be more holistic and garner widespread legitimacy and support (Fukuda-Parr, 2016; Sachs et al., 2019). Achievements The SDGs have been in effect for only a third of their mandate, and it is very early to clearly evaluate if they have or are on course to achieve their goals and targets. Evidently, their noted achievements have been uneven. For example, while in 2019 there were gains made in poverty reduction, education enrolment, maternal health, immunization, disease prevention and women representation, there were also increases in food insecurity, global warming, ocean acidity, unsustainable production and consumption, armed conflicts and the number of people living in slums. At the same time, the global economic growth and global foreign direct investment were slowing down (United Nations, 2020). Still, it is too early to know if this slow start for the SDGs can or cannot be improved. Criticisms/shortfalls Even before it was commissioned, the SDGs were criticized as a futile exercise that repeated the failings and misguidedness of the MDGs, with some critics even lampooning its acronym as the Stupid Development Goals. In his foreword to the 2019 Global Sustainable Development Report, UN Secretary-General, António Guterres also opined that the world was not on track to achieve the SDGs due to the slow pace of implementation (United Nations, 2019). Just
as it is too early to fully judge the positive impacts of the SDGs, it may equally be a bit premature to map out any clear shortcomings. However, the concerns raised by the UN and researchers are important and require urgent rectification if the SDGs are to be achieved. There are also other problems in the structure and implementation of the SDGs that threaten its viability. For example, the more expansive goals and targets of the SDGs also run the risk that efforts will focus on a few goals and targets to the exclusion of others. There is also some disagreement and a lack of clarity about how the various interrelated SDGs can be implemented and how businesses and private entities can be involved (Sachs et al., 2019). Some of the metrics and indicators that will be used to measure the SDGs are also ambiguous and it is not clear how they improve on the shortcoming of the MDGs (Hák, Janoušková & Moldan, 2016). In addition, the sudden onset of the Covid-19 pandemic from late 2019 could not have been foreseen and included in the SDGs but it has seriously impacted the SDGs as resources that could have been spent on the SDGs are now being used to stem Covid-19 infections, invest in vaccinations and support failing economies. According to the 2020 Sustainable Development Goals Report, the pandemic has actually erased about a decade of economic, health and social progress, pushing more than 70 million people into extreme poverty, increasing deaths from diseases among children and adults as well as hunger and food insecurity. Lockdowns resulting from the pandemic kept about 90 per cent of children out of school and also increased violence against women and girls (United Nations, 2020). Thus, calls to rethink the SDGs have been proposed in the wake of the pandemic, especially considering that the pandemic has changed the priorities of many nations and greatly reduced the aid spending capacity of wealthy nations to support the SDGs. The pandemic has, therefore, seriously altered the global economic and public health landscape in ways that will certainly shape the mandate of the SDGs in the coming years.
Conclusion
Since their inception at the turn of the millennium, the MDGs and their successor, the SDGs have provided the world a common
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global development agenda. With about a decade still left of the mandate, there is still hope that the SDGs will continue to have significant positive impacts on the world and people’s lives even if they fail to achieve all goals and targets. It is also likely that at the end of its mandate in 2030, the SDG will be succeeded by another development agenda. While it is too early to know what such a future agenda will look like, we can envisage that it will likely include a revised version of the SDGs as well as a focus on public health and the future of technology for the world. The value of such development agenda will always draw advocates and criticisms alike, but they are useful in giving the global development community a point of discourse, a source of inspiration and a call to action. Samuelson Appau and Sefa Awaworyi Churchill
References
Easterly, W. (2009). How the millennium development goals are unfair to Africa. World Development, 37(1), 26–35. Fukuda-Parr, S. (2016). From the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals: shifts in purpose, concept, and politics of global goal setting for development. Gender & Development, 24(1), 43–52. Hák, T., Janoušková, S., & Moldan, B. (2016). Sustainable Development Goals: a need for relevant indicators. Ecological Indicators, 60, 565–73. Langford, M. (2010). A poverty of rights: six ways to fix the MDGs. IDS Bulletin, 41(1), 83–91. Sachs, J.D. (2012). From Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals. The Lancet, 379(9832), 2206–11. Sachs, J.D., Schmidt-Traub, G., Mazzucato, M., Messner, D., Nakicenovic, N., & Rockström, J. (2019). Six transformations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Nature Sustainability, 2(9), 805–14. United Nations (2015). The Millennium Development Goals Report. United Nations. United Nations (2019). Global Sustainable Development Report 2019: The Future Is Now – Science for Achieving Sustainable Development. United Nations. United Nations (2020). The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020. United Nations.
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Migration–development nexus Of migration studies and nexuses
In 2002, a leading journal in the field of migration studies, International Migration, published a special issue on the migration– development nexus (Keely 2002). If development implies change, this was certainly not the first time that migration had been linked with the subject. Migration had for long been associated with social and economic transformations as rural societies increasingly interacted with urban societies (Safa and Du Toit 1975; Skeldon 1997). However, the 2002 special issue was important because it brought attention to policy to bring more closely together the worlds of migration and development specialists and practitioners. That is, the journal articles moved the discussion forward from the academic debates around how migration both impacted, and was impacted by, development in its broadest and often undefined sense (in prior times the word ‘modernization’ was often used), towards how policies designed for migration could help to bring about development in specific areas, and vice versa. In a previous publication, following Cowen and Shenton (1996) and Hart (2010), we distinguished between migration and development with a small ‘d’ referring to development in its generic sense, and migration and Development with a capital ‘D’ when dealing with specific policy-defined Development (Bastia and Skeldon 2020), a difference that was evident in those seminal 2002 papers. The special issue was influential in another and perhaps unexpected way: it brought the word ‘nexus’ to wider attention and began what Jørgen Carling (2017) called the ‘nexification’ of migration studies. Carling identified that some 36 distinct ‘migration and …’ nexuses had emerged by 2017, of which the ‘migration and security’ and the ‘migration and trade’ nexuses were the most established, a significant tribute to the influence that the 2002 volume had had on the direction of research into migration and policy. However, Carling also observed that those who had introduced the term to migration studies never identified quite what the word meant. Following the definition in the OED, nexus refers to a connected group, series, or network
but leaves unspecified how these actually link or interact. The term gives the impression of a scientific gloss while leaving an uneasy feeling that a ‘black box’ operates at the centre of any linkage, which is not totally dispelled by Carling’s own attempt to define the migration and development nexus as ‘the totality of mechanisms through which migration and development dynamics affect each other’. With interdependencies so central to the idea conveyed by nexus, it seems curious that no parallels were ever sought with the discourse around systems theory as originally proposed for migration studies by Mabogunje (1970). Perhaps a nexus with elements of systems approaches will further extend the legacy of those 2002 papers. Nevertheless, nexus implies more than just networks and mechanisms and, as will be shown below, is used profitably to draw attention to some of the most intractable issues in migration studies.
The migration and development nexus
The authors of the state-of-the-art review to introduce the 2002 special issue identified four critical issues (Sørensen et al. 2002): ● Poverty and migration: the authors show that programmes to reduce poverty will not reduce migration. Quite the reverse: programmes that increase people’s well-being and income will provide them with greater opportunities to move. ● Conflicts, refugees and migration: while migrants can contribute both to conflict and to reconciliation, the majority of those displaced only have the resources to move to areas neighbouring conflict zones. ● Migrants as a development resource: migrants send back money and goods in the form of remittances that should in theory be available for development purposes. The community of migrants from any destination outside the boundaries of a state, usually referred to as the ‘diaspora’ can be ‘leveraged’ to achieve development objectives back home, not just in terms of material assistance but also through the provision of technical expertise. ● Aid and migration: perhaps the more problematic of the four issues identified, aid can help to prevent conflict and
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the production of forced migrant flows and promote attempts at reconciliation. However, at the same time, the impact of aid is difficult to separate from other factors and it can be an integral part of the other three issues above.
The nexus extended
In the twenty years since these issues were tabled, much academic and policy research has been directed towards these and other issues, such as the loss of talent from origin countries under the overall rubric of ‘migration and development’. The issues as identified in 2002 have been both reduced and expanded. They have been reduced to the extent that the first issue on poverty has been absorbed into the third on migration as a development resource, with much attention given to remittances as a vehicle to reduce poverty, particularly in the work of the World Bank (see, for example, Acosta et al. 2007; Adams 2006; Adams and Page 2005; Yang and Martínez 2006). These studies, although never engaging directly with the idea of a nexus, generated results that amplified and expanded upon the conclusions of the 2002 paper: that migration itself did not significantly reduce poverty. Remittances certainly improved the lives of those who received them but are rarely the source of broader sustainable development. In 2012, Sørensen, the lead author of the original nexus papers, re-visited the concept identifying a migration and security nexus as a major ‘new’ issue in the nexus given changing geopolitical conditions. She argued that ‘development’ had become reduced to an instrument of migration policy to the extent that assistance was geared towards, even conditional upon, the undertaking of projects that were designed to reduce outmigration. We would argue, however, that this is an over-statement. While migration is now more present within development debates, as is illustrated by the fact that there is some acknowledgement of migration in the Sustainable Development Goals (Piper 2017), much of the development research and industry continue to focus on the more traditional development topics, such as poverty, industrial development, rural development and economic growth. Sørensen (2012) was correct, however, in highlighting the securitization of migration and development
policies, given that destination countries implemented increased security policies in order to control the number of migrants able to enter that destination. The nexus was thus seen to have become increasingly restrictive of migration from the so-called global South to the global North. It was also a nexus of more limited horizons in that it appealed to states and private companies involved in security rather than to the international and non-governmental organizations that had so actively promoted the migration and developmental nexus (Bakewell 2012). Much of the extension to the 2002 nexus took place within the second of the issues originally identified on conflict, refugees and migration. In particular, these saw the elaboration of the ‘migration and displacement nexus’ and the ‘humanitarian and development nexus’. In the first of these nexuses, best illustrated in the essays in Koser and Martin (2011), several key themes emerge, the most important of which revolved around the difficulties of categorization and the terminologies used in migration studies. So-called ‘mixed migrations’ appear to typify most contemporary migration flows, which are highly heterogeneous in nature. Individual movers in any flow fall into several different categories of ‘migrants’ and each of these different categories can encapsulate people moving for very different reasons. Nevertheless, over the trajectory of any migration, individual migrants can find their motivations for moving changing, while they themselves are allocated to specific migrant categories (Koser and Martin 2011). The idea of nexus thus attempts to capture this sense of fungibility and continuous transformation in the process of migration. While this discussion might seem somewhat academic, it identifies a critical tension in migration studies: clearly identified categories are necessary in order to understand the process of migration, yet in practical application the danger exists that some migrants are allocated to incorrect channels, while yet others can fall between the cracks entirely (Bakewell 2021). The humanitarian and development nexus seeks to re-emphasize the policy concerns that were central to the original 2012 paper to examine the changing mix of international and national agencies involved in refugee crises (Zetter 2020). Its goal is to integrate refugee protection with strategies to produce sustainable development, particularly in areas Ronald Skeldon and Tanja Bastia
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of protracted forced displacement. The challenges associated with such displacement are also associated with opportunities that could and should lead to development. Fundamental to any success that might emerge from the result of agencies with very different and competing agendas, however, is the incorporation of a security and peace dimension adding yet further complication to the nexus. The fourth issue of the 2002 nexus, that of aid, has continued to be a significant strand in migration research but one that has been largely separate from any engagement with nexuses. The isolation of an ‘aid effect’ from other factors contributing to migration in the mix of causation implied in the nexus remains, however, problematic. Nevertheless, aid does appear to complement or increase, rather than decrease migration, particularly to the poorest countries (de Haas 2007). However, it could have a dampening effect if concentrated on social and welfare services for the poorest rather than on more broadly targeted economic infrastructure projects (Lanati and Thiele 2018). They also highlight that multilateral rather than bilateral approaches to aid provision are more likely to be effective and they draw attention to methodological issues in previous studies and suggest that more robust results are likely if flow rather than stock data are used in the analysis. It is interesting to note that despite all the multiple nexifications that have proliferated, gender does not feature in any of the 36 migration nexuses identified by Carling (2017). This is despite the existence of a large gender and migration literature, and gender being widely acknowledged as a cross-cutting issue (Bailey 2010; Bastia 2013; Bastia and Haagsman 2020). The academic debates and policy initiatives around the migration– development nexus have tended to give priority to the economic aspects of people’s lives, side-lining the social dimension (Piper 2009). As a result, much of the discussion on migration and development is gender-blind (King et al. 2006) and women are included only when, and if it makes sense to do so from the perspective of making a policy more effective (Bastia 2013). For example, in projects focusing on remittances, women are often included only insofar as they are considered to be better remitters than men (Kunz 2008; see also Vullnetari and King 2011), thereby Ronald Skeldon and Tanja Bastia
missing out on the opportunity to expand the narrow economic focus to include broader concerns of migrants’ rights and wellbeing.
The nexus projected
The application of the idea of the nexus has been framed in the context of a polarization of global North and global South. It seems contradictory that a term whose strength lies in its flexibility to incorporate diverse relationships and classifications is forced into simple binary power or spatial frameworks. The global South and the global North are highly heterogeneous. Centres of advanced development that attract large numbers of migrants have emerged in the global South, particularly in East and South East Asia, but also in Latin America. Clear differences in the global North exist between countries that are based upon immigration as an integral part of nation building and those that see migrants either as a source of labour or as undesirable altogether. The mix of volumes and types of migration and the variations of integration and exclusion are difficult to reconcile within simple binary differences between developed/less developed or North and South. It may be inappropriate to continue to focus on migrations from a global South to a global North when around half of all migration takes places between countries in what is defined as the global South (Ratha and Shaw 2007; Short et al. 2017). However, the focus on movements from the less developed to the more developed parts of the world is more a reflection of the broader context within which migration policy operates, and who is designing that policy, than it is of any migration–development nexus itself or actual migration flows. The original proponents of the term had already identified the significance of South–South migration in, for example, recognizing the geography of forced migrations. The migration and development nexus has stimulated much productive research and policy since the early 2000s, while spinning off several new lines of enquiry. The strength of the term ‘nexus’ has been to imply that migration is related virtually to everything else within interacting systems of linkages. Never made entirely explicit was whether migration was part of a self-regulatory process, although it was more generally perceived as a disrupter. Much was left fuzzy
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and imprecise from terminology employed to the nature of the processes of interaction. Whether we have reached peak ‘nexification’ in migration studies remains unclear but future research needs to maintain the broad and integrationist approach of the nexus while at the same time locating the whole process of migration and development in a more robust time and space framework. Ronald Skeldon and Tanja Bastia
References
Acosta, P., P. Fajnzylber and J. Humberto Lopez (2007), ‘The impact of remittances on poverty and human capital: evidence from Latin American household surveys’, in Ç. Özden and M. Schiff (eds), International Migration, Economic Development and Policy, The World Bank, Washington, pp. 59–98. Adams, R.H. (2006), ‘Remittances, poverty, and investment in Guatemala’, in Ç. Özden and M. Schiff (eds), International Migration, Remittances and the Brain Drain, The World Bank, Washington, pp. 53–80. Adams, R.H. and J. Page (2005), ‘The impact of international migration and remittances on poverty’, in S.M. Maimbo and D. Ratha (eds), Remittances: Development Impact and Future Prospects, The World Bank, Washington, pp. 277–306. Bailey, A.J. (2010), ‘Population geographies, gender and the migration-development nexus’, Progress in Human Geography, 34(3): 375–86. Bakewell, O. (2012), ‘Commentary on Sørensen’, in Migration in a Changing World: Where Do We Go from Here? Wiley-Blackwell Exchanges, at: An Opinionated Guide to Current Philosophical Theories of Happiness (https://www.migrationinstitute.org). Bakewell, O. (2021), ‘Unsettling the boundaries between forced and voluntary migration’, in E. Carmel, K. Lenner and R. Paul (eds), Handbook on the Politics and Governance of Migration, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, pp. 124–36. Bastia, T. (2013), ‘The migration–development nexus: current challenges and future research agenda’, Geography Compass, 7(7): 464–77. Bastia, T. and K. Haagsman (2020), ‘Gender, migration and development’, in T. Bastia and R. Skeldon (eds), Routledge Handbook of Migration and Development, Routledge, London, pp. 103–13. Bastia, T. and R. Skeldon (eds) (2020), The Routledge Handbook of Migration and Development, Routledge, London. Carling, J. (2017), Thirty-six migration nexuses, and counting, Peace Research Institute (PRIO), Oslo, at: Thirty-six migration nexuses, and counting – Jørgen Carling (https://jorgencarling.org).
Cowen, M.P. and R.W. Shenton (1996), Doctrines of Development, Routledge, London. de Haas, H. (2007), ‘Turning the tide? Why development will not stop migration’, Development and Change, 38(5): 819–41. Hart, G. (2010), ‘D/developments after the meltdown’, Antipode, 41(s1): 117–41. Keely, C.B. (ed.) (2002), ‘The migration development nexus’, International Migration, 40(5): special issue. King, R., M. Dalipaj and N. Mai (2006), ‘Gendering migration and remittances: evidence from London and northern Albania’, Population Space and Place, 12(6): 409–34. Koser, K. and S. Martin (eds) (2011), The Migration-Displacement Nexus: Patterns, Processes and Policies, Berghahn Books, Oxford. Kunz, R. (2008), ‘“Remittances are beautiful”? Gender implications of the new global remittances trend’, Third World Quarterly, 29(7): 1389–409. Lanati, M. and R. Thiele (2018), ‘The impact of foreign aid on migration revisited’, World Development, 111(C): 59–74. Mabogunje, A.L. (1970), ‘Systems approach to a theory of rural-urban migration’, Geographical Analysis, 2(1): 1–17. Piper, N. (2009), ‘The complex interconnections of the migration–development nexus: a social perspective’, Population, Space and Place, 15(2): 93–101. Piper, N. (2017), ‘Migration and the SDGs’, Global Social Policy, 17(2): 231–8. Ratha, D. and W. Shaw (2007), South-South Migration and Remittances, World Bank, Washington. Safa, H.I. and B. Du Toit (eds) (1975), Migration and Development, Mouton, The Hague. Short, P.M., M. Hossain and M.A. Khan (eds) (2017), South-South Migration: Emerging Patterns, Opportunities and Risks, Routledge, London. Skeldon, R. (1997), Migration and Development: A Global Perspective, Longman, London. Sørensen, N.N. (2012), ‘Revisiting the migration-development nexus: from social networks and remittances to markets for migration control’, International Migration, 50(3): 61–76. Sørensen, N.N., N. Van Hear and P. Engberg-Pedersen (2002), ‘The migration-development nexus: evidence and policy options. State-of-the-art review’, International Migration, 40(5): 3–43. Vullnetari, J. and R. King (2011), Remittances, Gender and Development : Albania’s Society and Economy in Transition, Tauris Academic Studies, London.
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Zetter, R. (2020), ‘From humanitarianism to development: reconfiguring the international refugee response regime’, in T. Bastia and R. Skeldon (eds), Routledge Handbook of Migration and Development, Routledge, London, pp. 353–62.
Mining Mining generates relations and structures of capital accumulation wherever it flourishes. It creates local capital, capital, land, labour and technology conditions systemically linked to regional and global development. In the ancient world economy, mining contributed to the development of territorial empires and provided the raw materials needed for the exercise of imperial power, expansion of commerce, and general improvement of everyday life. The Roman Empire mined metals and minerals in Europe, northern Africa, Mediterranean islands, and the Near East. The Han State of China (206 bc–ad 220) developed remarkable iron mining works and production of cast iron in modern-day Shaanxi, Hubei, Anhui, and Jiangsu provinces. In both empires, mining guaranteed extraction of surplus that benefitted the ruling classes, deepening class struggle and uneven development. In Roman mines, societates formed by private citizens enjoyed mining rights and defined their rules pertaining distribution of profits and expenses. The Roman State legitimized private ownership of mines by conferring ownership rights to societates, which had the obligation of paying the pretium tax and fulfil mine-geometry requirements. However, hundreds of thousands of slaves formed the bulk of mining labour. A large mining bureaucracy under a procurator metallorum administered and policed each mining district. In Han China, ‘Iron Offices’ administered iron-mining works and were alternatively run by merchants and State officers. As in the Roman Empire, mining in Han China was done by slaves and forced labour, and thus revolts and rebellions were not uncommon. Slave revolts also proliferated in Roman mines in the second century bc. Labour revolts were oppressively dealt with by the authorities, according to the Book of Han, written in the second century ad. The gold mine of Las Médulas in Asturias, Spain, the mines of Carthage, Egypt, and the iron mines of Tonglüshan, Hubei, China, were among the most important mining works of antiquity. At Las Médulas, possibly the largest gold mine then, Roman miners pioneered the ruina montium method. The method consisted of forcing the collapse of the mountain using a strong stream of water carried unto the prospection area by
100-km-long channels dug in higher mountain areas. The silver mines of Carthago were famous for the vast scale of works, high number of labourers – 40,000 miners – and the ore-smelting techniques that the Romans adapted to the treatment of lead ores. At Tonglüshan, Chinese metallurgists smelted iron using the bloomery process and produced cast iron using a blast furnace built with refractory clays, centuries before cast iron appeared in Western Europe. They pioneered steel-manufacturing processes based upon decarburization, or blowing oxygen into the cast iron, and ‘co-fusion’ or the melting together of cast and wrought iron. Mining provided the bullion monopolised by the Roman Empire in their struggle to dominate monetary exchanges in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean world systems. Iron mining contributed to the wealth of merchants, moneyers and rulers of the Han State, and also led to the industrial expansion of Asia. The use of the iron ploughshare was widespread in ancient China, increasing agricultural productivity and demographic growth. Mass-production of pots, iron knives, scissors ‘made of a bent iron rod with its two sharpened ends facing each other’, fishhooks, belt buckles, iron needles, mirrors, lamps, axes, chisels, and hammers, facilitated everyday life. Production and design of iron weaponry notably improved. The long Han sword replaced short bronze swords; fish-scale armour, barbed iron balls placed on the ground outside the city walls, iron spearheads, and iron stems of arrowheads travelled far after the opening of the eastern end of the Silk Road in the second century bc. In the long thirteenth century (ad 1150–1450), mining created relations of capital accumulation that led to expansion of trade and commerce across Afro-Eurasia. Gold mining transformed African rural hinterlands into market-oriented frontiers. Gold-trading cities flourished, such as Timbuktu, Gao, Teghazza, Taoudeni, and Sijilmasa. Gold contributed to the rise of one of the most lavish imperial courts of the period, that of the Mali emperor, Mansa Kanku Mūsā (r. ad 1312–37). Sold to the medieval Islamic State from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, African gold contributed to the development of medieval Islamic coinage. It had a retroactive effect, as it contributed to intensification of mining in Europe as African gold was exchanged for
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European silver and salt. Gold deposits needed no capital-intensive methods, which increased the wealth of regional merchant elites. Using the open stope method, African miners removed first the weathered surface outcrops that contained the highest concentrations of gold. They then extracted the dipping reef from both sides, forming a large trench where the reef, approximately 1.5 m wide, was in soft rock. In cases where the reef was in hard rock, miners used the underhand stoping technique, by which they excavated the reef from beneath, creating narrow stopes. Most stopes did not exceed 45 m. Generally, shafts had a one-metre diameter, which meant that miners dug until reaching the reef. Once a shaft was sunk, miners exploited it in all directions for several metres. The method increased gold-recuperation rate, and reproduced relations of exploitation against enslaved populations and semi-free forms of labour. European silver increased the money supply of the world economy. It led to financial and technological innovations in districts where feudalization of mining rights coincided with expansion of commodity trade. Such was the case of mining districts of the Alps, the Carpathian Mountains, Tuscany, and Iberian and Mediterranean lands. Societates or private citizens organized in corporations held mining rights. They monopolized the most lucrative silver mines of Europe. The capital requirements of silver mining triggered relations of accumulation, along with clashes between societates and feudal lords over mining profits. Mining required digging of shafts using pickaxes. In some mines, miners dug holes on the surface of the ore-containing rock, filled them with water, and waited for water to freeze, hoping that ice created fissures into the rock walls of the mine. Sometimes, fire was used in the breaking of the rock wall, for which dry wood was placed in cracks or holes of the rock wall and set on fire. Recuperation of silver was done by smelting and cupellation, a two-stage process adapted to local geological and geographic conditions and which required the use of furnaces and cupels. Profiting from mining works, societates contributed to the development of bullion-trade activity linked to the rise of mining shares and other credit instruments in the city states of Pisa, Genoa, Florence, Venice, and beyond. Jeannette Graulau
In Asia, salt mining contributed to the development of the Northern Song Empire of China. Under a Monopoly Goods Bureau, the Northern Song State issued vouchers to private merchants, granting monopoly rights to trade salt in regional markets. The Bureau had branches in all commercial cities of the State and was placed later under the Salt and Iron Bureau. The Ministry of Finance and Military Bureaucracy played a role in salt-tax collection and voucher distribution, especially in frontier areas. Salt Intendancies in the south-east oversaw salt revenues and auditing salt mines. Mining varied depending upon the nature of the deposit. Miners of pond salt mined from a salt-water lake that extended across Anyi and Xie counties near present-day Shanxi, evaporated fields of salt-lake water under the sun and drained the salt on mats placed on flat soil. Miners of haiyan or sea salt, mined in the coasts of Hebei, Jingdong, Huainan, Liangzhe, Fujian, and Guangnan. The evaporated sea water in beds, percolating and boiling water until salt crystallized in iron-made cauldrons. Earth salt or jian was obtained from alkaline soil in present-day Shanxi, Shaanxi, Jingxi, and Hebei provinces. To mine well salt or jingyan in various localities of present-day Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, and Hubei, salters drilled deep boreholes in brines using with manually operated capstan. They boiled the brines using heat generated by igniting natural gas veins that they reached by drilling below the brine level. Sichuan salters employed round-bladed drill, bamboo cylinders for well shaft, and one-direction sluice gates, building deep, small-mouth wells. In pre-Columbian America, turquoise mining contributed to the material wealth that sustained the pre-Columbian, Mixtec-Puebla cultures that inhabited the US south-west. Along with turquoise stone, Amerindians exploited various blue-green minerals such as malachite, azurite, chrysocolla, and amazonite. They mined ‘the mother lode of turquoise in the New World’ in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Mining was labour intensive although reached a remarkable development. The principal method required heating the rock and cooling it with water, to induce sudden temperature changes that altered the structure of rocks. Miners sank and worked shafts on a step-by-step basis, with each shaft measuring approximately 10–12 feet
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and connected to each other by ladders, as in Californian mines. At Cerrillos, New Mexico, the main pit was 130 feet deep on the upper side, and 35 feet deep on the lower side. The rim was about 200 feet across, and the bottom was 100 feet across. Stone tools were made right on spot, including hammers and double-polled mauls with a central groove or notches. Pieces of basalt rock were polished to make various types of hammers, and nicked in the median region for hafting. Picks for hafting were made of deer and elk horns. Animal bones and tortoise carapaces also functioned as shovels and scoops. These labour-saving artefacts were the historical manifestation of capital formation that gave birth to trading cities along the Pacific coast of Mexico by ad 1200. In the long sixteenth century (ad 1450–1650), mining in Spanish American colonies triggered relations and structures constitutive of the capitalist world economy. The mines of Zacatecas, Guanajuato, and Durango in Mexico, and above all, Potosí in present-day Bolivia, among others, provided the bullion that allowed Western Europe to expand its trade with China. Mining provided the silver that made specie circulation possible. The Spanish real de a ocho or silver piece of eight became the first global currency of the world economy. Minted in Mexico, Lima, and Potosi, the Spanish peso as it was known, found its way to China, leading to the rise of global transoceanic trade connecting the Americas to Afro-Eurasia for the first time in world history. Between ad 1531 and 1660, 17,000 tons of silver reached the Spanish port of Seville, according to tax records. Silver minted at Potosi led to the accumulation of large riches by the colonial elite and contraband trade linking Mexico City, Lima, Vera Cruz, Portobello in Panama, and Acapulco, from where silver was shipped to Manila, Philippines, across the Pacific Ocean. Towns and cities sprung in mining districts, contributing to urbanization. Mexico’s Camino Real, a UNESCO World Heritage site, connected Mexico City to prosperous silver-mining districts to the north, on a road that ran for more than 2,500 km. Potosi became an effervescent mining city unlike any other in the world, with more than 20,000 Amerindians and 1,500 Spanish households. By the early seventeenth century, it reached population levels comparable to that of Amsterdam, London, or
Seville, where all sorts of crafts, trades, and peoples of mixed backgrounds were found, according to historian John Elliot. Extraordinary metallurgical innovations emerged. Known as the patio process and credited to Sevillian Bartolomé De Medina, amalgamation made possible the recuperation of silver from low-grade ores by using mercury amalgamation, in a general proportion of 3–4 pounds of mercury per mark of silver. In Potosi, miners used the caso method, an adaptation of the patio process pioneered by Alonso Barba. The method required the use of copper cauldrons that induced faster silver-recuperation rates. Amalgamation linked silver to mercury mining, creating dependency of colonial miners upon regional and international loans and credit networks to pay for the costly mercury supplies monopolized by the Spanish Crown. Mercury was imported to Mexico from Almaden, Spain, where the Fuggers of Augsburg owned asientos de minas or mining rights. By ad 1775, Almaden supplied approximately 10,000 cwt of mercury to Mexico. The Santa Bárbara mine in Huancavelica, Peru, the world’s fourth largest mercury deposit, became the largest supplier of mercury to Potosi beginning in ad 1572. Conquered Amerindians who survived Eurasian diseases and the violence of European colonization formed the bulk of forced labour. Encomienda and repartimiento were the labour institutions created by the Spanish Empire to extract surplus value from Amerindians by forcing them to work in the mines. Encomienda granted land to conquistadors as military reward for the wars of conquest. Repartimiento was the apportionment of conquered Amerindian populations to land improvement projects. In Andean mines, Amerindians were coerced into the mita, a labour-service obligation which provided Potosí with 4,000 to 5,000 active labourers at any particular month in a year. The historical outcome was one of the most spectacular mining booms in world history, built upon the exploitation of Amerindian labour and colonial resource frontiers. Exploitation of labour and land in this periphery of the world economy made possibly the industrialization of Western Europe. This, in turn, triggered the ’development of underdevelopment’ of Latin America. Mining rapidly spread around the world in the following centuries, contributing Jeannette Graulau
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to the rise of the British Empire and the industrial and financial restructuring of the world economy. The stamp mill and steam engine were adapted to mining purposes. Mines became large industrial sites. The Morro Velho gold mind, in Minas Gerais, Brazil, had 130 ore-crushing stamps. The mine, owned by British capitalists, consumed approximately two million gallons of water per day. Coal and iron mining in the UK, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the US and other countries, generated unprecedented mining profits monopolized by modern, capitalist corporations that increasingly tied industrial and financial operations. Masses of waged labourers emerged in industrial countries, along with the rise of militant miners’ labour unions in the UK, the US and other countries. The situation was worse in the periphery, as imperialist competition for the geological bounties of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, took violent forms, as Britain and the US claimed rights over the ‘underground wealth’ of the periphery, enforcing their claims by exercising naval power, maritime commercial monopolies, and illegitimate treaties. The British East India Company, precursor of the British mining multinational, invaded the ‘tin islands’ of the strait of Malacca, monopolizing lucrative cassiterite deposits. In Bolivia, ‘tin barons’ financed first by London bankers and later New York banks exploited cassiterite deposits and reproduced uneven development. Elisabethville (present-day Lubumbashi), Katanga Province, Democratic Republic of Congo, was owned by the British South Africa Company under Cecil Rhodes, in association with the Belgian Crown. The mine became a ‘site of mass destruction’. It pioneered the leaching technique of electrolysis, a chemical-intensive process for the recuperation of copper that consumed large quantities of sulphuric acid and produced mine waste, polluting lands and water sources. Britain was not the only country that aggressively pursued mining colonization in Africa. Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands mined the Central African Copperbelt, displacing local populations and instituting violent forms of colonial rule, creating the mining ‘scramble for Africa’ in the late nineteenth century. Coal and iron mining in the US expanded from 1840s onwards, linked to the rise of the US world markets. Hematite and taconite Jeannette Graulau
rock formations of the Lake Superior region were almost exhausted by the mid-twentieth century. The Hull–Rust Mahoning iron mine in the Mesabi Range became the greatest iron reserve of the US. Known as ‘the queen of all iron mines’ it was the largest iron ore mine in the world at its peak in mid-1950s. It stretched for more than five km, and less than two km of depth from surface to pit bottom. From 1895 to 1950, the mine produced 496,558,000 tons of ore, equivalent to two-thirds of the iron ore consumed by the US domestic steel industry. Gold mining rushes from California to Nicaragua, attracted miners and moneyers alike, cementing unequal social relations. By then, Western industrialization boosted demand for copper, iron and other metals and minerals, leading to imperialist competition over the ore-yielding lands of the periphery. Displacing British and to a lesser extent German capitalists, US capitalists opened new mining frontiers in Latin American countries. They created mining latifundia in Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and other countries, owned by Bethlehem Steel, US Steel, Cerro Corporation, Anaconda Copper, and Armco Steel. Their huge profits were based not upon technological innovations, but the accumulated, historical comparative advantages gained from bullion production and trade monopolies militarily enforced, the support of local agrarian oligarchies, and super-exploitation of labour in the periphery. Ores mined at Cerro de Pasco (Peru), Chuquicamata (Chile), Cerro Bolivar (Venezuela), Guanajuato (Mexico), and many other places, arrived at the ports of Baltimore, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, in route to industrial cities. They satiated the ore demand of the US industrial-military complex during the twentieth century. The underdevelopment of the periphery sustained the industrial development of chemicals, machinery, and capital-intensive goods. This increased the quality of life in Western countries. In the People’s Republic of China and the former USSR, mining flourished, sustaining the manufacturing industries of the largest peripheries of the world economy. Mining in peripheral countries reproduced debt-peonage and indenture labour relations, contributing to the rise of the ‘Third World’. Mines of zinc, nickel, manganese, iron ore,
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copper, and lithium sprung across the world, providing core economies with the raw materials needed for ongoing industrialization. Malaria, pneumonia, poor nutrition, and lack of infrastructure in Third World mining towns became the other side of the high mining profits of the Western corporations. The ongoing neoliberal restructuring of the world economy that began in the 1970s, including the military expansion of the US empire, endowed mining with new avenues for increasing capital accumulation. Transnational loan-and-debt circuits became the essential development feature of mining works in peripheral-dependent capitalist countries that possess geological bounties. These emerged along with the profit crisis of the US iron and steel industry, that began in 1973. Since then, mining has been tied to sovereign debt and balance-of-payment problems in the periphery. Large mining monopolies have emerged since, in the form of Western mergers and acquisitions that deepen exploitation of mining labour and thus, increase peripheralization of resource frontiers. Large, capital-intensive mines have emerged in Nordic countries, the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, and the coastal waters of the US, and Western Europe and elsewhere. They are the most conspicuous evidence of the relations of accumulation that define the economic possibilities of resource-rich, peripheral capitalist countries in twenty-first-century world economy.
Mining advanced the neoliberal restructuring of the world economy, by providing industrial economies with raw materials, while advancing predatory relations against labour and land in the periphery. Millions of hectares of ore-yielding lands in the capitalist periphery were sold to Western mining multinational corporations in the past decades. Mining operations have expanded their land-surface requirements, calculated as total number of hectares occupied by open cut mine pits, waste rock disposal and mine-tailings facilities, mill and processing plants, water storage facilities, environmental control dams, storage yards, ‘ancillary’ facilities, and ‘buffer’ zones. Indebted peripheral countries have thus sold large tracts of ore-yielding lands to foreign mining operations. In Peru, the number of mining-land hectares grew threefold, from 10 million in the 1980s to 34 million by the end of the 1990s. The Mexican national bourgeoisie privatized 6.6 million hectares of land for mining use only. Ongoing industrial development of rich countries creates new uses for metals and minerals. This condition indicates that today more than ever before, mining is central to the development of capital accumulation, and deepens underdevelopment of capitalist-dependent peripheral countries. Its fate in the nearby future will continue to be tied to the development and contradictions of the capitalist world economy. Jeannette Graulau
Jeannette Graulau
Modernization Currently, talk about the need for ‘green modernization’ is everywhere. Under the impression of the threatening effects of climate change, many politicians, entrepreneurs, and scholars are arguing that a technological transformation is needed that ‘greens’ production, consumption, transport, and living practices. Some argue that it is not sufficient to reduce the CO2 footprint of human activity but that it is essential to develop more sustainable forms of living that overcome the growth-centric assumptions of earlier times. It is here that the modernization paradigm of earlier times is challenged most radically. For much of the twentieth century, the promise of modernization was based on the belief that dramatic improvements in material living conditions were within reach for a large part of the global population; that the resources on which these improvements would draw were infinite; and that planned interventions into nature as well as into society would result in a ‘modern’ way of life that was better than anything before it. Given the (belated) insight into the finite nature of natural resources, the fragility of human and non-human life on the planet, and the numerous disillusionments with development projects, it is important to return to the genealogy of modernization thinking and to place it in the broader context of development. The concept of modernization has roots that reach far back into history, yet it was in the twentieth century, and especially in its second half, that it gained its most prominent status. It is closely associated with the Cold War superpowers’ competition over ideologies and spheres of influence. Before turning to the high time of modernization thinking, let us look at the background against which this phenomenon emerged. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the effects of accelerated industrialization and urbanization, of discoveries in the natural sciences, and of technological innovations produced a sense of dramatic change taking place and new opportunities and challenges opening up. Concerned with international competitiveness, the governments of many empires and nation states across the globe opted for modernization projects geared at improving their educational, economic, and military situations. Concepts of rationalization and efficiency made their
way across spatial and cultural boundaries and translated into a variety of languages and approaches. For all their differences, what united many advocates of modernization was the belief in the need for planning and expertise. Modernization could not be left to the masses; it had to be designed and steered by experts, they argued. Thus, technocracy was at the heart of the notion of modernization. Another aspect that characterized the emergence of modernization as a political paradigm is its connection with imperialism and colonialism. In direct and indirect ways, the modernization processes discussed and designed in the capital cities around the globe were closely connected to the existence of empires and colonies. For example, the modernization of agricultural production that allowed for increased yields ‘at home’ benefitted from experimental stations abroad and from the (forced) labour of indigenous workers in colonial plantations. Many of the raw materials and the energy that fed industrialization and urbanization in and around the ‘metropoles’ came from mines, coalfields, and forests at the imperial ‘peripheries’. The spatial difference inherent in this unequal power relationship was reproduced in the portrayal of ‘civilizational’ and ‘racial’ differences between dependent and independent countries and societies. Modernization was not a universal right but a tightly guarded privilege based on a superiority claim. At its heart was the concept of individual and collective self-determination – a right that demanded specific credentials and characteristics, whether they were defined politically or on the basis of history, culture, or skin colour. According to this view, modernization was for those who were already modern, while development was for those who had not yet reached that stage. The notion of the civilizing mission with which many colonial powers legitimized foreign rule reflected this rationale. Colonial development projects were its expression. The building of railroads and harbours and the establishment of hospitals and schools were geared towards more fully exploiting the economic value of the colonies. As a side effect, the colonial populations would become familiar with a ‘modern’ work ethic and, more generally, with ‘modern’ ways of living, which, in turn, would have the effect of stabilizing colonial rule. Thus, while development served a variety of purposes, modernization as an
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aspiration and as a political act was limited to those in power. This changed dramatically in the context of decolonization. As anti-colonial activists and movements across Asia and Africa challenged foreign rule and won their countries’ independence, they claimed the right to self-determination not only with regard to legal status but also with regard to designing their societies and economies free from foreign interference. The term ‘modernization’ became shorthand for the effort to make up, in the shortest possible time, for all those developments the colonies had been denied under foreign rule: nation building, setting up their own political and juridical systems, expanding educational opportunities and welfare services on a mass basis, industrializing the economy, and trading with other countries on an equal basis. At least officially, the privilege of modernization based on ‘racial’ or any other form of superiority lost its foundation, and modernization became a universally invoked goal. The Cold War taking place in parallel with the process of decolonization accelerated the rise of the modernization paradigm. Politicians from the opposing ideological camps realized that the promise of modernization presented a potentially valuable tool in winning over the so-called new nations for their respective sides. While formally emphasizing their respect for the independence and self-determination of the former colonies, they hoped that the vision of rapid socioeconomic and political improvement would allow them to exercise at least some influence over the future of those countries, and thus, over global affairs. Hence, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, modernization approaches became an integral part of the Cold War competition for hearts, minds, and geopolitical advantage. The Soviet Union advocated Marxism as a scientific approach to overcoming exploitation and to establishing equality across the divides of class, religion, ethnicity, language, and sex. The model of socialist modernity the USSR showcased in its Central Asian republics and since the late 1950s carried into African, Asian, and Latin American countries included industrialization and urbanization, a secure income and housing for all, universal access to education and healthcare, and gender equality. All of this would be achieved by a strong state that prevented the former elites
from securing undue power and that carried out economic planning in the best interest of all. The socialist vision of modernization met with much interest in societies that had long experienced racism, violence, and exclusion, and whose economic structures had been geared toward the interests of the colonial powers. Some of the politicians and intellectuals of the postcolonial countries were sceptical of the authoritarian and dogmatic bent of the USSR and opposed the ideological indoctrination students or trainees at Soviet institutions experienced. However, the need for the development expertise and resources, the generosity with which the USSR initially provided credits and other forms of support, and Moscow’s anti-imperialist credentials encouraged a pragmatic acceptance of the Soviet modernization approach. Against this background, American and Western observers and politicians believed that they needed to provide a counterpoint to the revolutionary rhetoric and politics of their Cold War enemy. The beliefs and assumptions inherent in what came to be called modernization theory were part and parcel of the American experience of the Cold War coupled with decolonization and the rise of the social sciences that characterized the post-war period. Scholars like Daniel Lerner, Lucian Pye, Max Millikan, Walt Rostow, and others argued that societies developed along stages, with traditional societies at the bottom of the developmental ladder and modern ones at its top. The United States allegedly presented the highest level of societal development, characterized by a consumer society thriving on capitalism and liberal democracy as the most progressive form of government. From this point of view, the socialist world was less modern because of its authoritarian structures and the ways in which both ideology and the planned economy inhibited individual freedom. Those societies that, in the 1950s, came to be grouped as the so-called Third World, stood at the very bottom of modernization theory’s developmental ladder: African, Asian, and Latin American societies, where a large part of the population lived in rural settings and that were not fully or even partially industrialized. According to Rostow and Millikan, who were the most outspoken policy advisors among the modernization scholars, the United States had both a responsibility and the opportunity to help those societies to Corinna R. Unger
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modernize rapidly, via development assistance in the form of technical and financial support. The rationale was that modern societies were less susceptible to ideological arguments like those advocated by the Soviet Union. Therefore, modernizing the allegedly backward societies as quickly as possible would prevent the global spread of socialism. By showcasing the advantages of American life; by training elites from the former colonies; by sending experts to the new nations to help build infrastructure, factories, schools, and hospitals; and by withholding support for projects that were not in line with the maxims of liberal capitalism, the United States could steer international politics in a way that was revolutionary yet peaceful, dynamic yet stable. Development assistance was the tool supposed to serve this goal, and the United States and its allies began to invest massive amounts of money into development projects across the globe. The key reason for the success of modernization theory as it became prominent in the post-war decades in the Western world was its ambitious promise of modernity anchored in democracy and of the universal nature of progress. In contrast to the Soviet modernization model, which put the authoritarian state in charge of development and emphasized central planning and collective advancement, the American model emphasized voluntary participation, freedom, and individual opportunities. In notable contrast to colonial times, ‘racial’ or civilizational difference was not considered to be an unsurmountable obstacle to modernization. At least rhetorically everyone could become modern, regardless of cultural, geographical, religious, or personal background. Furthermore, representatives of Western modernization theory moved beyond the narrow definition of development as economic growth and opted for an all-inclusive approach, one that, rather than tinkering with elements of economic production, would change society at large, and do so across national borders and cultural differences. In recent years, historians have analysed the history of modernization theory in depth, and most of them agree that although the theory carries strong American connotations, it cannot be interpreted as an American invention but has to be understood as part of the larger history of development thinkCorinna R. Unger
ing and practice. In the early twentieth century, European and American colonial administrators, international members of the League of Nations, and philanthropic foundations concerned with what they called progress, improvement, and uplift advocated approaches and projects very similar to those that would later become associated with modernization theory: Making agriculture more efficient; reducing mortality rates and increasing literacy rates; encouraging entrepreneurship, savings, and investments; limiting population growth and family sizes; and stimulating economic growth, among others. Hence, there was a large body of experience with development work that informed the ideas and arguments of those who came to be regarded as the fathers of modernization theory. When they carried out their research and published their writings in the post-war decades, they were not proposing something entirely new but were drawing on established theoretical and practical knowledge to build a theory of social change. The fact that they did so in the context of the Cold War and decolonization, and that they drew on and helped to establish sophisticated forms of qualitative and quantitative social scientific analysis, made its translation into political practice in the form of development interventions much more effective than it would have been under different circumstances. Yet for all its popularity and success, modernization theory as the theoretical underpinning of post-war Western development politics was never undisputed. As socialist commentators liked to point out, the image of modernity modelled on the United States ignored many of the problems that existed in American society at the time. Domestic racism was the most pronounced. How could the United States be advocating ideas of universal modernization abroad when at home the black population was experiencing continuous segregation, discrimination, violence, and exclusion? How could the grave gender inequality that characterized US society in the post-war period and the ideological bent of American politics be aligned with the argument that the United States embodied modern – rational, progressive, secular – society? In the West, critics of mainstream modernization theory argued that its universalist outlook had the effect of hiding social, cultural, and geographic particulari-
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ties, resulting in recipes for development that were misguided and ultimately unsuccessful because they did not pay sufficient attention to local and regional conditions. Yet under international political pressure, and with the business interests in mind that accompanied many development projects, many politicians argued that modernization had to be carried out despite all odds. Their trust in the transformative potential of modernization projects was frustrated by experiences with populations who seemingly preferred traditional life to its modern counterpart or did not understand the benefits of modernity. To overcome their alleged stubbornness or ignorance, authoritarian measures were required, many of those convinced of the need for modernization argued. This was true not only of international observers but also of politicians in the so-called developing countries, many of whom were frustrated with what they perceived as their societies’ inherent traditionalism. The elite-focused, technocratic element inherent in modernization thinking found its expression in forced modernization projects. Often the military and the police were assigned (and willingly took on) the role of the nation’s modernizer, given their ability to organize and enforce change. It was in the context of the Vietnam War that the theoretically peaceful and democratic concept of modernization through development took the most dramatic turn to violence. Yet there were many other instances in which politicians and administrators used force to realize their modernizing agendas. Today, the complicated history of modernization theory and the highly normative elements of modernization thinking have been analysed critically from a variety of disciplines and perspectives. In part in responding to the critique, but also in spite of it, social scientists have developed refined versions of modernization theory that are used widely to study social transitions across the globe. Since the 1990s, the term modernization has been used synonymously with the terms Westernization and globalization, indicating the continuous fascination with perceived tendencies toward sociocultural convergence and homogenization. Looking at it from the long-term view of the twentieth century, one can argue that the notion of development is the element that
provides continuity in the debates about socioeconomic transformations. Modernization was one of a number of concepts that turned development into a scientific approach, and a particularly successful one as far as concepts go. Yet in essence the ideas associated with modernization are development ideas. While social scientific, political, and ideological waves and fashions have had effects on how development has been conceptualized, carried out, and critiqued at different times in history, the very basic idea of development has not been challenged but rather re-affirmed. Today there is talk about the need for adaptation to climate change – adaptation made possible, at least in part, by modern technologies, but also by changes in social structures and behaviour. Modernization might have lost some of its developmental credence, but its promise of designing a better future in the face of looming global crisis might experience a revival, dressed in green. Corinna R. Unger
Further reading
Cooper, Frederick, ‘Development, Modernization, and the Social Sciences in the Era of Decolonization: The Examples of British and French Africa’, Revue d’Histoire des Sciences Humaines 10.1 (2004): 9–38. Edgar, Adrienne Lynn, Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). Engerman, David C., et al. (eds), Staging Growth: Modernization, Development, and the Global Cold War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013). Engerman, David C., and Corinna R. Unger, ‘Introduction: Towards a Global History of Modernization’, Diplomatic History 33.3 (2009): 375–85. Gilman, Nils, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). Hayden, Anders, When Green Growth Is Not Enough: Climate Change, Ecological Modernization, and Sufficiency (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014). Inglehart, Ronald, and Christian Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Kalinovsky, Artemy M., Laboratory of Socialist Development: Cold War Politics and Decolonization in Soviet Tajikistan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018).
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430 Elgar encyclopedia of development Latham, Michael E., Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and ‘Nation Building’ in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). Mark, James, Artemy M. Kalinovsky, and Steffi Marung (eds), Eastern Europe and the Postcolonial World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020).
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Naylor, Ed. (ed.), France’s Modernising Mission: Citizenship, Welfare, and the Ends of Empire (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Teichmann, Christian, ‘Cultivating the Periphery: Bolshevik Civilizing Missions and Colonialism in Central Asia’, Comparativ 19.1 (2009): 34–52.
Multispecies climate justice ‘Climate justice’, as principle and policy, aims to articulate climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies to achieve the upper-limit of a 1.5 degree Celsius global temperature rise, averting ‘dangerous climate change’ (Robinson and Shine 2018: 564). The concept is rooted in both science and ethics, as it attempts to account for the vulnerabilities of the poorest humans, on whom many scientific responses may have adverse effects, taking into account their class, caste, racial, gendered and other vulnerabilities. In essence, it links ‘human rights and development to achieve a human-centred approach’, in order to distribute the impacts of climate change equitably (Robinson and Shine 2018: 564). This entry explores the idea that this important concept, however, remains limited in its anthropocentrism, a human-centric value that is significantly responsible for global warming, pervasive political violence and species decline in the first place (Srinivasan and Kasturirangan 2016). By placing humans alone at the centre of moral consideration, current conceptions of climate justice elide the fact that animals also unfairly bear the burden of anthropogenic climatic change, and that anthropocentrically defined conceptions of climate justice might risk reproducing the inequities and vulnerabilities entrenched both by climate change, and adaptation and mitigation strategies (Celermajer et al. 2020). Thus, problematizing the anthropocentrism in climate justice, the entry outlines three potential pathways to multispecies climate justice, or a multispecies-inclusive consideration of climate justice. Anthropocentrism is ‘a form of human centredness that places humans not only at the center of everything but also makes “us” the most important measure of all things’ (Probyn-Rapsey 2018: 47). The ‘us’ by no means even includes all humans; rather, it represents a membership of humans privileged by gender, race, class or combinations thereof (Probyn-Rapsey 2018). Anthropocentrism underpins and sustains intra-humanist oppressions, including racism, casteism, sexism and ableism, among others. Anthropocentrism negates the subaltern sub-
human and the nonhuman, and has been a key strategy of geopolitical colonialism, the neo-colonialism of capitalism, and indeed, in producing climate injustices wherein the groups least responsible for environmental devastation – marginalized human and animal groups – pay the biggest price for its adverse impacts. Climate justice concepts acknowledge human vulnerability in ‘safeguarding of rights of the most vulnerable by recognising the inherent injustice owing to the asymmetrical impacts of climate change’ (Mattar & Mbakwem 2018: 480). The severity and intensity of human displacement due to extreme climate events is well-noted, leading to increased numbers of internally displaced persons, or even, climate refugees (Mattar & Mbakwem 2018). Displacement due to habitat loss, extreme weather patterns and events, and forced migrations due to global warming are also features of animal life. Other animals, however, are typically viewed as a means to human benefit in development and climate policies. As a response to climate change, the mission of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets 2011–20, for instance, is to ensure that ‘by 2020 ecosystems are resilient … thereby securing the planet’s variety of life, and contributing to human wellbeing’ (CBD 2011). The Aichi Targets are concerned with how ‘biodiversity components’ (that is, ecosystems, species and genes) (Blicharska et al. 2019) contribute to (human-centric) sustainable development goals, but not necessarily how sustainable development might contribute to the well-being of multispecies. The elephant in the multispecies climate crisis landscape of course, is the fact of animal agriculture, one of the most significant drivers of climate change (Weis 2013). The suffering of animals objectified as ‘food’ species (Gillespie 2018; Pachirat 2012) has hitherto been elided in development critiques, even as this negation brings the fundamental aspirations of ‘justice’ concepts itself into question (Srinivasan 2015). However, animal injustice is routinely compounded through invasive medical experiments on animals (see Patra 2016) in response to anthropogenic climate change, to make their bodies – rather than human attitudes – climate compliant, by reducing the amount of methane they produce. The scale of human violence against other animals under capitalism, and their resultant
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suffering is such that political theorist Dinesh Wadiwel (2015: 3) regards ‘our systems of violence towards animals precisely as constituting a war’. Challenging the idea that (other) animals deserved moral consideration only if they were regarded as cognitively superior (albeit, as per Homo sapiens metrics, narrowly defined even for humans), philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1948: 311) raised the crucial question: ‘The question is not, Can they reason?, not Can they talk?, but Can they suffer?’ While significant research since then has well established that animals other than humans, can and do, of course, also talk, reason and resist, albeit in species-specific ways (Wadiwel 2015), Bentham’s point, further taken up subsequently by ethicist and philosopher Martha Nussbaum (2006) remains crucial – the fact that animals suffer due to our treatment of them is a matter of justice, and must merit our political response. In recognition of the inequitable and unjust distribution of adversarial climatic impacts, climate justice has emerged as a global security issue, and policies aim to respond accordingly. However it is paradoxical to consider climate security exclusively in terms of safeguarding humans, when humans are located in complex webs of relationality with other living organisms and the ecology (Mitchell 2017). To conceptualize security in humanist terms in fact make humans less secure as it underestimates and compromises the relations and networks in which humans are embedded (Mitchell 2017). Humans and animals most interlocked with each other, such as herding pastoralist and nomadic tribes, are often more vulnerable when interlinked human–animal– ecological relations are not considered as multispecies climate justice. At least three pathways are possible in implementing multispecies climate justice policies. One, a genuine and serious exploration of the possible transition and pathways to vegan political economies, must be taken seriously. The definitive case for veganism was made by a large-scale study published by Springmann et al. (2018: e251) at the University of Oxford, in their widely publicized study in the Lancet Planetary Health about the multiple benefits to planetary and human health in following a significantly vegan diet. Nutrient levels improved, premature mortality declined, and it ‘markedly reduced environmental impacts globally’: Yamini Narayanan
greenhouse gas emissions reduced as much as by 87 per cent in some cases, while nitrogen-enhancement of the soil, phosphorus application and use of croplands and freshwater all showed sustained reduction. However, there is another critical dimension to add to these benefits in mainstreaming veganism in political economies: reducing, even eliminating the harms to animals in animal agriculture, and the subaltern human lives interlocked with them. Two, climate justice policies must explore the rich reserves of social science, and natural sciences methodologies involving the study of animals, and undertake the complex task of understanding and incorporating animals’ knowledge into protocols. In policy, what counts as knowledge is decisive in their framing (Bebbington 2007).The colonization of knowledge as a human production has underpinned the nature/culture binary in the relegation of animals as ‘nature’, but humans are a ‘cultural’ group (Deckha and Pritchard 2016). The act of producing and passing on knowledge is culture but associated with only humans, as such (Safina 2015). Author of Beyond Words, Carl Safina writes that it is almost never recognized that other animals have culture too; these cultures too must inform policies in which multispecies have a stake for no less than reasons of survival, well-being and flourishing. How can multispecies climate justice policies account for nonhuman owners of knowledge and traditions? Noting that a singular focus on human–animal relations is its own anthropocentrism in its disregard of the myriad animal–animal relations, Hovorka (2019: 8) calls for an understanding of ‘animal lives within multispecies hierarchical networks and the implications for individual animals or animal groups’. In recent years, work on multispecies contact zones has become preoccupied with issues of voice, decipherability and interpretation, to address the ethical and political tensions arising from one-sided narratives in hierarchical relationships (Wilson 2019). Translating such politics into multispecies work, Barua and Sinha (2019) for instance, bring ethology and geography together to understand what urbanization – or indeed climate change – means for the animals by trying to use their knowledge to understand their experiences.
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Last, multispecies climate justice must be concerned with forming, respecting and sustaining new relationalities with land itself. Land is perceived as capital by developmentality, and seized from a complex ecosystem of traditional guardians and communities, and other living beings. In a manifesto lamenting the global modernity that ‘brought us to the brink of extinction’, indigenous scholar Yin Paradies (2020) argues that the reversal of colonization, of peoples, living beings and land, is meaningful in its fullest expression when privileged colonizer subjectivities undergo a transformation in themselves relating to the land, the Earth, and multispecies kin. ‘(R)ather than a call to return all land to Indigenous peoples,’ writes Paradies (2020: 6), ‘I am asking that all people return to the land.’ It is not sufficient – or morally acceptable – that only the Indigenous act as custodians of land, rather, ‘it is important that all of us attend to neglected Country, led by those with the most experience in doing so’ (2020: 6, emphasis added). Translating this call for action into multispecies climate justice policies can take inspiration from Paradies’ vision of a ‘radical land-based re-localisation, revitalised communalism and embodied kinship with all life’ (2020: 1, emphasis added). Mitigating the weight of human impact on ecosystems is vital, by resizing local communities of no more than 100–150 individuals where people draw meaning not from the unceasing accumulation characteristic of capitalism but through ‘meaningful mutuality of being and becoming with close by (non‑)human life’ (2020: 7). In essence, a core of multispecies climate justice would be to prioritize and enable a relationship of care and real connection with land, perhaps only possible through communities of (small) scale, fostering the planetary kinship of which humans are a part. Yamini Narayanan
References
Barua, M., & Sinha, A. (2019). Animating the urban: an ethological and geographical conversation. Social & Cultural Geography, 20(8), 1160–80. Bebbington, A. (2007). Social movements and the politicization of chronic poverty. Development and Change, 38(5), 793–818. Bentham, J. (1948). An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. New York: Hafner Press.
Blicharska, M., Smithers, R.J., Mikusiński, G., Rönnbäck, P., Harrison, P.A., Nilsson, M., & Sutherland, W.J. (2019). Biodiversity’s contributions to sustainable development. Nature Sustainability, 2, 1083–93. CBD [Convention on Biological Diversity] (2011). Key elements of the Strategic Plan 2011–2020, including Aichi biodiversity targets. https:// www.cbd.int/sp/elements/. Celermajer, D., Chatterjee, S., Cochrane, A., Fishel, S., Neimanis, A., O’Brien, A., … Waldow, A. (2020). Justice through a multispecies lens. Contemporary Political Theory, 19, 475–512. Deckha, M., & Pritchard, E. (2016). Recasting our ‘wild’ neighbours: contesting legal otherness in urban human-animal conflicts. UBC Law Review, 49(1), 161–202. Gillespie, K. (2018). The Cow with Ear Tag #1389. Chicago, IL University of Chicago Press. Hovorka, A.J. (2019). Animal geographies III: species relations of power. Progress in Human Geography, 43(4), 749–57. Mattar, S., & Mbakwem, E. (2018). Climate migration: the emerging need for a human-centred approach. In T. Jafry (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Climate Justice (pp. 479–93). London: Routledge. Mitchell, A. (2017). ‘Posthuman security’: reflections from an open-ended conversation. In C. Eroukhmanoff & M. Harker (eds), Reflections on the Posthuman in International Relations: The Anthropocene, Security and Ecology (pp. 10–18). Bristol: E-International Relations Publishing. Nussbaum, M.C. (2006). Frontiers of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pachirat, T. (2012). Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Paradies, Y. (2020). Unsettling truths: modernity, (de‑)coloniality and Indigenous futures. Postcolonial Studies, 1–19. https://doi.org/10 .1080/13688790.2020.1809069. Patra, A.K. (2016). Recent advances in measurement and dietary mitigation of enteric methane emissions in ruminants. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 3, article 39. Probyn-Rapsey, F. (2018). Anthropocentrism. In L. Gruen (ed.), Critical Terms for Animal Studies (pp. 47–63). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Robinson, M., & Shine, T. (2018). Achieving a climate justice pathway to 1.5°C. Nature Climate Change, 8, 564–9. Safina, C. (2015). Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. New York: Henry Holt and Co. Springmann, M., Wiebe, K., Mason-D’Croz, D., Sulser, T.B., Rayner, M., & Scarborough, P. (2018). Health and nutritional aspects of sustainable diet strategies and their association with environmental impacts: a global model-
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434 Elgar encyclopedia of development ling analysis with country-level detail. Lancet Planetary Health, 2, e451–e461. Srinivasan, K. (2015). The human rights imagination and nonhuman life in the age of developmentality. Journal of the National Human Rights Commission, 14, 289–309. Srinivasan, K., & Kasturirangan, R. (2016). Political ecology, development, and human exceptionalism. Geoforum, 75, 125–8.
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Wadiwel, D.J. (2015). The War Against Animals. New York: Brill Rodopi. Weis, T. (2013). The Ecological Hoofprint: The Global Burden of Industrial Livestock. London: Zed Books. Wilson, H.F. (2019). Contact zones: multispecies scholarship through imperial eyes. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2(4), 712–31.
Multispecies poverty politics This entry theorizes animals’ poverty, or poverty as a multispecies phenomenon, rather than a condition of structural violences of capitalist development impacting only humans. Hitherto, animals have been obscured as subjects in development. Critical approaches to poverty are vital to addressing the inequalities and injustices perpetrated by capitalist development, and even illuminating marginalized or invisibilized subjects of impoverishment. Specifically, this entry explores animals’ adverse incorporation as commodities into, and social exclusion as threats from, the capitalist political economy as producing multispecies poverty, causing immense suffering. The conditions of impoverishment, more broadly, are intricately interconnected with capitalist forms of development through which ‘global poverty’ itself is sustained (Rahnema, 2019). Developmentality, or development that is driven by capitalist growth, involves not only the accumulation of money/capital, but also the formation of a ‘proletariat’, the large ‘reserve army of surplus labour’, dispossessed of their land and property (Veltmeyer, 2020, p. 1337). This class was available for hire as cheap labour for capitalists, first enabling the industrialization of agriculture – including animal agriculture – and subsequently constituting the urban informal economy (Veltmeyer, 2020, p. 1337). Developmentality became, problematically, the solution to impoverishment (Srinivasan & Kasturirangan, 2016). Development thus introduced its enduring ‘insidious legacy’ (Illich, 2019, p. 95) of basic needs, whereby the meta-narrative of poverty alleviation would become the driving force to justify more capitalist development to meet these ‘needs’ (Cornwall & Brock, 2005, p. 1045), laying the foundations for the professionalization and, later, even the corporatization of the development-industrial sector (including the state, non-profits, and the academe). In their theorization of relational poverty politics, Elwood and Lawson (2018, p. 10) frame ‘thinkable’ poverty politics as that which renders normative specific identities, through formal programmes,
development policies and projects, intended for those who are ‘audible and legible’ within essentialist/formal governmental, intergovernmental and not-for-profit institutions. This is not to say that significant good has not emerged from formal development. However, in continuing to offer solutions that are compliant with capitalism in poverty alleviation measures, it often reinforces limited notions of who can be poor (Elwood & Lawson, 2018; Rahnema, 2019). Hitherto, a significant subaltern population – nonhuman animals (Wolch, 1998) – and the precarity that they experience has thus far remained missing even from decolonial critiques of development, even as development regards animals as either capital, or expendable in the pursuit of capitalism. While precariousness is a feature of all life, precarity is a ‘politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposes to injury, violence and death’ (Butler, 2009, p. 25). (Other) animals, it can be argued, live in a state of continuous precarity by simply being not-human, as a result of human exceptionalism that politically devalues but economically exploits animals for being nonhuman (Collard & Dempsey, 2017). As Overall (2012, p. 338) writes, ‘one cannot recognize oppression if one does not identify and acknowledge the moral status of individuals.’ In envisaging alternatives to development, critical approaches to poverty unveil the different configurations of power, oppression and vulnerability economy that impoverish subaltern populations not typically considered in dominant poverty analyses (Crane et al., 2020), and are yet vital to sustaining developmentality itself. Bringing a critical animal approach to critical poverty analyses emphasizes the suffering that animals also experience as a result of the dominant forms of human–animal relationality under capitalism, diversifying the scope of post-development approaches seeking alternatives to such dominant capitalist development. This entry thus responds in part to the notable exception of Gillespie and Lawson’s (2017) work which calls for a ‘multispecies poverty politics’ by bringing together critical poverty and critical animal studies. Conceptualizing multispecies poverty can illuminate the scale, nature and impact of extractivism and land takeover that char-
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acterizes capitalist development (Escobar, 2020) or developmentality (Srinivasan & Kasturirangan, 2016). While (other) animals have always been commodified or evicted in human interest, developmentality can provide a heightened clarity to see the sufferings of animals entrapped as commodities or disregarded as waste/surplus/threat to capitalism through their displacement in the pursuit of urban capitalist development. ‘[S]uffering in body, mind and heart’ (Bray et al., 2020, p. 4) is regarded as a core experience of poverty in the case of humans. The question is: how can multispecies conceptions of poverty be imagined? This entry introduces a critical animal geographic lens to three major strands of work on poverty studies. As an exploratory approach to conceptualizing multispecies poverty as part of a more cosmopolitan post-development landscape, the intersections of two significant analyses of poverty generates possibilities for a multispecies poverty politics: (1) the multidimensionality of poverty (Bray et al., 2020); and (2) poverty as social exclusion and ‘adverse incorporation’ (Du Toit, 2004). Such a critique radically expands the decolonial aspirations of critical poverty politics, to serve as a starting point to envisaging multispecies-cognizant forms of global and local poverty and post-development politics. In the first strand of work on multidimensionality of poverty, Bray et al. (2020) identify nine dimensions of poverty: ‘disempowerment; suffering in body, mind and heart; struggle and resistance; social maltreatment; institutional maltreatment; unrecognised contribution; lack of decent work; insufficient income; and material and social deprivation’. Of these, only the last three are included in most human poverty indexes, though income remains highly contested, and much feminist work on poverty challenges income as relevant at all (Chant, 2008; Klasen et al., 2015). It is the first three dimensions and, particularly, suffering that is at the heart of poverty (Bray et al., 2020, p. 4). The unchecked use of power over exploitable people to generate power and wealth, and the suffering that such impoverishment entails, is precisely what makes it one of the most morally compelling reasons to alleviate poverty. In their work on the multidimensionality of poverty, Bray et al. (2020, p. 4) Yamini Narayanan
regard the ‘suffering in body, mind and heart’ as constituting ‘the core of the poverty experience’. The suffering ranges from physical distress due to hunger and lack of housing, to emotional terrors of being separated from one’s children, and being disregarded to such as extent that the poor no longer even feel human (Bray et al., 2020). Dehumanization is such a disempowering experience that Bray et al. (2020, p. 5) identify it as a central dimension of poverty. Dehumanization is fundamentally a species-specific form of de-animalization, a negation of shared humanness. The experience of de-animalization of any species-being is profoundly violent, in the undermining and disregard for their species-specific needs and vulnerabilities (Narayanan, 2021). The animalization inherent in any form of subhumanization and dehumanization, and the speciesism inherent in de-animalization is intricately interlocked, making anthropocentrism itself a meta-oppression to be recognized and dismantled as central to critical poverty and post-development politics. Taking a different approach to how the poor are reflected in political economies of scale, Andries Du Toit challenges social exclusion as mainly responsible for poverty. Poverty, argues Du Toit (2004, p. 1005), is the result of the ‘specific and concrete ways in which people are included and excluded (and incorporated integrated, inserted, contained, linked, and disconnected)’. The specific forms of ‘integration into broader economic and social networks’ determines how particular relationalities sustain capitalism through ‘exploitation, racialized power relations, gendered conflict’ (Du Toit, 2004, pp. 987, 1006). Poverty is produced through inclusions and exclusions and is therefore best explained by scrutinizing the socio-political relationships that produce and maintain them (Crane et al., 2020). Animals are both incorporated into the capitalist economy as capital, and also displaced from it – or excluded from it – in the pursuit of capitalism, particularly in the wholesale takeover of land, water and other natural resources as capital. Viewing animals as ‘poor’ is not without risks. Such intellectual and political work could be charged as anthropomorphizing in using ‘human’ metrics to assess the life-experiences of other animals. But it is precisely the anthropomorphism and human
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exceptionalism in such allegation itself that this entry attempts to counter, by introducing species as a vital category of identity in poverty politics. Bringing forth our shared animal identity with other species, this entry presents the case that the experiences and conditions of multiple sufferings due to exploitation of bodies and labour are not necessarily unique to human species. Indeed, the kind of protections and safeguarding via human rights that are available to humans, however tenuous, are wholly absent for other species, making possible the kind of violent exploitations that may be unfathomable in the case of humans. Another peril of conceptualizing multispecies poverty could be that the labelling of ‘poor’ itself often becomes a way of ‘maltreating’ vulnerable groups, ‘as undeserving of citizenship, rights, public goods or resources, and, importantly, that seeks to delegitimate them as political actors’ (Maskovsky & Piven, 2020, p. 381). However, commodified and displaced animals are already maltreated as underserving. So invisibilized in poverty politics, there is value then in visibilizing animals, animating them and drawing attention to the types of human-to-animal relationalities that render them ‘unthinkable’ in the first place. Yamini Narayanan
References
Bray, R., de Laat, M., Godinot, X., Ugarte, A., & Walker, R. (2020). Realising poverty in all its dimensions: a six-country participatory study. World Development, 134, 1–10. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105025. Butler, J. (2009). Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? Verso. Chant, S. (2008). The ‘feminisation of poverty’ and the ‘feminisation’ of anti-poverty programmes: room for revision? The Journal of Development Studies, 44(2), 165–97. Collard, R.-C., & Dempsey, J. (2017). Capitalist natures in five orientations. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 28(1), 78–97.
Cornwall, A., & Brock, K. (2005). What do buzzwords do for development policy? A critical look at ‘participation’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘poverty reduction’. Third World Quarterly, 26(7), 1043–60. Crane, A., Elwood, S., & Lawson, V. (2020). Re-politicising poverty: relational re-conceptualisations of impoverishment. Antipode, 52(2), 339–51. Du Toit, A. (2004). ‘Social exclusion’ discourse and chronic poverty: a South African case study. Development and Change, 35(5), 987–1010. Elwood, S., & Lawson, V. (2018). Introduction: (un)thinkable poverty politics. In V. Lawson & S. Elwood (eds), Relational Poverty Politics: Forms, Struggles, and Possibilities (pp. 1–24). University of Georgia Press. Escobar, A. (2020). Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible. Duke University Press. Gillespie, K., & Lawson, V. (2017). ‘My dog is my home’: multispecies care and poverty politics in Los Angeles, California and Austin, Texas. Gender, Place, Culture, 24(6), 774–93. Illich, I. (2019). Needs. In W. Sachs (ed.), The Development Dictionary (pp. 95–110). Zed Books. Klasen, S., Lechtenfeld, T., & Povel, F. (2015). A feminization of vulnerability? Female headship, poverty, and vulnerability in Thailand and Vietnam. World Development, 71, 36–53. Maskovsky, J., & Piven, F. (2020). We need a loud and fractious poor. Antipode, 52(2), 380–90. Narayanan, Y. (2021). Animating caste: visceral geographies of pigs, caste and violent nationalisms in Chennai city. Urban Geography. https:// doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2021.1890954. Overall, C. (2012). ‘Never eat anything with a face’: ontology and ethics. Planning Theory, 11(4), 336–42. Rahnema, M. (2019). Poverty. In W. Sachs (ed.), The Development Dictionary (pp. 174–94). Zed Books. Srinivasan, K., & Kasturirangan, R. (2016). Political ecology, development, and human exceptionalism. Geoforum, 75, 125–8. Veltmeyer, H. (2020). Capitalism, development, imperialism, globalization: a tale of four concepts. Globalizations, 17(8), 1335–49. Wolch, J. (1998). Zoöpolis. In J. Wolch and J. Emel (eds), Animal Geographies (pp. 119–38). Verso.
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Neoliberalism Introduction
As a political and economic theory, neoliberalism traces its intellectual origins from classical liberalism – Adam Smith’s ideas about the benefits to humans of a free market under a laissez-faire ‘night-watchman state’; David Ricardo’s notions of state specialization in manufacturing and productivity for optimal trading benefit (the Theory of Comparative Advantage); and Immanuel Kant’s zone of ‘perpetual peace’ in which states that trade avoid costly wars. A modern variant of these ideas (neoliberalism) developed through the work of European and North American scholars who saw excessive government intervention in and control over economies as a detriment to human freedom (Berger 2004: 150). Friedrich Hayek’s 1944 Road to Serfdom warned against government central planning leading to tyranny and a loss of freedom, and the Mount Perelin Society and other think tanks promoted these ideas internationally (Monbiot 2016). From the 1960s the influential ‘Chicago School of Economics’ plotted what was then a radical departure from Keynesian economic policies of state intervention, and towards a significantly reduced role for the state in the economy, claiming free markets would also enhance creativity, productivity and maximize choice. From the 1970s onwards, neoliberalism emerged as a broad political project that aimed to dismantle the welfare state in the global North that had driven economic development since the end of the Second World War, and forms of state involvement in the economies of states in the global South (Brenner and Theodore 2002: 350). Neoliberal policies, either adopted by or forced on governments, reduced the role of the state and its influence over national economies, through the privat-
ization of state-owned assets such as, inter alia, utilities, transport, ports and communications, as well as through the progressive reduction of regulations that prohibited the operations of private capital, especially those that protected labour conditions (Cahill 2008: 201–2). These changes were ostensibly to allow greater freedom for companies and individuals to generate greater profits; the dogma of neoliberalism was that with greater market competition, companies would make more money and there would be increased employment and lower prices for consumers. In its contemporary form neoliberalism can be broadly understood as ‘a set of policy recommendations that support market competition and are hostile to state regulation’ (Spies Butcher, Paton and Cahill 2012: 9). However, far from delivering benefits for all, the adoption of neoliberal policies by international financial institutions (IFIs), such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and by states, has resulted in increased global inequality within and between states, as well as promoting a ‘race to the bottom’ – a phrase used to describe competition to create the most lax labour and environmental conditions for states in the global South in order to attract foreign direct investment (FDI). While neoliberalism has achieved hegemonic influence globally, it is important to note that its geographic development has been uneven (Harvey 2005). Its effects across the world have also been uneven as different national states adapted neoliberal policies of privatization of state-operated services, market deregulation and the shift to flexible employment, to fit different national circumstances with varying intensity (Brenner and Theodore 2002: 342). This entry examines some particular issues in the embedding of neoliberal theory in social life as they relate to state policymaking and development processes, as well as the effects of neoliberal capitalism on global development, and the development aid sector.
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Neoliberalism and global development
Neoliberalism’s influence over national and global development has occurred both through international financial regimes and through the globalization of neoliberalism as an ideology. IFIs adopted and implemented neoliberal policy tenets into development policy, and this has shaped the way in which relations between the global North and the global South developed. As an ideological movement, neoliberalism emerged as an ‘historical bloc’ (Cahill 2008) that promoted a laissez-faire global capitalist economy that eroded, displaced and replaced consensus for the welfare state in the North and for developmental states in the global South (Gray 2002). The ascendency of neoliberalism to hegemonic status was a complex political and discursive process, involving conjecture and transformation, as well as resistance (Grabel 2002; Colas 2005; Harvey 2005). Each state engaged in a national process of consensus formation of support for neoliberalism, essential to the creation of specific nationally based hegemonies (Hawksley and Georgeou 2019). States with national variants of neoliberalism operate within an international nation state system that itself is influenced by what Gramsci call ‘hegemonic states’ within that system (Morton 2007: 100–101). Within the global North, the states with the most power and influence over IFIs pushed neoliberal policies to dismantle social protections in favour of market dominance, however this process was, and remains, deeply unpopular in many states, in addition to being unstable (Gray 2002: 19). Neoliberal policies of lax market regulation are held responsible for the Global Financial Crisis of 2008–10, which resulted in then unprecedented state intervention in rescue packages to bail out banks that were ‘too big to fail’. Further, the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 onwards has demonstrated that the free market cannot respond to all crises, and that strong state intervention in an economy is sometimes necessary to prevent social and economic collapse, and to ensure a decent quality of life for people (Georgeou and Hawksley 2020). Neoliberalism views the free market as a ‘natural’, rather than as a socially constructed, institution (Gray 2002: 17), a conceptualization that legitimates the role of the market in social life and renders it
both apolitical and neutral. In this manner neoliberalism, both as an ideology and an economic system, has provided ‘key justification for social and political arrangements’ (Williams 1999: 82) that in both developed and developing countries favour the market (Saad-Filho 2005: 118). The naturalization of the market is underpinned by two other key concepts: ‘universality/formal equality’; and ‘social good’. Neoliberal ideology claims the ‘universality/formal equality’ of all people, who are viewed as detached rational agents (especially in the economic sense), bound together through market forces (Williams 1999: 82) that are axiomatically rational. In this view, social relations and political positions are reduced to market exchanges. In the neoliberal conception, the individual’s ‘pursuance of self-interest’ should occur within a capitalist market economy as this is the most efficient system within which individuals can maximize their material well-being. Achieving ‘social good’ thus requires an unimpeded market, as well as a limited state practising ‘good governance’, understood as a framework of institutional structures of law, private property and contract. As a political and economic system, neoliberalism claims to be interconnecting people using the market mechanism to, ‘… adjust labour, production and raw materials to rationally secure the optimal benefit for all’ (Duffield 2005: 18). The neoliberal paradigm has de-emphasized the role of the state and shifted power from the state to the private sector and to the market. In neoliberal theory the role of the state is very much Smith’s ‘night watchman’ and restricted to, ‘… defence against foreign aggression, provision of legal and economic infrastructure for the functioning of markets, and mediation between social groups in order to preserve and expand market relations’ (Saad-Filho 2005: 114). Attacks on the role of the state should not, however, be equated with the idea that states are irrelevant to neoliberalism; on the contrary the support of Northern states for neoliberalism has been central to its global acceptance.
The rise of global neoliberalism
The rise of neoliberalism came when Western growth faltered in the face of a quadruple threat: economic recession; OPEC oil price rises in 1973 and 1979; spiralling inflation; and stagnant economic growth. In response Nichole Georgeou and Charles Hawksley
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to this crisis within capitalism, the global North adopted a high-interest rate regime, in part propelled by the monetarist strategies of the US Regan administration and the UK’s Thatcher government (Georgeou 2012: 39). However from the 1980s onwards, IFIs and powerful states such as the US promoted the idea of the dual failure of: (1) the welfare state in the global North as too expensive, inefficient and stifling human productivity; and (2) the developmentalist state paradigm of the global South, which perverted the operations of the rational market through artificially boosting prices and wages or providing subsidies on essential products. The global South had broadly followed one of two strategies: import substitution industrialization (ISI), in which states attempted to manufacture goods previously sourced from other states; export-orientated industrialization (EOI) where states created products for sale in a global marketplace. Both required heavy state support, and both had their drawbacks. ISI policies usually resulted in only partial industrialization, as well as persistent balance of payment (BOP) problems, chronic inequity and underemployment. EOI policies required massive FDI, and loan finance to kick-start economic development. Large-scale borrowing in the global South and inflated currency values led to increasing dependency on borrowing hard currency from Northern banks (Peck, 2004: 398; Colas, 2005: 78), but as terms of trade worsened under conditions of higher interest rates in the North, a number of countries in the South were forced to default on their variable-rate loans, triggering a ‘debt crisis’ (Peck 2004: 399). The possible collapse of the entire financial system led to the IFI stipulation of ‘Structural Adjustment Programmes’ (SAPs) as a condition for the disbursement of further grants or soft loans (Haque 2000) to stave off short-term BOP problems in the global South. SAPs generally involved state reduction of the public sector budget to reprioritize social spending towards debt retirement, and their advocacy was tagged the ‘Washington Consensus’. The promotion of neoliberal policies by IFIs later expanded to include other international organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and European Central Bank (Saad-Filho 2005).
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Institutional neoliberalism
The disbursement of grants or soft loans by IFIs or commercial banks was linked to strict conditions relating to the structural adjustment of national debts and required states to adopt programmes of privatization and deregulation, public sector austerity and the opening of markets to international competition and foreign corporations (Peck 2004; Johnston 2005). By the 1990s no major national or multilateral lending institution would extend credit to a state unwilling to accept structural adjustment, and adherents did not hesitate to use material and political capital to press a global neoliberal agenda (Grabel 2002: 36). At the same time, the Washington Consensus approach to development received criticism for being excessively top down and driven by the voices of World Bank economists (Mosley 2001). It was also becoming clear neoliberal policies had failed to deliver significant improvements in economic performance, and the unnecessarily harsh measures included in SAPs had a highly negative consequence for the poor (Thomas 2000). Critics noted the disparity between the rich and poor had increased (Amin 2001; Wade 2004). Additionally, the Washington Consensus could not account for the prodigious economic success of those ‘Asian tiger’ economies where states had been (and continued to be) actively involved in industrial policy and economic planning (Wade 2004; Saad-Filho 2005: 116). It became apparent that making markets work (better) depended more on the policies of the government involved (Harriss 2002: 78) and not on neoliberal prescriptions such as open markets and reduced government control. Some associated with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) called for ‘adjustment with a human face’ to take greater account of the social needs of recipient states in IFI policy prescriptions to the global South (Haque 2000: 226–30; Harriss 2002: 77–8). The appointment of Joseph Stiglitz as chief economist of the World Bank from 1997 to 1999 led to revisions of the Washington Consensus, and to a shift away from neoliberal orthodoxy in the late 1990s (Thomas 2000). Under the ‘post-Washington Consensus’, the focus moved away from the neoclassical emphasis on competition in
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markets, and towards the implications of market failure, the institutional setting of economic activity, and the potential outcomes of differences or changes in institutions. Post-Washington Consensus thinking about development is thus concerned with ‘market friendly intervention’ and ‘good governance’, the latter term being understood as transparent, accountable and working within a clear and consistent legal framework to create the conditions that would enable effective and efficient markets (Harriss 2002: 78). With the emergence of the ‘post-Washington Consensus’, structural adjustment lending was re-named ‘policy-based lending’ and while SAPs were discontinued in 2002, neoliberal principles continue to underpin the current Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper process (Georgeou, 2012: 213), and the Poverty Reduction Growth Trust (PRGT). While the PRGT claims to takes more account of recipient state concerns (IMF 2020), the continuation of political conditionality in the PRGT reflects more the concerns of IFIs and other aid donors than those of recipients of aid (Dijkstra 2005). Overall, both the Washington and the post-Washington consensuses committed to a flawed neoliberal paradigm which sees states as inherently inefficient economic actors, and which reduces development to a single process of technical policy that recommends very similar policies for all poor countries. The main difference between them was of the speed, depth and method of reform, with the post-Washington Consensus accepting the potential usefulness of localized state intervention in order to correct specific market failures (Saad-Filho 2005: 118). Under global neoliberal capitalism, the World Trade Organization, which commenced in 1995, has sought to embed free trade as a principle, reversing decades of tariffs and duties imposed by states to fund development. Cheaper labour and operating costs in the global South led to an exodus of industry from the global North, in both heavy and light manufacturing. Transnational corporations, and even much smaller companies, moved ‘offshore’ to take advantage of both cheaper labour and lax labour and environmental laws in the developing world (Berger 2004: 137). The role of domestic social forces in the adoption of neoliberal policy in the global South was in many cases in line with the
interests and strategies of local power elites (Haque 2000: 224–5). Examples of the adoption of neoliberalism for political purposes include Chile after 1973, where neoliberalism was implemented by the Pinochet military dictatorship to defeat leftist opposition (Smith et al. 1994). Neoliberal policies also served business elites in the global South who, in alliance with many foreign (Northern) investors, enjoyed considerable economic gain when purchasing public enterprises at nominal prices (Haque 2000: 226). For example, in Malaysia, private companies benefitted through the undervaluation of shares in Malaysian Airlines System, Malaysian International Shipping Corporation Building, Telecom Building and Otomobil National, among others, and the governments lost an estimated US$3.73 billion in revenue (Salleh 1995: 139). At times some sections of local elites supported neoliberal policy changes, but where there was resistance, IFIs and other international agencies used their influence to pressure states to adopt such reforms (Chossudovesky 1997; Haque 2000). One example is the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–98 when the IMF structural adjustment forced Indonesia’s Suharto government to end its fuel subsidies, a move that resulted in rioting and the end of the Suharto regime (Bullard et al., 1998: 528).
Neoliberalism and the security/ development aid nexus in the twenty-first century
As a result of the post-Washington Consensus, development under conditions of global neoliberalism now included changes in the distribution of property rights, work patterns, urbanization and family structures. The provision of development aid remained tied to the existence of sound policy frameworks and attendant conditionality determined by the World Bank (Williams 1999): legal and judicial changes to protect property rights and secure the profitability of enterprises; the development of market-friendly civil society organizations (CSOs); financial reforms beyond the privatization of state-owned banks, or anti-corruption programmes; democratic political reforms and so on (Thomas 2000: 117). Nichole Georgeou and Charles Hawksley
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After the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US (‘9/11’), which Duffield (2005) argues ‘reunited aid and politics’ in the post-Cold War era, neoliberalism moved into the realm of an unquestioned system of belief. The perceptions that underdevelopment led to terrorism engendered changes in the way development was conceptualized, resulting in a new rhetoric of pre-emptive intervention against so-called ‘failing’ states in the South, conceptualized as a security threat (O’Connor et al. 2006). If in this paradigm a lack of ‘security’ was understood as the cause of all development dilemmas (McDougall & Shearman 2006: xi), then the solution lay in heightened security. A new stable security environment required both the spread of democracy and the defence of civil rights in other countries; both were considered important goals in spreading peace and enhancing security (Duffield 2007: 225). The UN played its part with a programme of neoliberal state building, fashioning particular types of states that operated on the rule of law, held elections, had open markets and engaged with a global economy (Berger, 2006). Within this neoliberal paradigm, development aid came to represent a means of socially transforming aid recipients (Duffield 2005: 16; Ayers 2009). Such transformations had previously been the role of activists; however, the neoliberal focus on ‘social capital building’ depoliticized most CSOs, which were forced to adhere to neoliberal government funding models to secure funds. As governments believed development was predicated on the accumulation of ‘social capital’ rather than natural, physical and financial assets, CSOs have become unable to address power relations within the community as political confrontation with the power structure, or substantive change to the system, is not required (Veltmeyer & Petras 2005: 124; Hawksley and Georgeou 2019). Activism became divorced from politics (McGloin and Georgeou 2015; Georgeou and Haas 2019) in the name of ‘partnership’ in solving developmental problems, while the logic of ‘partnership’ underpins cooperation between business, government and CSOs to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals without questioning issues such as wealth distribution (Hawksley and Georgeou 2019).
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Conclusion
Neoliberalism was a political choice for some states, but was forced onto others through the work of influential IFIs. The adoption of neoliberalism across the world has deeply affected the trajectory of global development, and it has become embedded in development practice through the ongoing bureaucratic processes of engagement with development aid donors. Yet in reducing all complex social relations to market exchanges, neoliberalism neglects history, as well as the role of culture, class and gender in shaping society and thus divorces development from its socio-political context. Nichole Georgeou and Charles Hawksley
References
Amin, S. (2001). ‘Imperialism and Globalization’, Monthly Review, 53 (2), 6–24. Ayers, A.J. (2009). ‘Imperial Liberties: Democratisation and Governance in the ‘New’ Imperial Order’, Political Studies, 57, 1–27. Berger, M.T. (2004). The Battle for Asia: From Decolonization to Globalization, Routledge Curzon, London. Berger, M.T. (2006). ‘From Nation-Building to State-Building: The Geopolitics of Development, the Nation-State System and the Changing Global Order’, Third World Quarterly, 27 (1), 5–25. https:// doi .org/ 10 .1080/01436590500368719. Brenner, N., and Theodore, N. (2002). ‘Cities and the Geographies of “Actually Existing Neoliberalism”’, Antipode, 34 (3), 349–79. Bullard, N., Bello, W., and Mallhotra, K., (1998). ‘Taming the Tigers: The IMF and the Asian Crisis’, Third World Quarterly, 19 (3), 505–55. Cahill, D. (2008). ‘Hegemony and the Neoliberal Historical Bloc: The Australian Experience’, in R. Howson & K. Smith (eds), Hegemony: Studies in Consensus and Coercion, 201–17, Routledge, New York. Chossudovesky, M. (1997). The Globalisation of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms, Zed Books, London. Colas, A. (2005). ‘Neoliberalism, Globalisation and International Relations’, in A. Saad-Filho and D. Johnston (eds), Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader, 70–79, Pluto Press, London. Dijkstra, G. (2005). ‘The PRSP Approach and the Illusion of Improved Aid Effectiveness: Lessons from Bolivia, Honduras and Nicaragua’, Development Policy Review, 23 (4), 443–64. Duffield, M. (2005). ‘Social Reconstruction: The Reuniting of Aid and Politics’, Development, 48 (3), 16–24.
Neoliberalism 443 Duffield, M. (2007). ‘Development, Territories, and People: Consolidating the External Frontier’, Alternatives, 32: 225–46. Georgeou, N. (2012). Neoliberalism, Development and Aid Volunteering, Routledge, New York. Georgeou, N., and Haas, B. (2019). ‘Power, Exchange and Solidarity: Case Studies in Youth Volunteering for Development’, Voluntas, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-019 -00103-w. Georgeou, N., and Hawksley, C. (eds) (2020). State Responses to COVID-19: A Global Snapshot at 1 June 2020, HADRI/ Western Sydney University. https://doi.org/10 .26183/5ed5a2079cabd. Grabel, I. (2002). ‘Neoliberal Finance and Crisis in the Developing World’, Monthly Review, 53 (11), 34–46. Gray, J. (2002). False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, Granta, London. Haque, S.M. (2000). ‘Privatization in Developing Countries: Formal Causes, Critical Reasons, and Adverse Impacts’, in A. Farazmand (ed.), Privatization or Public Enterprise Reform?, 217–38, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT. Harriss, J. (2002). Depoliticizing Development: The World Bank and Social Capital, London, Anthem Press. Harvey, D. (2005). Freedom’s Just Another Word, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Hawksley, C., and Georgeou, N. (2019). ‘Gramsci “makes a difference”: Volunteering, Neoliberal “Common Sense” and the Sustainable Development Goals’, Third Sector Review, 29 (2), 27–56. http://www.anztsr.org.au/third -sector-review-contents/. IMF (2020). ‘IMF Support for Low-Income Countries’, IMF Factsheet, 13 March. https:// www.imf.org/en/About/Factsheets/IMF -Support-for-Low-Income-Countries. Johnston, D. (2005). ‘Poverty and Distribution: Back on the Neoliberal Agenda?’ in A. Saad-Filho and D. Johnston (eds), Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader, 135–41. Pluto Press, London, Ann Arbor, MI. McDougall, D., and Shearman, P. (eds) (2006). Australian Security after 9/11: New and Old Agendas, Ashgate, Burlington, VT. McGloin, C., and Georgeou, N. (2015). ‘“Looks Good on Your CV”: The Sociology of Voluntourism Recruitment in Higher Education’, Journal of Sociology, 52 (2), 403–17. https://doi .org/10.1177/1440783314562416.
Monbiot, G. (2016, 15 April). ‘Neoliberalism – The Ideology at the Root of All Our Problems’, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/ books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology -problem-george-monbiot. Morton, A. (2007). Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy, Pluto Press, London. Mosley, P. (2001). ‘Attacking Poverty and the “post-Washington consensus”’, Journal of International Development, 13(3), 307–13. O’Connor, T., Chan, S., and Goodman, J. (2006). ‘The Reality of Aid—Part V’, OECD Thematic Reports, 175–89, OECD. Peck, J. (2004). ‘Geography and Public Policy: Constructions of Neoliberalism’, Progress in Human Geography, 28 (3), 392–405. Saad-Filho, A. (2005). ‘From Washington to Post Washington Consensus: Neoliberal Agendas for Economic Development’, in A. Saad-Filho and D. Johnston (eds), Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader, 113–19, London, Pluto Press. Salleh, I.M. (1995). ‘The Impacts of Privatization on Distributional Equity in Malaysia’, in V.V. Ramanadham (ed.), Privatization and Equity, 118–42, Routledge, London. Smith, W.C., and Acuna, C.H. (1994). ‘The Political Economy of Structural Adjustment: The Logic of Support and Opposition to Neoliberal Reform’, in William C. Smith, Carlos H. Acuña, and Eduardo A. Gamarra (eds), Latin American Political Economy in the Age of Neoliberal Reform: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives, 17–66, Transaction, New Brunswick. Spies Butcher, B., Paton, J., and Cahill, D. (2012). Market Society: History, Theory and Practice, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne. Thomas, A. (2000). ‘Development as Practice in a Liberal Capitalist World’, Journal of International Development, 12 (6), 773–87. Veltmeyer, H., and Petras, J. (2005). ‘Foreign Aid, Neoliberalism and US Imperialism’, in A. Saad-Filho and D. Johnston (eds), Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader, 120–26, Pluto Press, London. Wade, R. (2004). ‘Is Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality?’, International Journal of Health Services, 34 (3), 381–414. Williams, D. (1999). ‘Constructing the Economic Space: The World Bank and the Making of Homo Oeconomicus’, Millennium, 28 (1), 79–99.
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Open development Introduction
To understand open development, we need to understand what we mean by the term open. The meaning of an open door, or an open mind is relatively well-understood. But what does open science, open data, or open government really mean? Do all these uses of open mean the same thing, and what do these ideas and applications imply in relation to social, organizational, and political activities associated with development? Open government is one of the first examples of openness in practice. It emerged in the eighteenth-century in Sweden,1 and referred to the concept of transparency in governance. In this case, certain information about the functioning of government was made open to the public. Yet despite this early start, it wasn’t until much later, with the advent of the Internet, that the applications of the adjective open began to diversify and proliferate. One of the key drivers of this proliferation was the emergence of freely available, open-source software. Open-source software is computer code that is freely shared with permissions to modify and redistribute. What made open source so novel was that it was typically developed by a volunteer community of developers through a commons-based peer production model (Benkler 2006). Without the benefit of private sector or public sector resources, this alternative production model can build high-quality software, even in high-value areas. For example, two widely used web servers in the world – Apache and Nginx – as well as the Linux operating system – are all examples of critical service software developed through a commons-based peer production model. A well-known derivation of this idea is Wikipedia, one of the Internet’s most frequented sites. While not
open-source software, Wikipedia is a platform that depends on the commons-based peer production model based on the voluntary work of editors and contributors and sharing the output to all with access. Since the 2000s the term ‘open’ has been used to describe a wide variety of organizational arrangements, activities, and knowledge products that draw from at least one of these general attributes of sharing knowledge and volunteer-based peer production. Examples include open innovation, open data, open educational resources, open access, open science, open budgeting, and even open development. The term has become so widely applied, and even over-used, that it led to an ambiguity in meaning (Pomerantz and Peek 2016). This diversity can be problematic for several reasons, the key one being that if openness can refer to so many things, then it loses its meaning altogether. This makes communication and learning about openness quite difficult. There is a lost opportunity to learn across domains because there is no common denominator across which to compare and learn. Varied definitions also contribute to the phenomenon of openwashing. Much like greenwashing, this is when governments or companies apply the term openness to benefit from the good connotations, while obscuring the fact that they are in fact, not that open in practice. In examining these activities more closely, one sees that openness ultimately refers to a set of knowledge practices – an opening rather than openness as an attribute (Smith and Seward 2017). Looking at different uses, we see that they typically either describe a thing (e.g. open data, open government, or open educational resources) or a process (e.g. open innovation, open science). However, digging deeper, it is only in identifying the practices behind these terms that a common ground across uses becomes clear. For example, we can call the data locked away on
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a computer open because we have attached a copy-left license to it – but for all intents and purposes – it isn’t open. The data only becomes truly open when it is shared, can be found, and used. We are interested in the practices of sharing and use of the data rather than just features of the data itself. Similarly, we find it more useful to see open science not as a thing, but rather as a set of activities (such as sharing lab notes) that open up the scientific process. Looked at this way, we can identify three categories of open knowledge practices that are referenced in the above uses of the term open. More specifically: ● Open production practices leverage collective intelligence in knowledge production. The two most common forms are crowdsourcing and commons-based peer production. ● Open distribution are practices of publicly and freely sharing knowledge resources in either digital or analogue form. ● Open consumption is the use of these publicly available knowledge resources. Typically, these resources make use of a copy-left license such as Creative Commons that maintains the copyright for the creator while making explicit the user’s freedoms to use, revise, and/or republish the content. Drawing from the above, we define open development as the strategic application of open production, open distribution, and/ or open consumption of knowledge (often via the digital ecosystem) in the pursuit of advancing sustainable development (Smith and Seward 2020: chapter 16).
Openness as inclusive development
If knowledge is power, open development is a set of open knowledge practices that, at least in theory, democratizes this power by expanding the number of those who can create, share, and use knowledge at large scale. Wikipedia has as a goal to help ‘create a world in which everyone can freely share in the sum of all knowledge’. Open educational resources are free and thus can be used by those who otherwise would have limited access to such resources. Open government is about making the activities of government
more transparent and therefore accountable to its citizens. Alongside the inclusivity dimension of openness, it is also action-oriented. In contrast to supply-side approaches to knowledge provision, open development highlights the multiple stages of production, distribution, and use of knowledge resources. This puts agency, participation, and engagement at the core of the work. As people become engaged in open activities, and because they have agency in that engagement, inclusion develops and deepens over time (Figure 1). Open development, however, is more than just including open activities in individual projects or programmes. Rather these approaches offer a new imaginary for development practice, grounded in participatory knowledge production, sharing, and (re) use that flip more traditional approaches to development on its head (Mansell 2013). It provides an opportunity to rethink who can be a creator, publisher and user. For example, in education the classic model for textbook provision is that students and governments pay large sums of money to publishers for textbooks. The textbook publishers hold the copyright and then produce a new textbook every few years. In an alternative model, governments can pay qualified individuals to develop a textbook which is then made openly available to all students. Then, on an annual basis, governments can pay to have the book updated. Not only, then, is this book made available for the students within that jurisdiction – but it is now also freely available to students around the world – with the largest benefits going to those students who would have struggled to afford a textbook. Furthermore, the book is updated yearly so doesn’t fall out of date, and students and teachers have the right to take the content and use it in a wide variety of ways that can benefit learning in and outside of classrooms. And all this can happen for much less than what governments and students would pay each year for the books in the first place. Similarly, openness raises questions about how international development can be practised differently. It brings into question who should be considered an expert, whose knowledge counts, access to that knowledge, how that knowledge serves human development, and provides new approaches for meaningful participation and engagement. It also urges Ruhiya Kristine Seward and Matthew L. Smith
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Note: Using, sharing, and producing knowledge are participatory practices, which in turn help one to recognize one’s own agency in the production of knowledge. Participation and agency support inclusion and together shape the contours of the knowledge commons. Source: Smith and Seward (2020: chapter 16).
Figure 1
Reconsidering open development-as-inclusion in the knowledge commons
us to think critically about the purpose and nature of development as knowledge.
Challenges
Even with these fundamental connections between openness and development, the path from open activity to development outcome is imperfect in its actualization. While these challenges are varied, here we focus on structural issues and how they influence inclusion on the development pathway, because these practices happen in a context which drives the effectiveness of openness. Fundamentally, this is about the difference between the theory of openness and how it plays out in different contexts of inequality. Ruhiya Kristine Seward and Matthew L. Smith
These are at different levels, the context of users and potential users – and poverty, and particularly digital poverty that exists around the world, and how this impacts people’s ability to use and produce and distribute knowledge resources. And there are also the global communication dynamics that dictate the terms in which people can participate and this impacts use, production and distribution of knowledge. From synthesis research on this nexus between openness and inclusion, some of the key challenges can be identified, as follows. Digital divide and digital poverty Currently around half the global population lack or have poor access to digital tools. Costs
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for connecting can be prohibitively high, or too expensive relative to income, or the infrastructure may not even exist to deliver connectivity. It is also the case that many people do not have the requisite skills, abilities, or resources to utilize and benefit from open resources online. Digital-enabled content and tools that often undergird open practices challenge the no cost and no exclusions values of open resources. Even if resources are technically available free of cost or fees, there are still costs associated with digital access, connectivity and skills, and participation time. As research has shown, even with no direct exclusion criterion, exclusion emerges in other ways (Smith and Seward 2020). For instance, consider Wikipedia, and who is editing, who has the ‘free’ time to write entries, where they live and what languages are they using. According to research, people living in poorer regions around the world contribute to these kinds of open platforms at much lower rates (Graham and de Sabatta, chapter 5, in Smith and Seward 2020). There are more edits on Wikipedia coming from Hong Kong than from the whole continent of Africa combined. Africans constitute less than 2 per cent of edits on Wikipedia. These issues matter more than ever as knowledge resources and the public sphere are increasingly digitally mediated. Unequal findability Open practices exist in the context of global communication dynamics. Increasingly, if knowledge cannot be located somewhere online, it is almost as if it doesn’t exist. LoCate – from the 10 Cs developed by the team behind Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D n.d.) – is an important precondition to other consumption practices. If discoverability of resources is critically important, how do marginal voices and knowledge resources become ‘discoverable’ in online searches? There are biases embedded in search algorithms – conditioned by popularity, by language, by capabilities to leverage information, and by being known in the global North. The growing prevalence of the digital environment makes it important for global South interests to show up online and be able to broker knowledge.
Global North dominance of the digital public sphere Commercial platforms based and moderated in the global North are increasingly the de facto intermediaries of the public sphere – even though they are neither public nor accountable to most users. Platforms developed in the US and in China have centralized the flow of information to such an extent that many people now equate the internet with Facebook or WeChat. These kinds of social media platforms represent a high concentration of information power. They usually have a particular focus on global North markets and issues – and play a significant role in the potential for shared content to be discovered and used. They can also wall off open and free content. Driven by commercial interests and advertising, platforms do not prioritize content from marginalized locations, and marginal populations neither live in areas that matter to Silicon Valley nor do they have the luxury of income to drive advertising revenue. This means that in the global online marketplace, certain types of knowledge are devalued by their position in the North–South exchange of ideas. As delivery mechanisms for open goods and services, online platforms and search engines like Google can intensify knowledge devaluation. From access and connectivity to global North information power, the constellation of issues means that there are some strong exclusionary currents in open development. Open practices are shaped by institutional, structural and market arrangements rather than the other way around, and the inequitable digital and communications dynamics mean there are challenges in drawing forth the real potential of openness. There are structural and epistemological barriers – gender, socioeconomic status, historical positionality, and physical location barriers. There are market barriers, where open practices get co-opted by the bottom-line interests of larger competitors. Open practices are defined by the contexts in which they emerge, and in inequitable contexts, without a well-targeted engagement strategy, openness initiatives may struggle with inclusive challenges.
Key takeaways
The tensions of how to ensure that open development realizes its inclusive potential challenges us to understand how, for whom, Ruhiya Kristine Seward and Matthew L. Smith
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and under what conditions open practices support inclusion, and when they just reinforce the status quo or even more deeply entrench exigent inequalities. How we construct and govern open practices shapes equitability: figuring out the institutional arrangements for open practices and their link to equity; addressing underlying systemic inequalities that in turn shape the contours of open practices; and, furthermore, understanding that governments have a critical role to play in facilitating and incentivizing openness. Through legal and regulatory regimes, governments help define the ecosystem in which openness plays out and incentivizes (or not) open practices. In contexts of international development, open platforms that operate outside of global North advertising models for education and science tend to be supported by national governments, foreign governments, or by NGOs. They all rely on public funding or foundations. Other key takeaways for open development include the following. Engagement matters to connect supply with use Open development requires a focus on the engagements that connect the supply of open informational resources with their uses, and an understanding of how the resources are used by or benefit marginalized communities. Rather than focusing exclusively on the supply side of openness (such as with data), which is currently the norm, governments and knowledge institutions should focus on the ecosystems that support that data and its use, in order to help overcome challenges to more inclusive use. For example, research on open government data has emphasized the crucial role of data intermediaries in the facilitation of use of the data. Intermediaries play an important role of translated raw data into a form that can be use by a range of different actors. In turn, journalists can interpret and represent the data in ways that can help to hold governments to account. Or civil society organizations can facilitate community discussions based on open budget data to help engage in and bring new perspectives to budgetary processes.
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Open practices and activities need to be incentivized In many contexts, creating and sharing open knowledge is neither encouraged nor incentivized. Governments resist sharing data that might make them look bad. Academics are incentivized to publish in long-standing, high impact journals which are often closed, rather than open access journals that can reach larger audiences. The continued existence of such closed journals focused on international development is particularly ironic given their content. To address this issue requires more structural changes, including starting with institutional and technical arrangements that explicitly incentivize open practices. Institutional support for open practices makes a difference for their use: universities, for instance, can encourage academics, researchers, and authors to develop, collaborate, and disseminate knowledge; and organizations can support marginalized scholars to curate their scholarship in ways that ensure that it can be discovered. Here the role of governments and funders can play a large role, such as recent proliferation of open access and open data requirements for research funding. New governance models for the knowledge commons Knowledge equity and the growth and sharing of knowledge inherent in open development practices requires that we invest in and facilitate the knowledge commons more effectively. The digital knowledge commons should be reclaimed for development and reframed as a public good, and business models for open initiatives should be reframed from the commodification of knowledge to knowledge as a public good. This is central to open development. To conclude, development impacts from openness emerge through the production, sharing, and use of knowledge resources, i.e. the practices of openness. Even without agreement on the use of the word ‘open’ we can point to these concrete activities to understand when and where inclusive development is realized. Armed with these activities, we can then consider how integrating open activities at all stages of development projects, programmes, and policies may help to improve inclusion and efficiency – or perhaps
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References
even how openness changes assumptions and creates a space for a complete redesign. Overall, through helping to bring greater accountability into the public sphere, introducing opportunities for more local agency, and demonstrating the efficient use of resources, openness initiatives are achieving successes in areas of science and education and governance. The impacts of open development can and will cumulatively grow if properly incentivized to support broad inclusion in the production and use of knowledge, and the flourishing of human capabilities. Ruhiya Kristine Seward and Matthew L. Smith
Note 1.
Most scholars trace the earliest uses of the term ‘open government’ to papers originating in the United States, though the Kingdom of Sweden produced perhaps the first freedom of information act in 1766 to disseminate government records. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open _government.
Benkler, Yochai (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press. Mansell, Robin (2013). Imagining the Internet: Open, Closed, or in Between. In Bruce Girard and Fernando Perini (eds), Enabling Openness: The Future of the Information Society in Latin America and the Caribbean, 9–20. Montevideo, Uruguay/Ottawa: Fundación Comunica/ IDRC. https://www.idrc.ca/en/book/enabling -openness-future-information-society-latin -america-and-caribbean. Pomerantz, Jeffrey and Robin Peek (2016). Fifty Shades of Open. First Monday, 21 (5), May 2. https://firstmonday.org/article/view/6360/5460. ROER4D (n.d.). Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D). Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching. https://www.roer4d.org/. Smith, Matthew L. and Ruhiya Kristine Seward (eds) (2020). Making Open Development Inclusive: Lessons from IDRC Research. MIT Press. Smith, Matthew L. and Ruhiya Kristine Seward (2017). Openness as social praxis. First Monday, 22 (4). http://firstmonday.org/ojs/ index.php/fm/article/view/7073.
Ruhiya Kristine Seward and Matthew L. Smith
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an intergovernmental organization that was founded in 1961 to stimulate economic growth, to harmonize Western development aid, and to deepen world trade. Its predecessor, the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), was founded in 1948 as a Western European organization tasked with administering Marshall Plan aid. With the transformation into the OECD in 1961 the United States and Canada became full members, later joined by Japan (1963) and others. While the OECD also included Yugoslavia as an associate member during the Cold War era, it was within and through this organization that Western capitalist countries discussed their economic policies both in the Cold War setting and vis-à-vis the emerging power-bloc of decolonizing countries in the global South. After the end of the Cold War, the organization expanded its membership to many emerging market economies as well as former Soviet bloc countries. In 2021, the OECD has 38 member countries, including Hungary, Chile and, most recently, Costa Rica. By the turn of the millennium, the OECD had established its reputation as a key knowledge hub in the current era of globalization. Throughout its history, the OECD has worked on almost every subject of interest to national governments ranging from growth statistics (GDP, economic outlook) to education (PISA rankings) to the environment (Polluter Pays Principle) and including fields as diverse as agriculture, transport, social welfare, and development aid. It has developed a series of unique modes of governance, and it has with varying success played a role as a think tank and promoter of industrialized Western countries, market economies, and of capitalist development more generally. OECD reports are widely used by researchers and journalists alike as a recognized expert opinion on current affairs; its statistics are taken as objective and reliable; and its advice is extensively reported on in the public. The organization is widely seen as a rational, non-hierarchical and knowledge-oriented
think tank and forum devoted to ‘better policies for better lives’ (a key OECD slogan) – a perspective consciously produced and upheld by the OECD itself. While research about the OECD only started recently and initially tended to reproduce this image of the seemingly neutral and detached expert identity of the organization, since the early 2010s political scientists, sociologists and scholars in international relations have developed a more critical analysis (for an overview, see Leimgruber & Schmelzer, 2017: 1–22; Woodward, 2009). This entry first sketches three OECD governance mechanisms, then focuses on the OECDs work in the field of development, and finally analyses the organization’s core functions.
OECD governance mechanisms: ideas, peers, and data
In contrast to many international organizations, for the most part the OECD does not rely on legal or financial means to achieve agreements. While these did play a role for the OEEC, in particular in the distribution of Marshall Plan aid, the OECD largely relied on soft power mechanisms. Soft power – getting others to want the outcomes that you want – means that the OECD’s way of working aimed at shaping the ideas and preferences of member countries. Three mechanisms are particularly important to understand how the OECD works, analyse its role in global governance, and distinguish it from other international organizations: production of policy ideas, policy evaluation, and data generation (Woodward, 2009; Martens & Jakobi, 2010; Schmelzer, 2016). First, in its internal reports, the hundreds of annual routine or one-off studies, public statements, and speeches, the OECD produces policy ideas, develops scenarios, sets agendas, defines guiding principles and narratives, and frames topics and cause– effect relationships. By introducing new questions, perspectives, guiding concepts, or policy proposals, OECD officials use the organization’s committee structure, expert conferences, and the organization’s technical reports to advance and diffuse their agenda, thus exercising some autonomy from member countries. Second, the OECD has been engaged in policy evaluation, coordination, and harmonization. Even though financial incentives
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did play a considerable role in the early years of the OEEC, and some legally binding agreements were adopted (such as the Capital Movements Code), the core instrument of the organization was the procedure of multilateral surveillance that was developed since the 1950s and became one of the hallmarks of the OECD. This involved processes of ‘confrontation’, ‘examination’, and ‘peer review’. While the resultant recommendations did not directly force governments to change their policies, they often strengthened certain factions within national institutions by providing authoritative endorsement to a set of economic policies. Governments could thus use the OECD in the logic of what international relations scholars have described as a two-level game to muster international backing in national controversies. The OECD’s advice with its expert authority could thus be used by national governments to support their positions in national debates. Sometimes the OECD was also used by its member countries to create a common position to be taken in other international organizations such as the GATT, UN, or IMF (Schmelzer, 2016; Martens & Jakobi, 2010). The third governance mechanism, data generation, describes the OECD’s capacity to develop and standardize statistical concepts and to assemble large sets of internationally comparable quantitative data and long-term time series. From the beginning, the OECD successfully aimed at building up its reputation for objectivity and impartiality. By the early 1970s, the OECD Economic Surveys and the Economic Outlook were widely regarded as one of the most reliable sources of information one could find about the economic conditions or the policies of specific countries. The production of data in turn proved crucial in shaping the organizational procedures of the OECD as well as in creating its identity. Starting to work on a new area, the OECD regularly synthesized existing academic work and transformed it into a comparative perspective, allowing comparisons between countries and then internationalized existing data over time, and finally used rankings, benchmarking, and indicators to identify ‘leaders’ and ‘laggards’. The publication of OECD rankings was a test of the performance of its member states that often sparked public debates and furthered a policy process of convergence towards what the
ranking constructed as best practice (Mahon & McBride, 2008; Woodward, 2009). While these mechanisms – ideas, peers, and data – help us understand the actual specificities of OECD work, a critical analysis of the OECD as the ‘rich man’s club’ and of the OECD’s workings more generally reveals other important roles and modes of action.
The ‘rich man’s club’ and the OECD in the field of development assistance
Since its foundation, the OECD has been an important player in development assistance. The so-called rich man’s club was – with regard to ‘helping’ the poor – significant in several ways. Firstly, the OECD was instrumental in making development aid a normal function of a modern state. Through the production and diffusion of the relevant knowledge, policy ideas and aid standards, it helped in turning its member states – who had as members of the OEEC only recently been the recipients of the first large-scale aid project, the Marshall Plan – into a community of donors, sharing a more or less coherent doctrine on aid questions. Secondly, the OECD’s efforts at coordinating the aid flows of the capital-exporting countries in relation to other international capital flows and balance-of-payments questions were a vital contribution to the emergence the aid regime. Thirdly, the OECD set some of the most influential norms, standards, and benchmarks in the development field, most importantly with regard to what counts as public aid (i.e. the still used Official Development Assistance, ODA) and how much aid a modern industrialized country is supposed to give (i.e. in preparing the United Nation’s United Nations’ ODA target of 0.7 per cent of GDP). Fourthly, the OECD produces some of the best comparative data, in particular on the economies of developing countries and on flows of public and private aid (Schmelzer, 2014, 2016). Interpreting the OECD as a central site of the global emergence of development aid does justice to the perspective of historical actors within the OECD, but also in the national administrations. Some of the most highly recognized development economists (such as Angus Maddison, Herbert Giersch, Göran Ohlin, Ian Little, and Tibor Scitovsky) Matthias Schmelzer
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worked within the OECD Secretariat or at the OECD Development Centre. More importantly, in the early 1960s it was not yet decided which international organization would emerge as the global aid institution the World Bank has become in the course of the 1970s and 1980s. The fact that the OECD focused on the coordination of aid and the setting of aid standards and did not get involved in operational aid activities with its own large budget was the result of heated controversies in the early 1960s that could have turned out differently (Schmelzer, 2016). The field of development policies also involved the peer-review process, which was invented by the OECD and is now used by many other organizations. It is worth delving into since this mechanism of critical auditing, detailed policy evaluation, and justification of current trends among peer countries illustrates well the specific OECD way of working. On average every three to four years, each member country of the Development Assistance Committee is examined by a peer review process, in which it must ‘open up’ its policies to others in a rather long process of drafting and redrafting a jointly agreed upon text that is then published, often accompanied by missions of secretariat staff to the capital. This highly elaborate procedure involves two other countries that are designated as ‘examiners’, members of the OECD secretariat, the DAC chairman and the responsible authorities within the country that is examined. Over a period of more than a year, the peer review runs through seven stages: (i) preparation, (ii) visits to the field, (iii) mission to the capital, (iv) peer review meeting, (v) editorial session, (vi) publication, and (vii) follow-up. The reviews include a variety of aspects such as the volume of aid, its geographical distribution, effectiveness and contribution to self-help, intentions for future changes in the aid flow, principal capital exporters, the internal coordination of aid within the country, and the coordination with other donors and international aid agencies. Most commentators regard this form of ‘normative governance’ through moral persuasion within a closed forum as the most effective form of OECD influence (Mahon & McBride, 2008; Schmelzer, 2014, 2016).
Matthias Schmelzer
The OECD’s core functions: geopolitics, the identity of ‘developed countries’, and economic expertise
Based on a critical analysis of the OECD’s unsettled history packed with fundamental transformations, this section sketches core functions of this organization. On the most general level, the OECD can be characterized as a forum and think tank designed for the defence, promotion, and monitoring of capitalist economies and a place to deal with the internal contradictions of liberal capitalism through specific modes of ‘cooperation’. Three dimensions are particularly important (Leimgruber & Schmelzer, 2017; Carroll & Kellow, 2011). To begin with, the OECD can be understood as a (geo)political tool. While its predecessor, the OEEC, never fulfilled the geopolitical role it was designed for in 1948 (to serve as the incubator for the United States of Europe), between its foundation and up until 1989 (and possibly beyond), the OECD became the economic grouping representing the economic interests of the capitalist West. The OECD was specifically founded to coordinate the interests of Western capitalist countries vis-à-vis the communist East and the decolonizing countries in the global South. At a time when the rich countries were losing their majority at the UN, this was regarded as important not only to advancing a common view on development issues, but also to coordinating Western global relations in a platform that shut out nations from the global South and the communist rivals. In recent decades, the geopolitical role of the OECD has become more diffuse. With the relative demise of OECD member countries related to the rise of the emerging market economies that did not want to join this organization (most importantly China), the geopolitical function of the OECD as a kind of Cold War economic NATO continued to be eroded – in fact, since it is still widely perceived as a Western club, the old geopolitical role stands in the way of becoming the global hub of the major advanced market economies that the OECD wishes to be. Secondly, the OECD is an identity-generating club – a key example of international organizations whose membership defines a specific identity. From the 1960s onward, the OECD worked on defin-
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ing the community of highly ‘developed’ or ‘advanced’ capitalist countries on the mental maps of officials, and increasingly the wider public. This also meant that the OECD was founded as an imagined community of ‘developed’ countries that had a common ‘mission’. Since the demarcation of a community of countries as non-members – or the ‘other’ – is highly important, we can see that with the end of the Cold War and the rise of newly emerging market economies the OECD lost two key identity-defining markers. Since the 1990s, the OECD no longer encompasses all the core economies of global capitalism and struggles to find a new identity beyond the Cold War vision of representing rich capitalist countries and the (post)colonial idea of representing the major developed economic powers (Schmelzer, 2015, 2016; Woodward, 2009). Thirdly, the OECD is an economic think tank and experts’ meeting place, a function that continuously increased in importance throughout its history. One of OECD’s key contributions to global governance was the repeated provision of a generally acceptable framing of issues and cause-and-effect relationships, the creation of convincing narratives, and the production of powerful models and metaphors – such as the ‘economic growth paradigm (Schmelzer, 2016) – all of which enabled Western civil servants to perceive social facts and political problems in convergent ways. This process not only took place among members of the international secretariat – as with most international organizations – but also among the thousands of national delegates that visited the OECD headquarters on a regular basis. This rationalization of an international bureaucratic space in a Weberian sense was a process of socialization that contributed to a culture of shared Western administrative expertise, bureaucratic camaraderie, and economic expertise. Of particular importance in this regard is the authority of economic expertise. From the 1960s onward, economics became the lead discipline within the organization and the secretariat began to mainly employ economists. Relatedly, economic approaches increasingly came to expand into and dominate all other policy fields the organization dealt with – from education over social policies to the environment. The organization’s authority in public debates derives to a large degree from
the authority of economic expertise, which in the case of the OECD is framed as seemingly detached from national interests and thus devoid of a particular economic ideology (Mahon & McBride, 2008; Schmelzer, 2016). The OECD’s key task can thus be characterized as defining good economics and the ruling norms of adequate government behaviour, not only for its member countries but‚ increasingly‚ for the entire globe. And since this is done from a very particular vantage point – an expert think tank dominated by mainstream economics and the interests of powerful Western countries – this needs to be analysed critically. These developments were, however, not unchallenged. Some pertinent examples are the internecine conflicts around quantitative growth and environmental questions between two factions of the secretariat in the early 1970s; the organization’s shift in economic ideology from a roughly Keynesian framework to a supply-side orientation in the 1980s; intense conflicts around the OECD’s efforts to implement the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) in the 1990s, which sparked the anti-globalization movement; or the more recent debates about moving beyond the quantitative growth focus through alternative indicators, interventionist social policies, and stricter environmental regulations (Abdelal, 2007; Schmelzer, 2016; Woodward, 2009). Matthias Schmelzer
References
Abdelal, R. (2007). Capital Rules: The Construction of Global Finance. Harvard University Press. Carroll, P., & Kellow, A. (eds) (2011). The OECD: A Study of Organisational Adaptation. Edward Elgar. Leimgruber, M., & Schmelzer, M. (eds) (2017). The OECD and the International Political Economy Since 1948. Palgrave Macmillan. Mahon, R., & McBride, S. (eds) (2008). The OECD and Transnational Governance. University of British Columbia Press. Martens, K., & Jakobi, A.P. (eds) (2010). Mechanisms of OECD Governance: International Incentives for National Policy Making. Oxford University Press. Schmelzer, M. (2014). A Club of the Rich to Help the Poor? The OECD, ‘Development’, and the Hegemony of Donor Countries. In M. Frey, S. Kunkel & C. Unger (eds), International Organizations and Development, 1945 to 1990 (pp. 171–95). Palgrave Macmillan.
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454 Elgar encyclopedia of development Schmelzer, M. (2015). Entwickelter Norden, unterentwickelter Süden? Wissenseliten, Entwicklungshilfe und die Konstruktion des Westens in der OEEC und OECD. Comparativ - Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung, 25, 5, 18–35.
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Schmelzer, M. (2016). The Hegemony of Growth: The OECD and the Making of the Economic Growth Paradigm. Cambridge University Press. Woodward, R. (2009). The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). Routledge.
Oxfam
History of the Oxfam family
Oxfam, or originally the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, was established in the United Kingdom in 1942. It is now an international confederated non-governmental organization (INGO), known as Oxfam International, made up of 21 member organizations. They are based in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Ireland, India, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand/Aotearoa, Quebec, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, and the United States. Despite the role people of faith played in the early days of some affiliates, it is an openly secular agency. The Oxfam International secretariat was formerly based in Oxford, UK, and was relocated to Nairobi in Kenya in 2018. The secretariat runs offices in Addis Ababa, Oxford, Brussels, Geneva, New York, Moscow, and Washington DC. Oxfam International also has three public engagement offices in South Korea, Sweden, and Argentina, which raise funds and awareness about the organization’s work. These members either began life as fundraising bodies for Oxfam GB as in the cases of Oxfam Canada, Oxfam Hong Kong, or Oxfam America, or were established independent INGOs who became members of the Oxfam family, as in the cases of Community Aid Abroad which became Oxfam Australia, Intermon in Spain which became Oxfam Intermon, and Novib in the Netherlands which became Oxfam Novib. In the early 2000s a number of southern affiliates joined the confederation, this included local civil society organizations who became members of the Oxfam family as well as newly created entities building on Oxfam country offices, programmes and networks. Oxfam International’s governance architecture is currently made up of an international board and a multi-stakeholder assembly. The board is made up of four independent members and five members who are on the boards of national Oxfam affiliates. The assembly is composed of delegates from Oxfam affiliates as well as some external stakeholders from the countries and regions in which Oxfam works. The assembly approves Oxfam’s global strategy and the appointment of new board members.
Oxfam was born in controversy in 1942 when a small group of Oxford academics and clergymen agreed to advocate for food relief and supplies to be sent through the blockade of Greece set up by the British government and its allies at the height of the Second World War. By 1943 a registered charity was established and a Greek Famine Relief Appeal was launched to raise funds to provide practical and tangible support to the people of Greece (Black, 1992: 15). In 1948 the committee established the first of what became 650 Oxfam shops across Britain. In the same year the organization announced that it would seek to address ‘suffering arising as a result of wars or other causes in any part of the world’, not least because of the enactment by the US that year of the Marshall Plan designed to assist post-war recovery in Europe. In the same spirit, Oxfam members in other countries had their roots in social justice movements and actions. Oxfam America argued against the Vietnam War, the Canadians worked in solidarity with revolutionary partners in Latin America, Oxfam Novib was strongly connected to the Dutch labour movement; likewise, Oxfam Belgique worked closely with social justice and labour groups in Belgium straddling both French and Flemish community organizations. Community Aid Abroad – Oxfam Australia – emerged from a local social justice organization – the Brotherhood of St Lawrence – (Blackburn, 1993). What was common among all the budding Oxfams was a deep commitment to going beyond projects by speaking out on social justice issues. During the 1950s and 1960s Oxfam started to support communities and set up offices in various African countries, in India and in Latin America, often but not exclusively following humanitarian disasters. At the same time, some Oxfams began more grass-roots organizing domestically to raise awareness of poverty, for example in schools, to raise funds through regular donations through ‘pledge giving’ collectors, and selling handicrafts from developing countries, as well as second-hand clothes and books, in the Oxfam shops. In the 1970s Oxfam in Britain set up a campaigns department to address the causes, and not just the symptoms of poverty and injustice. As such, by the end of the 1970s the key pillars of Oxfam’s work,
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a mix of humanitarian response, support for long-term development, and advocacy and campaigning, were in place. Oxfam has historically been known in the United Kingdom for its shops, and in particular for its second-hand clothes, which are so renowned that jokes about being dressed by Oxfam often feature in sit-coms and comedy routines in the UK. But since the 1970s Oxfam in the UK and increasingly other Oxfam members have also been involved in helping to promote a worldwide Fairtrade scheme which as of 2019, according to the Fair Trade International involves some 1.9 million workers who are part of a certified scheme. In part the Oxfam approach has been about demonstrating the practical potential of fair trade through sales of fair-trade products through affiliates shops where they have them, but it is has also been about working with others to create the Fairtrade scheme, promoting fair trade products in mainstream supermarkets, as well as advocating for changes in trade policies and practices which are ‘unfair’ (Watkins and Fowler, 2002). Maintaining viable fair-trade shops in some countries like Australia, where it has ceased trading operations, has proved challenging. In what became known by some as the lost development decade of the 1980s (Singer, 1989) Oxfam was involved in major responses to the Sahel famine, was caught up in the public discussions generated by Band Aid and Comic Relief, and was engaged in major advocacy campaigns on US policy in Central America, essential drugs and the pharmaceutical industry, and in particular issues of structural adjustment promoted by the World Bank amongst others. In 1985 Oxfam GB established the Gender and Development Unit and in the same decade, Oxfam America developed significant gender programmes in South Asia (Chen, 2010) as did other Oxfam affiliates. These initiatives went on to have an important impact not only on the organization but also on the sector more broadly, although it is recognized that Oxfam’s commitment to gender equality has waxed and waned over the years (Crewe, 2018). In recent years the organization has undertaken research and advocacy on the care economy and the links between unpaid care and global inequality. By the mid 1990s, as issues of globalization, free trade, and the collapse of the USSR gave rise to both optimistic and pessimistic Chris Roche
forecasts on the future of internationalism, the Oxfam family recognized the need to be better able to mobilize global campaigning and advocacy work. This led to the establishment of the first Oxfam International advocacy office in Washington DC. At the same time the Oxfam family also became aware of the risks of being part of a loosely affiliated entity with no shared standards or governance arrangements. As a result of both these forces, Oxfam in the UK came together with other Oxfam organizations – some of whom were already known as Oxfam – based in Australia, New Zealand/Aotearoa, America, Canada, Quebec, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, and Belgium to form Oxfam International and associated governance structures. The different sizes and approaches of the Oxfam affiliates naturally created certain tensions, notably about who set the global advocacy agenda, how this linked to local struggles and demands for change, and whose voices were heard on the international stage. It is also worth noting that a number of Oxfam affiliates in the global North also developed domestic programmes addressing poverty and injustice ‘at home’, including in particular in the United Kingdom, the United States, and in Australia, where there was a focus on indigenous disadvantage. In the late 1990s, Oxfam adopted what it called the ‘one programme approach’ which sought to bring its work on humanitarian response, long-term development, and advocacy together in holistic ways. This approach recognized the interrelated nature of these activities and the often artificial divides between them. This was complemented by a ‘rights-based approach’ which recognized that all human beings, regardless of their race, class, religion, age, gender or sexual orientation, enjoyed the same entitlements as right holders, and the denial of their social and economic rights, as well as their civil, political, and cultural rights was at the heart of poverty and injustice. The implication was that Oxfam needed to play a clearer role in holding duty bearers to account, as well as supporting its partners to do so. And it needed to do this at multiple levels that linked the local to the global and vice versa, which led to the establishment of regional offices in the global South designed to help make these links. In this sense the ability of different affiliates to influence their own national gov-
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ernments’ domestic, foreign, and aid policies was also seen as a key part of their contribution to the overall programme. In many ways Oxfam affiliates were shaped by their various contexts, albeit often in many ways that appeared contrarian. Oxfam America, for example, set out to be different from other US-based INGOs, by refusing to take government money, by challenging US policy in Central America and South East Asia, by sending money not goods, and refusing to engage in child sponsorship. Other affiliates were also mindful in one way or another about seeking to articulate that how they went about their work was somewhat different to others, even if this was not always the case. This of course meant that trying to bring together these somewhat individualistic affiliates without trying to impose a one-size-fits-all corporate model led to long internal debates and sometimes increased transaction costs. The early 2000s perhaps was the highpoint of Oxfam’s global advocacy efforts, with campaigns on Make Trade Fair/Access to Medicines, Make Poverty History, an Arms Trade Treaty and on Climate Justice. After this, the pendulum started to swing back to a greater emphasis on national influencing strategies. In the second decade of the twenty-first century Oxfam has increasingly played a significant role on the international stage in bringing attention to the issue of inequality. This has included being involved in high-profile events and sessions, including at Davos and showcasing a number of ‘killer facts’ on inequality which have, over the years, gained headline attention in the global media (Phillips, 2017: 429). In 2019 a session on the cost of inequality with Oxfam International CEO at the time Winnie Byanyima, and historian Rutger Bregman, went viral on social media. In 2021 Oxfam launched a much-cited report on the ‘Inequality Virus’ at Davos, which claimed that the 1,000 richest people in the world recouped their losses from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic within just nine months, whilst suggesting it might take more than ten years for the world’s poorest people to recover. In response to some of the critique of international NGOs, as well as its own internal reflections, Oxfam in recent years has embarked on a journey to promote localization and shift the power to southern affil-
iates and local offices in the global South. Apart from moving the international secretariat to Nairobi in 2018 this has also involved decentralizing power and authority to regional offices, which it is envisaged in some cases, like the Pacific, will over time become independent affiliates of the Oxfam family. Oxfam New Zealand’s recent rebranding as Oxfam Aotearoa, and it efforts to adopt bi-cultural values founded on Maori and Pasifika world views are significant in this regard. In the long term, Oxfam may perhaps be remembered best as a sort of social venture capitalist providing start-up support to a number of initiatives and organizations like the New Internationalist magazine, the Fair-Trade Foundation, the Equitable Food Initiative, or the Self Employed Women’s Association in India; or indeed, for some of the ideas and narratives its staff were part of creating, such as Kate Raworth’s work on doughnut economics – all of which might be more durable than some of the more deliberate and planned initiatives the organization has taken.
Controversies
As noted earlier, Oxfam was born in controversy and has continued to be subject to various critiques and attacks. On the one hand, this has included run-ins with domestic charity commissions about whether its long-term development work could be deemed charitable (1963), and subsequently whether its advocacy work could be deemed charitable (i.e. its campaigns against the Arms Trade, American destabilization of Nicaragua, and on the impact of apartheid in South Africa on other front-line states in the region in the 1980s). On the other hand, Oxfam, along with other international NGOs, has long been criticized for not being political enough, or for simply being in the vanguard of vested interests in the global North (Banks et al., 2015). There is a view in particular that Oxfam in Britain became too close to the Blair government from 1997 to 2007 and its insider models of lobbying and advocacy risked legitimizing the policies and targets of its efforts (Quarmby, 2005). At the same time Oxfam was again being criticized as being ‘too political’ and unrepresentative of the people it seeks to benefit, with The Economist Chris Roche
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asking at the time of the 1999 and 2000 anti-capitalist protests ‘who elected Oxfam?’ (Montanaro, 2017). So how Oxfam practised politics and the degree to which it saw itself as the centre of political activism, as well as whether it was, or was not, political enough was also the subject of much debate both internally and externally. In February 2018, The Times newspaper published an article about sexual misconduct and abuse by Oxfam GB staff in Haiti in 2010 and 2011. It was reported that the culprit had resigned without penalty and that he had also been linked to other similar cases of sexual abuse in Chad and Liberia. In the light of the #MeToo campaign, which had been ramping up in late 2017, and given Oxfam’s high profile in the UK and on the international development scene, the article provoked a significant level of debate in the aid sector as well as in the public. The consequences for Oxfam GB and Oxfam International have been damaging. Already stagnating income has further reduced as both private donors and the UK government in particular have reduced support, a situation that has been compounded by losses of revenue associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. This has led to a number of staff redundancies across Oxfam. In June 2021, Oxfam GB was again in the media spotlight about a survey of its staff to help inform the development of a Racial Justice Framework. It has led to Oxfam GB’s CEO writing a piece on Duncan Green’s popular From Poverty to Power blog on ‘Why Oxfam is talking about race’, seeking to explain how poverty will not be ended as long as systemic racism exists (Sriskandarajah, 2021). In June 2023, Oxfam International was involved in a controversy over a cartoon produced for Pride month which led to Oxfam issuing a public apology and a revision of the cartoon (Butler, 2023).
Conclusion
Oxfam is one of the world’s most well-known international NGOs. Whilst its origins in the UK have shaped its trajectory, in the last twenty-five years it has become much more of an international organization with a growing number of members from the global South. It has become more well-known on the international stage particularly for its high-profile Chris Roche
work on inequality. At the same time, it has been subject to a number of controversies many of which are not peculiar to Oxfam and which other international NGOs have also faced. This has included criticism from both the left and the right on Oxfam’s political stance and accountability, as well as on issues of sexual misconduct of its staff. Like most NGOs the COVID-19 pandemic has hit Oxfam revenue hard, whilst at the same time growing calls for ‘decolonizing aid’ have asked significant question about issues of race, power and control in the sector, all of which are liable to make the next decade particularly challenging for organizations like Oxfam as they struggle to remain relevant and effective in a changing and uncertain world. It is perhaps for this reason that Oxfam now unequivocally states that it ‘will deliberately seek to overcome patriarchal, neo-colonial and elitist tendencies’ and seek to improve how it practises its values and feminist principles (Oxfam International, n.d). Chris Roche
References
Banks, N., Hulme, D., & Edwards, M. (2015). NGOs, states, and donors revisited: Still too close for comfort? World Development, 66, 707–18. Black, M. (1992). A Cause for Our Times: Oxfam the First 50 Years. Oxford University Press. Blackburn, S. (1993). Practical Visionaries: A Study of Community Aid Abroad. Melbourne University Press. Butler, P. (2023). Watchdog considers action over Oxfam cartoon of anti-trans ‘hate groups’, The Guardian, 8 June, https:// www .theguardian .com/world/2023/jun/07/oxfam-pride-month -cartoon-charities-watchdog. Chen, M. (2010). Women’s empowerment in South Asia: Oxfam America’s first gender program, in Roper, L. (ed.), Change not Charity: Essays on Oxfam America’s First 40 Years (pp. 175–85), Oxfam America. Crewe, E. (2018). Flagships and tumbleweed: A history of the politics of gender justice work in Oxfam GB 1986–2015. Progress in Development Studies, 18(2), 110–25. Montanaro, L. (2017). Who Elected Oxfam? A Democratic Defense of Self-Appointed Representatives. Cambridge University Press. Oxfam International (n.d.). Oxfam Global Strategic Framework 2020–30, Oxfam International, Nairobi, https://oi-files-d8-prod.s3.eu-west-2 .amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2020–11/GSF %202020–2030_ENG_FINAL_0.pdf.
Oxfam 459 Phillips, N. (2017). Power and inequality in the Sriskandarajah, D. (2021). Why are we talking global political economy. International Affairs, about race? From Poverty to power, 28 July, 93(2), 429–44. https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/why-oxfam-is Quarmby, K. (2005). Why Oxfam is failing -talking-about-race/. Africa, The New Statesman, 30 May, https:// Watkins, K., & Fowler, P. (2002). Rigged Rules www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/world and Double Standards: Trade, Globalisation, -affairs/2014/04/why-oxfam-failing-africa. and the Fight Against Poverty. Oxfam. Singer, H.W. (1989). The 1980s: a lost decade— development in reverse? In Growth and External Debt Management (pp. 46–56). Palgrave Macmillan.
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Participatory development Participation has been mainstreamed in development to such an extent that it is now hard to imagine development theory or practice that does not make participation a central tenant. Donors, government agencies, multilateral agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs) are in virtual total consensus that development effectiveness, local ownership and sustainable outcomes require real and active participation by the people or groups whom the programme seeks to assist. Nonetheless, despite this virtual unanimity about the need for participation, there are very significant critiques and a wide spectrum of views about the practice of participation. Practices and processes remain highly contested, and assessments of the implementation of participation diverge greatly. The idea of ‘participatory development’ first appeared in development theory and practice in the 1970s, initially as a research tool known as rapid rural appraisal (RRA). By the late 1970s/early 1980s, there was growing dissatisfaction among many development experts with the reductionism of formal surveys, which formed the biases of typical field visits that were widely relied upon for development planning. Relying upon data and analysis provided by the recipients was seen as a better option, which resulted in popularization of participatory development approaches. Originally designed for use during needs assessments and appraisals in rural areas, participatory development became very popular in the 1980s and 1990s, with both multilateral and NGO development agencies. The tools, techniques and approaches remain popular,
particularly with many CSOs and local NGOs. Robert Chambers and Orlando Fals-Borda are perhaps the key practitioner-academics who most turned ‘participatory development’ into a coherent school of practice during the 1980s to 1990s. Chambers, with his long interest in rural development, and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, where he was based, took a leading role in promoting participatory development. Integral to popularizing participation were two workshops on RRA hosted by IDS in October 1978 and December 1979, respectively. Chambers (1981) summarizes the range of approaches and techniques presented at these two workshops, and citing most of the papers presented, argues that RRA offered development agencies based in the West a timely, cost-effective, flexible and ‘proportionately accurate’ way of understanding local knowledge and needs – in a manner that reduces the programming bias against poorer rural people. Chambers (1983) further popularized these ideas, under the headline idea of Putting the Last First. The approach was linked very early on with the ideas of ‘development from below’ (Pitt, 1976), and ‘self-reliance’ (Galtung et al., 1980) at the ‘grass-roots’ (Rahman, 1984, 1985). Rapid acceptance of the approach is indicated, for example, by a first international conference to share RRA best practice held in Thailand in 1985 (Proceedings, 1987). Participatory development ideas quickly snowballed into a family of approaches as it was popularized, with a wide diversity of names and acronyms. Fals-Borda (1987, 1991) heavily promoted a variant he called a participatory action-research (PAR), notably emphasizing participation as the key element, and co-opting the idea of action research into the process. He argued that the purpose of such tools was to help the poor, oppressed and exploited articulate
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reliable knowledge, so they could use this to construct countervailing power through new authentic organizations and movements. Importantly, he argued that the ability to frame and generate knowledge is a form of power, and therefore participation in knowledge generation and framing ideas is essential to the dismantling of power inequalities, as well as strengthening agency. Chambers partially followed suit, re-framing his version from RRA (Chambers, 1981) to participatory rural appraisal (PRA) (Chambers 1994a, 1994b, 1994c), in recognition of the primacy of participation to the process being proposed – and to counter critiques of some RRA practice being quick and dirty data extraction. Chambers re-conceptualized poverty as not being a lack of income, assets, services or knowledge, as much as powerlessness due to marginalization. He therefore argued that the solution to poverty requires a reversal of power relations, both between agencies and recipients and within village social structures, resulting in recipients themselves – especially the most marginalized recipients – gaining control over their own futures and agenda. This includes control over not just project design and implementation, but also – similar to Fals-Borda – the power to frame knowledge, analyse and articulate for themselves the analysis upon which projects should be designed. Real decision-making power needs to be transferred primarily into the hands of recipients, not just local governments or civil society: they need to gain control over their own development, for development to be meaningful and effective. Otherwise, he argued, marginalized local voices would continue to be routinely silenced by others, even if only inadvertently by the material power and technocratic proficiency of international agencies. Chambers (1994a, 1994c) acknowledges PRA’s indebtedness to the work of Paulo Freire and his followers, for this insight. With foundations in Marxian and Gramscian ideologies of hegemony, dehumanization and oppression, Freire (1972: 33) argued that power ‘acts to submerge human beings’ consciousness’ in a manner that conditions people to internalize their ‘oppressive reality’, resulting in a capitulation of individual power and self-determination such that people become objects of the wills of others rather than autonomous subjects
of their own agency. To overcome this, Freire advocates critical awareness-raising, or conscientization, as the initial step towards social transformation. To Freire, this involves people reflecting together upon their situation until they become critically aware of their ‘oppression’ and scope of agency, and through that, reclaim responsibility and self-determination, rejecting the internalized dehumanizing narratives subjugating them. Drawing on this, Chambers and other advocates of participatory development see the reversal of control over analysis, planning and decision-making as not just being an instrumental act for development agencies to gain more accurate local knowledge, but as a requirement central to empowerment, agency and, therefore, to lasting poverty alleviation through social change. By the mid 1990s, the term participatory learning and action (PLA) became favoured, as participation became popularized beyond the rural development sector. From 1987, Chambers/IDS partnered with International Institute for Environment and Development to publish regular field notes, PLA Notes, which subsequently evolved into the peer-reviewed journal Participatory Learning and Action aimed primarily at practitioners. These publications promoted the idea and methodology for 26 years, only ceasing publication in 2013. Originally designed for use during needs assessments, the approach is used throughout the project cycle – design, planning, monitoring, review and evaluation – and is now used in both urban and rural areas. Mirroring Chambers’ (1994a) earlier formulation, Napier and Simister (2017) of INTRAC, perhaps the most active ongoing promoter of the approach, describe PLA as a philosophy that emphasizes reversals in power relations between communities and outsiders (such as researchers, evaluators or programme planners) more than a specific approach or set of tools, although the term is also used for the range of tools and approaches adopted as people work, plan and reflect alongside communities. The fundamental idea of PLA is that communities are supported to analyse their own situation, make decisions about how to best tackle their problems, and, as a result, feel empowered to take action. Napier and Simister argue that while PLA is based around group Anthony Ware
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analysis and learning, it is designed to seek out multiple perspectives and embrace diversity, and that it is designed first and foremost to encourage active discussion, fleshing out the opinions of the most marginalized communities and people, such as children, women, people of lower caste or status or people with disabilities. They argue that, if carried out properly, PLA supports the empowerment and mobilization of local communities and the individuals within them, whilst at the same time providing information for outsiders. Rather than rapid, however, they argue that doing PLA well is actually quite time consuming, not least for community members, is difficult to do well and is not inherently ‘good’. If rushed, they argue, it can produce biased outcomes that essentialize community views and reinforce local power hierarchies. A particular set of facilitation skills are required for effective practice, and there is a danger that PLA may arouse false expectations if not handled well. Further, results are usually specific to a local community, meaning wider generalization in area and regional or national development planning may not be appropriate. There are, of course, significant critiques of participatory development, and debates about its efficacy. Criticism came to a head around the turn of the millennium, with Guijt and Shah (1998) challenging the idea of community, then Mohan and Stokke (2000) arguing that despite lofty ideals, the practice orientation of participation was insufficiently theorized and politicized, thus easily misused or abused – and then the publication of Participation: The New Tyranny by Cooke and Kothari (2001). Critics accuse participatory development of three main failings: emphasizing personal reform over political struggle, obscuring local power differences by uncritically celebrating ‘the community’, and using a language of emancipation to ensnare marginalized populations further into an ‘unreconstructed modernist project’ (Williams, 2004, 558). The most common critique is that participatory development approaches communities as if they are discrete, socially homogeneous entities, and seeks a single, coherent, community view to emerge as the basis for communal planning and action, in the process downplaying intra-community divisions and ineAnthony Ware
qualities, and setting up the likelihood of elite capture that only further entrenches pre-existing social divisions and marginalization (Guijt and Shah, 1998). Inequitable participation thus has a ‘tyrannical potential’ to further oppress the marginalized poor, reinforcing rather than combatting pre-existing social power relations (Cooke & Kothari, 2001; Cleaver, 2001; Mohan, 2001; Kothari, 2001). Some go so far as to suggest that, in practice, most participatory practice is actually merely a guise for manipulation, in which the will of those with power is projected onto the group (be that the will of the development agency, or local elite) (El-Mahdi, 2008). Local inequalities and vested interests are glossed over, and, intentionally or otherwise, the massive material power and technocratic proficiency of international agencies overwhelm the agency of local actors, resulting in almost all analytical and decision-making power being reappropriated by the elite (Mosse, 2001). Indeed, Mosse argues participatory development draws marginalized people into the development process in ways that bind them more tightly to power structures, which they are then not able to question, creating an impression of grassroots agency without any real power. Kapoor (2002, 2005) notes that practitioners ask for far more participation, egalitarianism and cooperation in participatory development practice than they do at home, arguing that participatory development has become a vehicle for practitioners to seek to resolve their misgivings about the deficiencies of their own liberal democracies and a site to test idealized notions and fantasies. He also points out the profound self-interest development agencies have in particular outcomes of participatory planning, and not in others, yet denial of that fact – using disavowal as a ‘technology of power’ (2005, p. 1214). Many critics thus attack most participatory practice as a form of political control. Indeed, Ferguson’s (1990) Anti-Politics Machine argues that the mainstreaming of participation has depoliticized it, turning it into a form of ‘subjection’ by ‘rendering technical’ what is in fact ‘political’, leaving the promise of empowerment and social transformation impotent. These critiques all have merit. However, as I have argued elsewhere,
Participatory development 463 there are two significantly different implementations of participatory practice in development, one co-opting it instrumentally into a modernist, neoliberal agenda, another seeking to retain the radical, emancipatory ambition. The first adopts participation as a means of improving effectiveness of development programming, in what remains a primarily top-down or external system managed by institutions and agencies. Participation in this context, we argue, is more prone to elite capture. The second adopts participation out of notions of empowerment, facilitating collective mobilisation of marginalised groups to create bottom-up, locally led knowledge and change, challenging hegemonic interests and power inequalities. In applications such as this, careful management of power relations and who is participating, and how, during sessions is integral to its use. While not a silver bullet, skilled facilitation goes a long way to minimising the issues … acknowledging its vulnerability and widespread misapplication does not negate potentially effective implementation. (Ware and Laoutides, 2021, 685)
Fals-Borda, O. (1987). The application of participatory action-research in Latin America. International Sociology, 2(4), 329–49. https:// doi.org/10.1177/026858098700200401. Fals-Borda, O. (1991). Action and knowledge: breaking the monopoly with participatory action research. New York: Apex. Ferguson, J. (1990). The anti-politics machine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Galtung, J., P. O’Brien, and R. Preiswerk (eds) (1980). Self-reliance: a strategy for development. London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications. Guijt, I. and M.K. Shah (eds) (1998). The myth of community. London: Intermediate Technology. Kapoor, I. (2002). The devil’s in the theory: a critical assessment of Robert Chambers’ work on participatory development. Third World Quarterly, 23(1), 101–11. Kapoor, I. (2005). Participatory development, complicity and desire. Third World Quarterly, 26(8), 1203–20. Kothari, U. (2001). Power, knowledge and social control in participatory development. In B. Cooke and U. Kothari (eds), Participation: the Anthony Ware new tyranny?, pp. 139–52. London: Zed Books. Mohan, G. (2001). Beyond participation, strategies for deeper empowerment’. In B. Cooke References and U. Kothari (eds), Participation: the new Chambers, R. (1981). Rapid rural appraisal: tyranny?, pp. 153–67. London: Zed Books. rationale and repertoire. Public Administration Mohan, G. and K. Stokke (2000). Participatory and Development, 1(2), 95–106. https:// doi development and empowerment: the .org/10.1002/pad.4230010202. dangers of localism. Third World Quarterly, Chambers, R. (1983 [1979]). Rural development: 21(2), 247–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/ putting the last first. London; New York: 01436590050004346. Longman. Mosse, D. (2001). “People’s knowledge”, parChambers, R. (1994a). The origins and practicipation and patronage: orientations and reptice of participatory rural appraisal. World resentations in rural development. In B. Cooke Development, 22(7), 953–69. https://doi.org/ and U. Kothari (eds), Participation: the new 10.1016/0305–750X(94)90141–4. tyranny?, pp. 16–35. London: Zed Books. Chambers, R. (1994b). Participatory rural Napier, A. and N. Simister (2017). Participatory appraisal (PRA): analysis of experience. Learning and Action (PLA), INTRAC, https:// World Development, 22(9), 1253–68. https:// www.intrac.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/ doi.org/10.1016/0305–750X(94)90003–5. 2017/01/Participatory-learning-and-action.pdf. Chambers, R. (1994c). Participatory rural Pitt, D. (ed.) (1976). Development from Below. appraisal (PRA): challenges, potenThe Hague: Mouton. tials and paradigm. World Development, Proceedings of the 1985 International 22(10), 1437–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/ Conference on Rapid Rural Appraisal (1987). 0305–750X(94)90030–2. Rural Systems Research Project and Farming Cleaver, F. (2001). Institutions, agency and the Systems Research, Thailand: Khon Kaen limitations of participatory approaches to University. development. In B. Cooke and U. Kothari Rahman, Md. A. (ed.) (1984). Grass-roots par(eds), Participation: the new tyranny?, ticipation and self-reliance experiences in pp. 36–55. London: Zed Books. South and South East Asia. New Delhi: Oxford and IBH. Cooke, B. and U. Kothari (eds) (2001). Participation: the new tyranny? London: Zed Rahman, Md. A. (1985). The theory and practice of participatory action research’. In O. Books. Fals-Borda (ed.), The Challenge of Social El-Mahdi, R. (2008). Empowered participation Change. London: Sage. or political manipulation? Leiden: Brill.
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464 Elgar encyclopedia of development Ware, A. and C. Laoutides (2021). Whose Analysis? Trial of a new participatory conflict analysis for Do No Harm/conflict-sensitive development planning’. Conflict, Security and Development, 21(5), 673–96.
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Williams, G. (2004). Evaluating participatory development: tyranny, power and (re)politicisation. Third World Quarterly, 25(3), 557–78.
Pastoralism The study of pastoralism holds fascinations and challenges for development studies. Pastoralists have long stood out as interesting subjects of research for their perceived ‘otherness’ from both industrial society and peasant societies, in regard to their mobility, their reliance on communal ownership of key resources, their apparent ability to live in stateless societies and to wield but simultaneously manage violence, not to mention the distant echoes of the Old Testament some have heard in their societies and cultures. These qualities have resulted in their importance in the history of social anthropology, particularly British social anthropology, as exemplified by Evans-Pritchard (1940) and Lewis (1961) among many other works, giving rise to a solid basis of knowledge on which development studies could build. To these problematics of mobility, communal tenure and the management of conflict have been added new themes of indigenous environmental knowledge, complex relations between pastoralism and environmental trends, including climate change, and gender relations within pastoral societies. The very fact that pastoralists and pastoralism have been marginalized in multiple ways by governments in developing countries has contributed to the motivation of concerned scholars to better understand their societies, livelihoods and opportunities for development. Aspects of their otherness in regard to the flexible use of resources are increasingly held up as material for new learning in an age of climate change (Scoones 2004). On the other hand, pastoralist communities, in environmentally marginal regions and often physically remote from national capitals, moving across national borders, or located in zones of conflict, have been logistically difficult to research and sometimes unwelcoming of researchers and refractory to more formal research methodologies. Pastoralist entanglement with the natural environment and the livestock with which they are mutually dependent requires an intense practice of interdisciplinarity with the biophysical sciences: range ecology, animal science, veterinary medicine, climate science and others.
After a brief look at definitions of pastoralism and numbers of pastoralists in the world, this entry reviews some of the research questions raised by pastoralism that are specific to it as a livelihood and form of interaction with the environment – mobility, ‘communal’ land tenure, the future of pastoralism under climate change – alongside the topic of gender inequality in pastoral societies and how it can be reduced. A range of other questions, where pastoralism casts its distinctive light on broader research themes in development studies, are touched on more briefly, with some final reflections on approaches and methods for the study of pastoral development.
Definitions and numbers
Pastoralism has been defined in many ways, with various references to the dependency of pastoralists on their livestock, to the dependence of livestock on open grazing, and to patterns of spatial movement (Devendra et al. 2005). The definitions that best capture the realities of pastoralism are fuzzy definitions, such as that recently used by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): ‘pastoralism refers to a wide family of livestock-based, livelihood and food production systems that are highly diverse but that all share a specialization in improving animals’ diets (and welfare) by managing their grazing itineraries at a variety of scales in time and space’ (FAO 2021: 3). But even a definition like this fails to reflect the fact that, as Baxter (1994) noted, pastoralism is not just an occupation, but a vocation, even for the many pastoralists who have fallen out of livestock-keeping, due to drought, disease or conflict, but aspire one day to return. FAO estimates that under its definition considerably more than 180 million people are raising livestock in pastoral and agropastoral systems (Kieta et al. 2016). Pastoralists are most numerous, and pastoralism is most salient as a development challenge, in dryland sub-Saharan Africa, but there are also considerable populations that can be defined as pastoralists in the Middle East and North Africa, in South, Central and Inner Asia and in Latin America. For the most part they are associated with drylands, but pastoralists are also found in mountain and arctic environments.
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Mobility and environmental rationality
Starting in the 1980s, collaboration between researchers from a range of disciplines and inter-disciplinary backgrounds, largely published in two key edited volumes (Behnke et al. 1993; Scoones 1995), resulted in what became a new and much-needed consensus about pastoral mobility. Key ideas about African savannas emerged from the discipline of range ecology – that they are subject to non-equilibrium ecology driven by fluctuating rainfall more than by long-term grazing pressure, that scientific concepts drawn from rangelands elsewhere in the world such as ‘carrying capacity’ and ‘overgrazing’ are deeply problematic in dryland Africa and that herd mobility is a rational response to the variability of rainfall and nutrient availability in time and space. These ideas fused with, and were given practical form by, tendencies in the development-oriented social sciences that emphasized participatory methods, and the validity of indigenous knowledge and traditional institutions, which could be supported by appropriate policies. Previous stereotypes of pastoralists as motivated by obscure psychosocial wanderlusts, or as inherently prone to destructive overgrazing, were laid to rest. The new understanding has itself evolved. While some qualifications were made on the applicability of the non-equilibrium concept, a wave of social-science research that took as its departure point the essential rationality of pastoralism and pastoralist institutions had gained its own momentum, in regions of the world well beyond Africa. The assumption of rationality has been taken even further to see pastoralists as not just living with uncertainty (the title of the key volume edited by Scoones in 1995) but living off uncertainty – active practitioners of ‘a production system, that deliberately exploits the transient concentrations of nutrients that represent the most reliable feature of dryland environments’ (Krätli and Schareika 2010). This perspective has now been incorporated into a landmark FAO report – Pastoralism: Making variability work (FAO 2021).
Land tenure
Herd mobility among pastoralists is widely and closely associated with various forms of non-exclusive tenure of rangelands, which are John Morton
described in general terms as ‘communal’. As with herd mobility, there is a strong strand of research (often by the same authors and in the same volumes) which has sought to understand these forms of land tenure and advocate that they are rational and sustainable. Much of this work has taken the form of suggesting that rangelands under pastoralism can be viewed as ‘common property resources’, and using understandings of common property such as those derived from the work of Elinor Ostrom to refute the hypothesis that pastoral systems might be subject to Hardin’s ‘Tragedy of the Commons’, doomed to overgrazing as each herdowner exploits the common rangelands with a privately owned herd. This has had crucial and beneficial policy implications in encouraging governments, and development donors, to support forms of communal range management, and discouraging them from imposing forms of individual tenure on rangelands. However, it has often been remarked that real-world pastoral systems do not correspond at all to the Ostromian model of property held in common by defined and rule-bound groups, with the group controlling livestock numbers and the duration of grazing. Real-world pastoral systems instead exhibit a mixture of rights, responsibilities, customs and preferences, relating to individuals and social groups at various scales, combined in some cases with open access, relating to different resources in the landscape, and all subject to changes over time. Pastoral land tenure ‘systems’ are not producing tragedies of the commons, but not, it appears, because they are classic Ostromian common property systems. This argument has developed its strongest incarnation in an article by Behnke (2018) comparing the common property model with the ‘sovereign pastoral commons’, exemplified by African cases from pre-colonial times or from areas unreached by the power of colonial and post-colonial states, where resource exploitation was regulated by ‘networks of social relations, negotiated access, and political or military competition’ and the strength and continuity of the human community, not economic output, was the prime objective. External government control and the development of markets have fractured these sovereign commons, leading to individuation of grazing rights, and increasing wealth differentiation among pastoralists.
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Climate change
Pastoral areas in dryland Africa have, for many decades, been subject to recurrent droughts often engendering famines and the necessity of large-scale food distribution. This has led to much discussion of whether droughts are currently becoming more frequent and/or more severe with climate change, and whether they can be projected to do so in future. Social scientists have contributed to that discussion by examining the different forms of vulnerability of pastoralists, stemming not only from environmental stresses but as much or more from underlying socio-economic factors. López-i-Gelats et al. (2016) have identified six ‘pathways’ of vulnerability resulting from the intersection of factors such as region, ecosystem and market exposure. Krätli et al. (2013) have made a twofold distinction between the strategic vulnerability which is intrinsic to pastoralism and linked to its use of environmental instability as an asset, and induced vulnerability stemming from socio-economic and policy trends such as alienation of pastoral resources, inappropriate land policies and undermining of pastoralist culture and knowledge. Reducing these pressures could release the ‘unreleased potential’ of pastoralism, not only to adapt to climate change but, echoing Scoones (2004), turn ‘environmental instability into an asset for food production’. A different strand of discussions on pastoralism and climate change emerges from increased awareness of the responsibility of the global livestock sector for greenhouse gas emissions, a responsibility in which pastoralists as ruminant livestock keepers are sometimes, by default, assumed to share. In fact, as demonstrated by Rivera-Ferre et al. (2016), measurement of greenhouse gas emissions from livestock is heavily dependent on metrics, assumptions and baselines, and must distinguish more carefully between the highly varying livestock production systems across the world. Houzer and Scoones (2021) take this analysis further with specific regard to pastoralism, drawing attention to factors such as the counterfactual methane emissions from rangelands without pastoral livestock, and the opportunity costs of not producing food from areas where crop production is impossible.
Gender
The research which has generated radically new insights into pastoral herd mobility and land tenure, and allowed a more nuanced discussion of pastoralism and climate change, has tended to focus on community- and household-level factors and assume the homogeneity of households as decision-making units. Research into gender among pastoralists has been comparatively less developed, even though many pastoralist societies are seen as heavily male-dominated in their institutions and traditions, and pastoralist women are doubly disadvantaged in access to education, healthcare and economic opportunities outside pastoralism. A landmark study from an advocacy organization (Kipuri and Ridgewell 2008), for East Africa, framed the situation of pastoralists women as a ‘double bind’ where they suffer both from exclusion from property rights and decision-making within pastoral societies and from the more generic marginalization of pastoralists by governments. Nelson et al. (2015) review the situation of dryland women globally, including but not limited to pastoralist women, in terms of land rights, governance and resilience: in the case of governance a tripartite schema of women’s empowerment through representation, recognition of women’s rights and redistribution of resources is used. Opportunities are identified, which can be seen as bringing a new gender-specific inflection to the themes of defence of pastoralist rationality, knowledge and institutions established in previous research. Livingstone and Ruhindi (2013), surveying the impacts on women of livelihood diversification, autonomous and aid-assisted, among pastoralists, take a different line in linking their topic to fundamental changes in pastoralism and the potential benefits (though also the costs) to women of adopting radically new economic strategies, such as in small towns. All these discussions begin to raise, though very implicitly, the question of how far the agendas of social-scientific research on pastoralism, around defending pastoralism against neglect or worse by governments, need to be modified to address gender inequalities and ways to overcome them. The above discussions only outline some of the many questions on which development studies – seen primarily as social-scientific research on development, John Morton
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but necessarily linked in interdisciplinarity with natural-scientific approaches – have contributed to an understanding of pastoralism and the possibilities for the further development of pastoralism. Just taking the example of one multi-authored volume on African pastoralism (Catley et al. 2013), a range of other topics and questions are also treated: increasing socio-economic differentiation, the development engagement of multinational and indigenous companies, pastoral conflict, livelihood diversification, social protection and the role of livestock and milk markets (for which, see also McPeak and Little 2006). The study of the interrelations and overlaps between development and humanitarian assistance is another question posed with great urgency in some pastoralist areas (Alinovi et al. 2008). In terms of research approaches too, the field is diverse. Much of the work highlighted above draws deeply from the natural sciences both empirically and through engagement with emerging concepts in ecology, but much is free-standing social science research. Much important research is funded by development donors, comes from close involvement with the activities of NGOs or seeks to influence policymakers, while other work is funded in more academically conventional ways. Many theoretical approaches are drawn on, including institutional economics, property rights economics, collective action theory, feminist analysis and Foucauldian governmentality, as well as a concern with the co-production of knowledge between researchers and pastoralists. In terms of methodologies, it can be notoriously difficult to collect quantitative information from pastoralists, but important insights into pastoralist risk management in East Africa have been derived from large-sample structured data collection across multiple locations, in an interdisciplinary combination with historical, ethnographic, and participatory methods (McPeak et al. 2011). Social anthropology and in-depth qualitative fieldwork (with an increased emphasis on documenting knowledge of and entanglement with the natural environment) continue to be crucial ingredients in the methodological mix, well-suited to exploring pastoralist life-worlds, their sometimes startling differences from those of industrial societies and
John Morton
their local expressions of global experiences of change. John Morton
References
Alinovi, L., Hemrich, G. and Russo, L., 2008. Beyond Relief: Food security in protracted crises. Practical Action Publishing, Rugby. Baxter, P., 1994. Pastoralists are people: why development for pastoralists, not the development of pastoralism? Rural Extension Bulletin (United Kingdom). https://agris.fao.org/agris -search/search.do?recordID=GB9415305. Behnke, R., 2018. Open access and the sovereign commons: A political ecology of pastoral land tenure. Land Use Policy, 76, pp. 708–18. Behnke Jr, R.H., Scoones, I. and Kerven, C. (eds), 1993. Range Ecology at Disequilibrium: New models of natural variability and pastoral adaptation in African savannas. Overseas Development Institute, London. Catley, A., Lind, J. and Scoones, I. (eds), 2013. Pastoralism and Development in Africa: Dynamic change at the margins. Routledge, London and New York. Devendra, C., Morton, J., Rischkowsky, B. and Thomas, D., 2005. Livestock systems. In Owen, E., Kitalyi, A., Jayasuriya, N. and Smith, T. (eds), Livestock and Wealth Creation: Improving the husbandry of animals kept by resource-poor people in developing countries. Nottingham University Press, Nottingham. Evans-Pritchard, E.P., 1940. The Nuer: A description of the modes of livelihood and political institutions of a Nilotic people. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York. FAO, 2021. Pastoralism: Making variability work. FAO Animal Production and Health Paper 185, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome. Houzer, E. and Scoones, I., 2021. Are Livestock Always Bad for the Planet? Rethinking the protein transition and climate change debate. PASTRES (Pastoralism, Uncertainty, Resilience) Programme, Brighton. Kieta, N., Kvinikadze, G., Pica-Ciamarra, U., Bourn, D., Honhold, N., Georgieva, N. and Bako, D., 2016. Guidelines for the Enumeration of Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic (Transhumant) Livestock. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome. Kipuri, N. and Ridgewell, A., 2008. A Double Bind: The exclusion of pastoralist women in the East and Horn of Africa. Minority Rights Group International, London. Krätli, S., Huelsebusch, C., Brooks, S. and Kaufmann, B., 2013. Pastoralism: A critical asset for food security under global climate change. Animal Frontiers, 3(1), pp. 42–50.
Pastoralism 469 Krätli, S. and Schareika, N., 2010. Living Off Uncertainty: The intelligent animal production of dryland pastoralists. The European Journal of Development Research, 22(5), pp. 605–22. Lewis, I.M., 1961. A Pastoral Democracy: A study of pastoralism and politics among the Northern Somali of the Horn of Africa. International African Institute, London. Livingstone, J. and Ruhindi, E., 2013. Women and economic diversification in pastoralist societies. In Catley, A., Lind, J. and Scoones, I. (eds), Pastoralism and Development in Africa: Dynamic change at the margins. Routledge, London and New York. López-i-Gelats, F., Fraser, E.D., Morton, J.F. and Rivera-Ferre, M.G., 2016. What drives the vulnerability of pastoralists to global environmental change? A qualitative meta-analysis. Global Environmental Change, 39, pp. 258–74. McPeak, J.G. and Little, P.D., 2006. Pastoral Livestock Marketing in Eastern Africa: Research and policy challenges. Intermediate Technology Publications, Rugby.
McPeak, J.G., Little, P.D. and Doss, C.R., 2011. Risk and Social Change in an African Rural Economy: Livelihoods in pastoralist communities. Routledge, London and New York. Nelson, V., Forsythe, L. and Morton, J., 2015. Synthesis of Thematic Papers from the Series ‘Women’s Empowerment in the Drylands’. Report by NRI for UNDP, Natural Resources Institute, Chatham. Rivera-Ferre, M.G., López-i-Gelats, F., Howden, M., Smith, P., Morton, J.F. and Herrero, M., 2016. Re-framing the Climate Change Debate in the Livestock Sector: Mitigation and adaptation options. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 7(6), pp. 869–92. Scoones, I., 1995. Living with Uncertainty: New directions in pastoral development in Africa. Intermediate Technology Publications, London. Scoones, I., 2004. Climate Change and the Challenge of Non-Equilibrium Thinking. IDS Bulletin, 35(3), pp. 114–19.
John Morton
Plan International Plan International is a child-focused non-governmental development organization. It was founded in 1937 by British journalist John Langdon-Davies and refugee worker Eric Muggeridge. At the time, the aim of the organization was ‘to provide food, accommodation and education to children whose lives had been disrupted by the Spanish Civil War’ (Plan International 2022a; see also Dijsselbloem et al. 2014: 113–15). In the Second World War, the organization was renamed ‘Foster Parents Plan for War Children’ (FPPWC) and its scope of work broadened to providing support to displaced children all over Europe. After the Second World War, FPPWC reached out to children in ‘France, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Greece and briefly in Poland, Czechoslovakia and China’ (Plan International 2022a: history timeline). Over the years, subsequent name changes came about, expressing both the further expanding geographical scope and the broadening contents of the work done. In the 1950s the organization was renamed ‘Foster Parents Plan Inc.’ In the 1970s it became ‘Plan International’ (Plan International 2022a: history timeline), which since the turn of the century is often shortened plainly to ‘Plan’. As of the early 1950s, the organization gradually reduced its programmatic activities in Europe while stepping up work in other regions. This started with activities in Asia (especially Korea). During the 1960s, presence in Latin America came about. As of 1974 work in Africa was added, with a first programme in Ethiopia (Plan International 2022a: history timeline; Dijsselbloem et al. 2014: 124–5). As indicated earlier, the name changes over time also reflect the changes that occurred in the substantive scope of the work done. While initially the organization focused exclusively on supporting children affected by war, the name change in the 1950s was supposed ‘to reflect the goal of bringing lasting change to the lives of children in need, whatever their circumstances’ (Plan International 2022a: history timeline). Currently, the organization presents itself as ‘an independent development and humanitarian organisation that advances children’s rights and equality for girls. We strive for a just world, working
together with children, young people, our supporters and partners’ (Plan International 2022b). In 2022, Plan International was active in more than 75 countries and consisted of 20 member national organizations, more than 50 country offices, four regional hubs and four liaison offices in Geneva, New York, Addis Ababa and Brussels, respectively. The international headquarters, or ‘Global Hub’, is based in Woking in the United Kingdom (Plan International 2022c).
From child sponsorship to a rights-based approach (RBA)
In the early days, individual child sponsorship was Plan International’s single backbone, certainly in terms of organizational fundraising (Dijsselbloem et al. 2014: 113). Another interesting early distinctive feature of the organization was the involvement of celebrities in its work. For instance, in April 1939 Eleanor Roosevelt became a foster parent, and famous American actress Tallulah Bankhead sponsored the first Plan-sponsored child in Greece (Dijsselbloem et al. 2014: 119, 123). This turned out to be an appealing way of drawing attention to and promoting Plan’s work. Gradually this would become a widespread practice for many child-focused and other development organizations, including UNICEF and Save the Children. While obviously there are reputational risks involved as well, for example linked to misconduct by a celebrity ambassador, research has indicated that they can also be a major support for development organizations that need to recover from scandals themselves. For instance, supportive tweets by soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo and singer Camilla Cabello played an important part in the reputation recovery of Save the Children UK after a scandal in 2018 relating to unwanted behaviour by senior management of the organization (Scurlock et al. 2020: 98, 103–4). Over time, in response to both public criticism and new substantive insights, similar to the situation described in this Encyclopedia’s entry on Save the Children, Plan’s approach broadened and became more both community-based and rights-based (Watson and Clarke 2014: 6). However, overall, individual child sponsorship is still quite important a base for Plan today, with 1.4 million sponsored children in 48 countries in 2019 (Plan International and RMIT 2019:
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2).1 At the same time, individual child sponsorship was also stopped in certain countries, most recently including Laos, South Sudan and Pakistan (Plan International and RMIT 2019: 2). The meaning of individual sponsorship changed drastically over the years and, according to the organization itself, nowadays entails the following: All our sponsorship activities and programmes aim to ultimately benefit all the children who live within a sponsored community – whether they each have an individual sponsor or not. In this way, our sponsorship activities and programmes work on both an individual and a community level. The programming spans a variety of areas, such as approaches to health, education, and water and sanitation, with the aim of bringing community-wide benefits. Sponsored children participate in sponsorship activities such as children’s clubs where they can learn, play and discuss community issues; receive visits from Plan International staff to monitor their general well-being; receive small gifts as tokens of appreciation; possibly receive bursaries for education; and directly communicate with their sponsor (Plan International and RMIT 2019: 4).
This allows Plan International, and the people it is working for and with, to reap the benefits from the interaction between individual- and community-level engagement: Thanks to the continuity of sponsorship funding, we can be responsive to community needs over several years in ways that more time-limited, donor-funded projects cannot be. (…) Sponsored children’s individual development ripples out across the community as they become healthier, learn more and help to bring positive change. The tailored interventions enable the community as a whole to develop and, in turn, improve prospects for all children and their families. (Plan International and RMIT 2019: 5)
The long-term nature of this approach, seeking to realize structural development, and the focus on communities rather than ‘only’ on selected sponsored children within communities, fit well with common understandings of what is at the core of human/ child rights-based approaches (see e.g. Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, 2006; Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, 2022; Save the Children 2005, 2007).
Distinctive features of Plan’s RBA practice: community-based, girls and participation
Thus, over time and among other organizations such as UNICEF and Save the Children, Plan became one of the pioneers in elaborating and applying child rights-based policies and practices (Arts 2014: 150). This clearly emerged from certain particular features of the organization’s approach to its work. As explained by van Vijfeijken et al. (2009: 76–7 as cited in Dijsselbloem et al. 2014: 131): Plan’s approach to rights-based development differs from strategies of some other rights-based development organisations. The focus of Plan lies (so far) not on grassroots activism but instead on the practical exercise of human (and child) rights by local communities and their ability to participate in local democratic process.
This was the long-term but direct result of the organization’s shift to a community development approach as of the early 1970s. According to Dijsselbloem et al. (2014: 129): For Plan, deeper engagement with communities brought greater realization that there were systemic factors creating and re-creating the conditions of poverty that required a strategic approach. (…) The challenge for Plan came down to questions of how it could go beyond service provisions and community development, to improving dynamics between the state and marginalized or poor people.
The content of Plan’s approach and the terminology used for it evolved over the years, from ‘community development’ in the 1970s, to ‘integrated community development’ in the 1980s, and ‘child-focused community development’ in the 1990s (Dijsselbloem et al. 2014: 126–8). Since 2003, all of Plan’s programmes are subject to the so-called Child-Centred Community Development (CCCD) approach which is: a rights-based model in which participatory, child-centred community development is complemented with initiatives aimed at duty-bearers at district and national levels. It has meant recognising and identifying webs of exclusion and discrimination that violate human rights and perpetuate cycles of poverty. (Betts 2007: 12)
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In 2017, Plan International articulated that its CCCD approach had evolved further and entailed embracing the Sustainable Development Goals and prioritizing ‘gender equality and the persistent development challenges that girls are facing’ (Plan International 2018: 3). Plan’s work thus explicitly came to prioritize the ‘two intersecting primary impact groups’ of ‘vulnerable and excluded children, and girls in particular’ (ibid.: 4). The organization also shared that it had ‘grown from being child-centred and community-focused to recognising that we must also impact young people over 18 years of age, work at multiple levels and be active across humanitarian and development contexts’ (ibid.: 3). Thus, to support children in their journey to becoming an adult, Plan International decided to extend its mandate and ‘impact young people up to 24 years old’ instead of ending at 18 which is the threshold of the legal definition of childhood that applies in most settings.2 This is a highly interesting insight and change which, again, goes well with the essence of human rights-based approaches. These approaches apply on the basis of the idea that human rights are inherent to being human and must be seen in an integral way. It is commonly known that the prompt ending of the special rights regime for children once they reach the age of 18 causes problems, including protection gaps, in practice. Examples relate to inadequate follow ups to youth care arrangements or the right to education for young people above 18. From a human rights-based perspective, stepping into this vacuum by extending special support to youth above 18 for a few years longer certainly was a sound, and welcome, step. The particular focus on girls is another clear and longstanding distinctive feature of Plan’s work. For example, from 2007 to 2018 Plan ran the global campaign ‘Because I am a Girl’ which sought to ‘transform girls’ lives through education’, including by fund-raising, changing laws, and directly supporting ‘millions of girls to get an education’ (Plan International 2022d). As part of this campaign, since 2007 a series of annual reports was published under the title ‘The State of the World’s Girls’ (Plan International UK 2022). These reports ‘brought together leading thinkers, activists and policy makers to provide a wealth of data and the experiences of marginalised girls from around the Karin Arts
world on the major issues facings them’ (Plan International 2022d). The campaign was a successful fundraiser, helped to convince the United Nations to adopt 11 October as the International Day of the Girl, and involved a lobby to make sure that Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals would include adequate provisions ‘to ensure quality education for all children’ (Plan International 2022d). It also pushed for making cities safer for girls and for changing laws to curb child marriage, and various other important specific themes. In 2018 ‘Because I am a Girl’ came to an end as a global campaign. However, it continued as a national campaign in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, USA and UK Plan (Plan International 2022d). The new global campaign ‘Girls Get Equal’ started in October of the same year and pursued ‘power, freedom and representation for girls and young women’ ̶ meaning that ‘every girl and young woman has power over her own life and can shape the world around her’ ̶ and ‘a world free from discrimination, harassment and violence’ (Plan International 2022e). Child and youth participation is another interesting rights-based characteristic of Plan’s work. With valuable initial inputs from Plan Ecuador, Plan’s South America regional office, Plan Bangladesh and others, the organization developed a comprehensive method for ‘involving children and youth in all phases of the Programme Cycle’ (Dijsselbloem et al. 2014: 129). Being a core element of the CCCD approach, participatory practices were then gradually institutionalized throughout Plan’s work (Zuurmond 2010: 26–8, 38–40). Valuable and rich expertise was built. Random concrete examples include a consultation of children in host and Rohingya refugee communities in Bangladesh, providing them a space to share their experiences, to articulate their needs and wishes and their hopes for the future. The children’s stories and ideas should help to increase the visibility of children in this complex situation and inform a ‘more child-centred humanitarian response’ (World Vision International et al. 2018: 1). A second example is the development of the children’s climate cards. This was a collective project undertaken in the framework of the Children in a Changing Climate Coalition,3 partnering among other organiza-
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tions with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The cards are to be used by children between 7 and 12 years old, and stimulate ‘a series of inspiring and interactive activities to engage children on the climate change agenda (…). The goal is to inspire a call for climate action from children in every country in the world to hold decision makers accountable to children’s voices’ (Plan International 2022f). A third cluster of examples is in the realm of working with Youth Advisory Boards, youth lobbies to influence relevant politicians and/or policymakers, and various other concrete modalities for youth engagement (Arts 2014: 151; van Vijfeijken et al. 2009: 22–4; Zuurmond 2010: 25–8).
Concluding remarks
Since its establishment in 1937, Plan International evolved from a European-based development NGO that focused primarily on children affected by war, to a globally active all-round organization standing up for child development and children’s rights at large. It became one of the pioneers in developing and applying child/human rights-based approaches to development. As a result, in 2017 the organization came to the conclusion that, in the spirit of children’s and human rights, it was necessary to extend its activities to young people up to 24 years of age. Three main distinctive features characterize the organization’s rights-based efforts. First, its rights-based orientation was instigated by its community-based ways of working. Coined as Child-Centred Community Development, this particular outlook became a hallmark of the organization. Second, over the years girls increasingly came to the centre of Plan International’s activities. Third, Plan has a long-lasting and strong record of facilitating and practising child and youth participation. Along these lines Plan International has made important contributions to its professional field. Karin Arts
Notes 1.
For example, in May 2022 in the USA individual child sponsorship was advertised for 35 US$ a month. It entailed the opportunity to send the sponsored child birthday gifts and cards, special holiday presents and to subscribe the child to Plan’s educational kids’ magazine Sunny Days. In addi-
tion (pending any travel restrictions), sponsorship even brought the opportunity to visit the sponsored child, with individual travel assistance provided by Plan. See Plan International USA (2022). 2. This definition is contained in Article 1 of the nearly universally ratified United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and in many implementing national laws. However, this Convention provision contains an exception clause stating that a person is no longer a child if ‘under the law applicable to the child majority is obtained earlier’. 3. Consisting of Plan International, ChildFund Alliance, Save the Children, UNICEF and World Vision.
References
Arts, Karin (2014), ‘Countering Violence Against Children in the Philippines: Positive RBA Practice Examples from Plan’, in Paul Gready and Wouter Vandenhole (eds), Human Rights and Development in the New Millennium: Towards a Theory of Change, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 149–76. Betts, Julia (2007), The Effectiveness of Plan’s Child-Central Community Development: Plan Program Review (2003 to 2006), Woking: Plan Ltd., as referred to in Arts 2014: 151, document on file with author. Dijsselbloem, Han, Fugle, Justin and Gneiting, Uwe (2014), ‘Child Sponsorship and Rights-Based Interventions at Plan: Tensions and Synergies’, in Brad Watson and Matthew Clarke (eds), Child Sponsorship: Exploring Pathways to a Brighter Future, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 113–38. Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (2006), Frequently Asked Questions on a Rights-Based Approach to Development Cooperation, Geneva: United Nations OHCHR. Plan International (2018), Advancing Children’s Rights and Equality for Girls – Our Global Approach to Programme and Influence, Woking: Plan International. Plan International (2022a), ‘Our History’, accessed plan -international .org/ 2 May 2022 at https:// organisation/history/. Plan International (2022b), ‘About Plan International’, accessed 2 May 2022 at https:// plan-international.org/about/. Plan International (2022c), ‘Our Structure’, accessed 2 May 2022 at https:// plan -international.org/organisation/structure/. Plan International (2022d), ‘Because I Am a Girl’, accessed 29 July 2022 at https://plan-international .org/how-we-work/because-i-am-a-girl/. Plan International (2022e), ‘Girls Get Equal’, accessed 29 July 2022 at https:// plan -international.org/girls-get-equal/. Plan International (2022f), ‘Children’s Climate Cards’, accessed 29 July 2022 at https://plan -international.org/publications/childrens -climate-cards/.
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474 Elgar encyclopedia of development Plan International and RMIT [Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology] University (2019), Changing Lives – An Analysis of Plan International’s Child Sponsorship Data, Condensed Report, Woking: Plan International. Plan International UK (2022), ‘Because I am A Girl: Our Latest and Past Reports’, accessed 29 July 2022 at https://plan-uk.org/about-because-i-am -a-girl/because-i-am-a-girl-past-reports. Plan International USA (2022), ‘Sponsor a Child: Sponsoring a Child Changes Lives – Including Your Own’, accessed 29 May 2022 at https:// www.planusa.org/sponsor-a-child/. Save the Children (2005), Child Rights Programming: How to Apply Rights-Based Approaches to Programming – A Handbook for International Save the Children Alliance Members, Lima: Save the Children, 2nd edn. Save the Children (2007), Getting It Right for Children: A Practitioner’s Guide to Child Rights-Based Programming, London: International Save the Children Alliance. Scurlock, Rebecca, Dolsak, Nives and Aseem Prakash (2020), ‘Recovering from Scandals: Twitter Coverage of Oxfam and Save the Children Scandals’, Voluntas 31: 94–110. Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (2022), ‘Human Rights Based Approach Toolbox’, accessed 29 July 2022 at https://www.sida.se/en/for-partners/methods -materials/human-rights-based-approach.
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United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), adopted 20 November 1989 and entered into force 2 September 1990, accessed 1 April 2022 at https:// www .ohchr .org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/ convention-rights-child. Van Vijfeijken, Tosca Bruno, Gneiting, Uwe, Schmitz, Hans Peter, and Valle, Otto (2009), Rights-based Approach to Development: Learning from Plan Guatemala, Syracuse: Transnational NGO Initiative – Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs of Syracuse University. Watson, Brad and Clarke, Matthew (2014), ‘Introduction’, in Brad Watson and Matthew Clarke (eds), Child Sponsorship: Exploring Pathways to a Brighter Future, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–17. World Vision International, Save the Children and Plan International (2018), Childhood Interrupted: Children’s Voices from the Rohingya Refugee Crisis, London/Woking/ Uxbridge: Save the Children/Plan International/ World Vision International. Zuurmond, Irko (ed.) (2010), Promoting Child Rights to End Child Poverty: Achieving Lasting Change through Child-Centred Community Development, Woking: Plan International.
Pollution Pollution and development objectives on poverty, gender, health, and so on, strongly interact. Definitions of pollution coalesce around the concept that pollution is the introduction by human activity of materials (and heat, noise, etc.) to the environment which may cause harm to health and ecosystems (European Union, 2010). Pollution encompasses a wide range of sources and media – including air pollution, water pollution, chemicals, solid waste – all of which have particular impacts and, therefore, particular relationships with development objectives, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which specifically address pollution, as it is a major threat to the achievement of development targets around the world. Pollution is symptomatic of wasteful lifestyles. It disproportionately impacts poorer communities in both developing and developed countries. Poor communities may be located close to pollution sources, they may have poor or non-existent pollution management practices, and some social groups (e.g. certain workers, women, the young) may be at particular risk. Poverty exposes people to pollution. The poor may be forced to live in areas with inadequate sanitation and exposed to high levels of pollution (industrial and domestic). This is true for countries at all levels of development and applies to all forms of pollution. The impacts of pollution have major costs. Diseases from pollution reduce the gross domestic product (GDP) of middle-income countries by up to 2 per cent per year and can account for 1.7 per cent of health spending in higher-income countries and 7 per cent of spending in middle-income countries (Landrigan et al., 2018). As a result, it is estimated globally that welfare losses due to pollution account for 6.2 per cent of global economic output. Poverty can make health outcomes worse as it forces people to live or work in places which cause illness (from air, water pollution, waste), such as from factories, in poor housing with polluting cooking and heating sources, and so on (World Bank, 2016). Air pollution is a problem in many urban areas and has been found to adversely affect poorer communities in lower-income countries (e.g. in Accra, Ghana) (Zhou et al.,
2011). The poor may live close to industrial pollution sources and major road systems. Even where the total quantities of pollution are not high, the fact that emissions are in the immediate vicinity of people’s dwellings means that exposure is maximized. Furthermore, poorer communities may generate their own forms of toxic air pollution, such as from burning waste for heating. The burning of biomass in lower-income countries is the source of most particulate, sulphur, and nitrogen pollution exposure for many of these people. In developed countries, air pollution problems may disproportionately affect poorer communities (e.g. UK, Mitchell et al., 2015) or poorer areas with high concentration of Indigenous populations (e.g. Australia, Chakraborty & Green, 2014). This, therefore, enhances the disparities already evident in economic development between social and racial groups. Poor infrastructure can exacerbate air pollution in developing countries. For example, in many Indian cities the threat of power cuts means that many businesses and residential areas retain diesel generators which result in serious pollution incidents when operating. Development objectives concerned with gender are impacted by air pollution. Indoor air pollution is a serious problem with the combustion of wood and other biomass, but it is women and children who are more exposed to this source (as they tend to stay at home). For water pollution, the link with development concerns is exemplified by SDG6, focused on improving water quality for people, whether on the provision of clean water for drinking or treatment of wastewater from domestic and industrial sources. Poorer communities within middle- and low-income countries may be forced to use water (for drinking, washing, swimming) that is contaminated with human and animal waste and/ or with industrial chemicals. It is estimated globally that 2.5 billion people do not have access to a basic toilet and 748 million people do not have clean drinking water (WSSCC, 2015). These problems also have significant consequences for women and girls, affecting gender development objectives. Lack of available hygiene facilities adversely exacerbates problems with menstrual hygiene, with negative impacts on school attendance by girls, who are also often responsible for fetching water (Sommer et al., 2016). Poor water quality, therefore, affects educational
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outcomes. Pesticides for agricultural use affect many people, but there are particular risks for women because of their hormonally sensitive tissues and higher body fat levels, where pesticides can accumulate (Arrebola et al., 2015). The economic losses due to water pollution in developing countries have been estimated to be US$260 billion per year (WHO, 2004). A challenge in developing countries with significant levels of population growth is that investments in water treatment and pollution control can be overtaken by the population increases, particularly if these are poor, unplanned urban developments (Vermeulen et al., 2015). Further, it is important also to recognize the impact of water pollution on rural communities. Globally, 65 per cent of irrigated croplands (with 1.37 billion people), are in catchments subject to discharge of wastewater, but many are subject to poor (or no) water treatment, affecting 885 million people (Thebo et al., 2017). There is a strong link between development objectives and pollution from solid waste, which often accumulates close to housing where waste collection services may be limited in many low-income countries (Asante et al., 2011; Liu et al., 2011; Margai & Barry, 2011; Sepúlveda et al., 2010). Poverty in low- and middle-income countries means that many (often women and children) resort to seeking materials from highly contaminated areas. ‘Waste pickers’ are at great risk from exposure to heavy metals, landfill gases and other chemical contaminants, as well as disease from rotting organic matter. Recycling of materials is an important economic function, with benefits to poor households, but this could be done more effectively (and safely) with better waste management. Further, some communities are subject to dumping of illegal waste from developed countries, typically electrical waste, contaminated with toxic substances creating health impacts (but which also include valuable materials, which drives the local demand for this waste). The rapid increase in the production of electrical goods in developed countries represents an increased future threat of this type of waste in developed countries unless control of this waste in developed countries is improved. The 17 SDGs contain targets to tackle a wide range of development and environmental issues, including the link between Andrew Farmer
pollution and development. However, delivering some of the SDGs could pose a risk to addressing pollution and its impacts on poverty if policies are not adequately thought through. Addressing development objectives requires adopting policies to address many different forms of pollution. Similarly, addressing pollution means adopting policies to tackle poverty, which often contributes to the production of pollution. In each case it is important to identify the critical relationships between development and pollution (including individual pollutants, sources and drivers) to better inform policy development. Policies for economic development, planning, agriculture, transport, and the environment need to examine how they interact and, in particular, the implications for development, pollution management and wider environmental justice. Andrew Farmer
References
Arrebola, J.P., Belhassen, H., Artacho-Cordón, F., Ghali, R., Ghorbel, H., & Boussen, H. (2015). Risk of female breast cancer and serum concentrations of organochlorine pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls: a case–control study in Tunisia. Science of the Total Environment, 520, 106–13. Asante, K., Adu-Kumi, S. Nakahiro, K., Takahashi, S. Isobe, T., Sudaryanto, A., Devanathan, G., Clarke, E., Ansa-Asare, O., Dapaah-Siakwan, S., & Tanabe, S. (2011). Human exposure to PCBs, PBDEs and HBCDs in Ghana: temporal variation, sources of exposure and estimation of daily intakes by infants. Environment International, 37, 921–8. Chakraborty, J., & Green, D. (2014). Australia’s first national level quantitative environmental justice assessment of industrial air pollution. Environmental Research Letters, 9(4), 1–10. European Union (2010). Directive 2010/75/EU on industrial emissions (integrated pollution prevention and control), 24 November. http:// eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2010/75/oj. Landrigan, P.J., Fuller, F., Acosta, N.J.R. et al. (2018). The Lancet Commission on pollution and health, 391(10119), 462–512. https:// doi .org/10.1016/S0140–6736(17)32345–0. Liu, J., Xu, X., Wu, K. et al. (2011). Association between lead exposure from electronic waste recycling and child temperament alterations. Neurotoxicology, 32, 458–64. Margai, F.M., & Barry, F.B. (2011). Global geographies of environmental injustice and health: a case study of illegal hazardous waste dumping in Côte d’Ivoire. Geospatial Analysis of Environmental Health, 4, 257–81.
Pollution 477 Mitchell, G., Norman, P., & Mullin, K. (2015). Who benefits from environmental policy? An environmental justice analysis of air quality change in Britain, 2001–2011. Environmental Research Letters, 10. https://doi.org/10.1088/ 1748-9326/10/10/105009. Sepúlveda, A., Schluep, M., Renaud, F.G., Streicher, M., Kuehr, R., Hagelüken, C., & Gerecke, A.C. (2010). A review of the environmental fate and effects of hazardous substances released from electrical and electronic equipment during recycling: examples from China and India. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 30, 28–41. Sommer, M., Caruso, B.A., Sahin, M. et al. (2016). A time for global action: addressing girls’ menstrual hygiene management needs in schools. PLoS Medicine, 13, e1001962. Thebo, A.L., Drechsel, P., Lambin, E.F., & Nelson, K.L. (2017). A global, spatially-explicit assessment of irrigated croplands influenced by urban wastewater flows. Environmental Research Letters, 12. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ aa75d1. Vermeulen, L.C., Kraker, J. de., Hofstra, N., Kroeze, C., & Medema, G. (2015). Modelling the impact of sanitation, population growth and urbanisation on human emissions of
Cryptosporidium to surface waters – a case study for Bangladesh and India. Environmental Research Letters, 11. https://doi.org/10.1088/ 1748-9326/10/9/094017. WHO (2004). Evaluation of the costs and benefits of water and sanitation improvements at the global level. https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/ 10665/68568. World Bank (2016). The cost of air pollution: strengthening the economic case for action. 8 September. http://documents.worldbank.org/ curated/en/781521473177013155/The-cost-of -airpollution-strengthening-the-economic-case -for-action. WSSCC (2015). Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council. Post-2015 WAST targets and indicators. http://wsscc.org/2015/ 02/20/post-2015-washtargets-indicators -questions-answers/. Zhou, Z., Dionisio, K.L., Arku, R.E., Quaye, A., Hughes, A.F., Vallarino, J., Spengler, J.D., Hill, A., Agyei-Mensah, S., & Ezzati, M. (2011). Household and community poverty, biomass use, and air pollution in Accra, Ghana. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108, pp. 11028–33.
Andrew Farmer
Population and development As the term suggests, the field of ‘population and development’ addresses reciprocal relationships between aspects of both ‘population’ and ‘development’. If there is a central focus then it has been on the relationship between population growth and economic development. Beyond this concern, however, ‘population’ and ‘development’ are both complex categories. Therefore, interactions between other aspects of them are also of interest. The first category includes, in particular, the causes of population change (i.e. fertility, mortality, and migration), age-structural change, urbanization, and urban growth. The second category includes, for example, aspects of both ‘human’ and ‘sustainable’ development. Since development occurs through time, much work in the field has an historical dimension. Many books and periodicals contain relevant research. But the main field journal is Population and Development Review, published by the Population Council in New York. In discussing the history and growth of the field it is helpful to refer to the demographic transition – which has had a huge conditioning influence. To varying degrees, the demographic transition has involved all human societies moving from conditions of relatively high mortality, high fertility, and young age structures to conditions of relatively low mortality, low fertility, and much older age structures. In stylized form, the transition involves a move from one state of rough equilibrium – i.e. high death and birth rates, and negligible population growth – to another – i.e. low death and birth rates, and negligible population growth. But because the death rate usually falls well before the birth rate, passing through the transition involves a long period of population growth – essentially reflecting demographic destabilization. Throughout history, scholars have seen an association between large settled populations on the one hand, and the emergence of cities, states, and empires on the other. But the origins of the field of population and development are probably best located in Europe in the decades around 1800 – when the phenomena of demographic transition and ‘modern economic growth’ both began to
occur. A seminal work was the second edition of An Essay on the Principle of Population by T.R. Malthus, published in 1803. Malthus argued that, within a defined territory, sustained population growth would eventually depress living standards and lead to responses that would reduce the birth rate and possibly exert upward pressure on the death rate. Against this background, population growth in European countries caused by mortality declines, which often began in the decades around 1800, was eventually followed by the widespread adoption of birth control measures (frequently from around the 1870s). Then, in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, as mortality gradually began to decline from various times in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the case for birth control was increasingly discussed in relation to populations in these regions. The argument was that the adoption of birth control would be beneficial at the aggregate level (e.g. in terms of the food supply) and for individuals (e.g. in terms of the health and welfare of women and children). In the period after the Second World War, mortality fell very substantially in almost every ‘developing’ country – and this caused unprecedentedly rapid rates of population growth. Indeed, many countries experienced annual population growth rates of 2–3 per cent for several decades. This created anxiety about the implications of this population expansion for economic growth. A landmark study was Population Growth and Economic Development in Low-income Countries by Ansley Coale and Edgar Hoover, published in 1958. Using data for India, Coale and Hoover contrasted two illustrative demographic-economic projections. In the first, fertility remained high into the future; in the second, a significant decline in fertility was assumed. After several decades, the overall size of the economy was similar in both projections. But the level of per capita income was appreciably greater in the second (though the population’s size was smaller). The higher level of income resulted from the fact that fertility decline caused a change in population age structure – such that the ratio of working-age adults to children rose substantially. This meant that people in the most economically productive age groups became an appreciably higher fraction of the total population – so boosting economic growth. In addition, because in proportional terms
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there were fewer children, more resources could be directed towards economic investment (e.g. in infrastructure). During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s concern about the possible negative economic consequences of rapid population growth led some countries – especially in Asia – to develop family planning programmes to promote birth control, reduce birth rates, and decelerate population growth. As a result, the effectiveness of these programmes in reducing fertility became an area of research. In many countries household demographic surveys were also undertaken – for example, as part of the World Fertility Survey (1974–87) and the Demographic and Health Surveys Program (1984 to present). Relatedly, there was considerable research on the determinants of infant and child mortality, and fertility. In the 1970s this led to the conclusion that, especially for girls and young women, improvements in education could play a major role in helping to reduce early age mortality and fertility. That said, some scholars argued that fertility was high in poor countries because parents needed to have children to work for the household – the so-called ‘child labour’ hypothesis. This implied that substantial economic change would be required before couples would begin to practise birth control. Yet another strand of research, undertaken chiefly by economists, began to question the idea that rapid population growth had negative economic consequences. This work led to a position that was often essentially agnostic on the issue. In this context, international cross-sectional data for the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s showed no clear sign of a negative relationship between the rate of population growth and the rate of per capita income growth. Harking back to mercantilist writers of the seventeenth century, an influential voice here was that of Julian Simon, who in his 1981 book, The Ultimate Resource, argued that population growth was actually a driver of prosperity. Population and development is often a controversial field. And it is also one that can be affected by politics and ideology. The three major inter-governmental population conferences of the post-war era, held under the auspices of the United Nations, illustrate these points. At the World Population Conference in Bucharest in 1974 the United States and other Western countries argued strongly in favour of family planning pro-
grammes – chiefly on the basis that reducing population growth would assist economic growth. However, led by India and China, and supported by the former Soviet Union, this position was opposed by many poor countries who claimed, to use a phrase of the time, that ‘development is the best contraceptive’. These countries argued that economic growth would bring about fertility decline, and they called for general development assistance rather than funding for family planning activities. Ten years later, at the International Conference on Population in Mexico City in 1984, the position of both sides to the argument had changed. Thus, using forceful methods, China had drastically cut its fertility in the 1970s. And India too had adopted a strong approach to reducing fertility during the Emergency period of 1975–77. In Mexico City, and influenced by the work of Julian Simon, the United States now argued that – rather than being negative – population growth was, by itself, ‘neutral’ with respect to economic development. The new US position asserted that the introduction of free markets to many countries would facilitate economic growth and so bring about fertility decline. The third UN meeting was the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in 1994. By this time, HIV/AIDS had emerged as a major new concern, especially in relation to sub-Saharan Africa. In general, there was less controversy at the Cairo conference. In part, this was because the aggregate issue of whether population growth impeded economic growth was largely avoided. Instead, and influenced by international women’s organizations, the ICPD saw a distinct shift in emphasis towards reforming family planning programmes so that they better served the reproductive healthcare needs of women. Just how the ‘quality of care’ of programmes could be improved itself became a significant area of investigation. It is telling that the ICPD was the last major United Nations population conference. By 1994 it was clear that fertility, and therefore birth rates, had fallen substantially in many countries in Asia and Latin America. Moreover, and despite substantial population growth, many of these countries had been able to raise average living standards – sometimes considerably. Also, other than in sub-Saharan Africa – where fertility remained high and the HIV/AIDS situation manifestly Tim Dyson
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required attention – population growth rates were falling in many countries. Therefore, observers were frequently of the opinion that the ‘population problem’ had been largely overcome. Furthermore, the ICPD had diluted the previous central aim of family planning programmes – i.e. that of reducing the birth rate. Perhaps it was not surprising, then, that from the mid-1990s onwards there was a significant fall in international funding for family planning activities (Bongaarts and Sinding 2009). Yet it was from the mid-1990s that a reassessment of the relationship between population growth and economic growth began. The idea that population growth was neutral, let alone positive, with respect to economic growth was increasingly questioned. Two developments informed the reassessment. The first was that, from the 1980s onwards, international cross-sectional data showed a clear negative relationship between the rate of population growth and the rate of per capita income growth. Thus, as early as 2001, an influential overview of research by Birdsall and Sinding concluded that ‘in contrast to assessments over the last several decades, rapid population growth … [has] … exercised a quantitatively important negative impact on the pace of aggregate economic growth in developing countries’ (2001: 6). The second development arose from the observation that, notably in East and South East Asia, rapid fertility declines had often been followed by so-called ‘economic miracles’. This led to a reconsideration of the case regarding the economic benefits of fertility decline, and consequent age-structural change, that had previously been proposed by Coale and Hoover. The case was amended and developed, however. In particular, it was noted that fertility decline made it easier for countries to improve the quality of education that children received – so raising the level of ‘human capital’ – and that it also facilitated the movement of women from household work to employment in the formal labour force (Bloom and Williamson 1998). The overall potential for fertility decline and age-structural change to benefit a country’s economic performance became known as the ‘demographic dividend’. Research suggested that, given the right policies, the dividend could be substantial.
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In the 1950s and 1960s the prospects for declines in mortality and fertility in developing countries were understood largely in economic terms. After all, it was in wealthier countries that life expectation was generally high and fertility was low. So, it was widely presumed that incomes would have to rise considerably in poor countries for there to be major rises in life expectation and falls in fertility. In the 1970s, however, research by Samuel Preston (1975) showed that most of the mortality decline that had occurred in the world during the twentieth century was due to factors other than rises in per capita income. Indeed, by the 1980s it was clear that some countries with low incomes had nevertheless been able to achieve big gains in life expectation. Political commitment to improve health was invariably one part of the explanation. But research also underscored the importance of progress in relation to factors like the provision of education, water and sanitary facilities, and the use of certain health technologies – notably vaccinations and insecticidal sprays. These and other factors enabled the achievement of ‘good health at low cost’. A similar change occurred with respect to the understanding of fertility decline. In particular, from the 1980s onwards an increasing number of poor countries experienced fertility declines, and therefore falling birth rates. Research suggested that family planning programmes could indeed assist the process of decline. And analysis of cross-sectional survey data showed that wealthier, better educated couples, especially those in urban areas, usually had appreciably lower fertility. Nevertheless, such fertility differentials turned out to be mainly the result of differences in timing with respect to the adoption of birth control. Eventually, the process of fertility decline almost always involved the spread of birth control use, and low fertility, to all sections of society – largely irrespective of economic, educational, cultural, or other factors. Relatedly, within the field there arose considerable agreement that, ultimately, fertility decline is a process of adjustment to the fact of prior (and concurrent) mortality decline. In short, though the relationship is conditioned by many factors, mortality decline is the underlying cause of fertility decline (Wilson and Airey 1999; Casterline 2003).
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An analogous change in understanding occurred with respect to the key dimension of development that is urbanization (i.e. the change in population composition from mostly rural to mostly urban). In the 1950s and 1960s urbanization was widely seen as reflecting economic growth in urban areas which, in turn, stimulated rural to urban migration. Against this background, historical research showed that, before the demographic transition, in most societies the very existence of any towns and cities depended on a continual flow of people moving – for economic and non-economic reasons – from rural to urban areas. Urban areas were unusually unhealthy places where death rates exceeded birth rates (i.e. there was negative natural increase). This basic fact set a – usually very low – limit on the level of urbanization that could prevail in any population. Indeed, without out-migration from rural areas urban centres would eventually have withered away. The process of sustained urbanization, from a low to a high level, occurred first in Europe. It only became possible because of the occurrence of major mortality decline in the urban areas of Europe, usually from various times in the second half of the nineteenth century. In turn, this created positive urban natural increase which, combined with continuing rural to urban migration, led to faster growth of the urban than the rural population (i.e. urbanization) (De Vries 1990). With the partial exception of Latin America, in most of Asia and Africa it was not until after the Second World War that there were major falls in urban mortality – and a similar change in population composition began to occur. Research suggests that, during the post-war era, the world’s ‘developing’ regions have urbanized at a significantly faster rate than was the case in Europe. And because most countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa have experienced much higher rates of population growth than previously applied in Europe, they have also experienced much higher rates of urban growth (with its attendant problems). Furthermore, urban natural increase, rather than rural to urban migration, has often been the principal cause of urban growth. In the period since the Second World War the highest rates of urban growth, by far, have been experienced in sub-Saharan Africa – the region with the poorest economic growth. Indeed, urbanization and urban growth are
processes that almost everywhere seem to have occurred largely irrespective of economic performance (Dyson 2011). Coming to very recent decades, certain areas in the field have received heightened attention. Some examples follow. The field has always been concerned with political forces and considerations – among other things, due to the importance of government policies and programmes. Nevertheless, and influenced by events, there has been much recent work on the issue of whether young and fast-growing populations contribute to the existence of unstable socio-political conditions. Conversely, there has been work on whether progress through the demographic transition promotes the process of democratization. The interaction of demographic and environmental factors is a major rising area. For the world as a whole, the annual population growth rate has fallen steadily from around 1970. But, on an increasing base, the period 1970–2020 still saw the addition of an extra billion people to the world’s population every 12–13 years – with only slightly smaller increments projected for 2020–50. The environmental implications of this population growth vary – for example, between rich and poor countries, and between different forms of damage (e.g. biodiversity loss, carbon emissions). Nevertheless, population size is almost always relevant in explaining environmental harms. Migration is yet another area of raised attention. Of course, the field has always been concerned with the causes and consequences of migration, in its many forms. But international migration, in particular, has received more attention as the number of migrants involved has grown. Here, the fact that many receiving countries now have low death and birth rates, and thus are experiencing negligible population growth of their own, means that the effects of migration on the composition and size of receiving populations is heightened. Lastly, there has been mounting concern about the prospects for fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa. Fertility in this region remains unusually high and shows only a slow rate of decline. Consequently, the region will experience very considerable population growth in the future – something that will likely have considerable social, economic, environmental, and other implications. There has, therefore, been growing interest in sub-Saharan Tim Dyson
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Africa’s possible ‘exceptionalism’ with respect to fertility behaviour. In conclusion, as we enter the 2020s, all ‘developed’ countries have effectively passed through the demographic transition. They have low levels of mortality and fertility. Indeed, fertility levels are below – often far below – the ‘replacement’ level of about two births per woman. Accordingly, these countries have old populations which, nevertheless, are getting older still. Many of them face the prospect of population decline. Moreover, they are increasingly being joined in these circumstances by many former ‘developing’ countries in Latin America and Asia – where fertility declines which started decades ago have continued to reach below-replacement levels. Mortality decline and fertility decline have transformed the nature of human societies everywhere – not least, with respect to family institutions and the position of women in society. Nevertheless, future research in the field of population and development will likely be increasingly concerned with how different countries grapple with unprecedented – and increasingly shared – post-transitional demographic circumstances. Tim Dyson
References and selected further reading
Birdsall, N. and S. Sinding (2001), ‘How and why population matters: new findings, new issues’, in N. Birdsall, A.C. Kelley and S. Sinding (eds), Population Matters: Demographic Change, Economic Growth, and Poverty in the Developing World, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bloom, D. and J.G. Williamson (1998), ‘Demographic transitions and economic miracles in emerging Asia’, World Bank Economic Review, 12(3), 419–45. Bongaarts, J. and S.W. Sinding (2009), ‘A response to critics of family planning programs’, International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 35(1), 39–44.
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Casterline, J.B. (2003), ‘Demographic transition’, in P. Demeny and G. McNicoll (eds), Encyclopedia of Population, New York: Macmillan Reference. Coale, A.J. and E.M. Hoover (1958), Population Growth and Economic Development in Low-Income Countries, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Crook, N. (1997), Principles of Population and Development, Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Vries, J. (1990), ‘Problems in the measurement, description, and analysis of historical urbanization’, in A. van der Woude, A. Hayami and J. de Vries (eds), Urbanization in History, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dyson, T. (2010), Population and Development: The Demographic Transition, London: Zed Books. Dyson, T. (2011), ‘The role of the demographic transition in the process of urbanization’, Population and Development Review, 37(Supp.), 34–54. McNicoll, G. (1984), ‘Consequences of rapid population growth: overview and assessment’, Population and Development Review, 10(2), 177–240. McNicoll, G., J. Bongaarts and E.P. Churchill (eds) (2012), Population and Public Policy: Essays in Honor of Paul Demeny, Population and Development Review, 38(Supp.). Malthus, T.R. (1803), An Essay on the Principle of Population; A New Edition, Very Much Enlarged, London: Printed for J. Johnson, in St. Paul’s Church-yard. Population and Development Review (1975–), New York: Population Council. Preston, S.H. (1975), ‘The changing relationship between mortality and the level of economic development’, Population Studies, 29(2), 231–48. Simon, J.L. (1981), The Ultimate Resource, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. United Nations (2018), World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision, New York: United Nations. United Nations (2019), World Population Prospects: The 2019 Revision, New York: United Nations. Wilson, C. and P. Airey (1999), ‘How can a homeostatic perspective enhance demographic transition theory?’, Population Studies, 53(2), 117–28.
Postcapitalism Introduction
Development and capitalism are deeply intertwined. Mainstream development thinking is founded on the idea that linear models of progress describe how societies develop, and that classifications of nations into ‘developed’, ‘developing’ and ‘under-developed’ are simply reflections of empirical reality. Capitalist core regions, industries and organizations are similarly treated as the proverbial gold standard for whatever ’development’ stands for: the pathway towards prosperity has been seen to rest with a capitalist articulation of productivity and efficiency, with a focus on mobilizing resources and attaining economic growth by adhering strictly to market forces. The capitalist model has often been assumed to be universal, ubiquitous and inevitable. ‘Postcapitalism’ signals an opportunity to reconsider the taken-for-granted dominance of capitalism and its linear indicators of development. Although postcapitalism has been hailed as a transformative convergence of thinkers and movements of alternatives to capitalism (see Chatterton & Pusey 2020), it is important to distinguish between two senses of the term. Firstly, in the use of some thinkers (e.g. Mason 2015), the ‘post’ in postcapitalism has a primarily temporal meaning: it denotes a global system, as extensive as capitalism is, that is coming to replace older forms of capitalist organization, either gradually or suddenly. As the social and environmental harms and inequities of capitalism become more acute, it is argued that a new system is coming into being. In this view, emergent postcapitalism is being driven by the knowledge economy and increasingly networked and technologically connected capitalist practices. Postcapitalism in this sense proposes a nascent ‘ism’ that is set to replace ‘capitalism’ with a more equitable and inclusive, technologically driven economic system. Secondly, there is a contrasting use of ‘postcapitalist politics’ that signals not another future system but a heterogeneous reality that is already present in the here-and-now, and in fact has been with us all along. This kind of ’post’ demands not
another ‘ism’, instead questioning the starting point of many postcapitalist visions: the idea that there is a singular, primordial and globally extensive capitalism. It invites us to examine how our economies and livelihoods have always already been built on a range of more-than-capitalist practices – and what kind of rethinking of ‘development’ such a turn might yield. This second body of postcapitalist scholarship centres on diverse economies. It draws on the work of feminist economic theorist J.K. Gibson-Graham (1996, 2006; Gibson-Graham and Dombroski 2020), alongside postcolonial and poststructural thought and the place-based knowledges of communities around the world. It offers recognition that there are many diverse economic practices present in the world, that are dismissed and rendered invisible by what Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2016) calls ‘epistemicide’, the denial of ways of knowing being and doing that do not conform with ‘capitalism’ and ‘development’. This does not deny that capitalist practices, relations and organizations exist, but rather it means that they are seen to reside in a much wider and more heterogeneous economic landscape and are themselves criss-crossed and compromised by more-than-capitalist economies. What is crucial to this vision of postcapitalist politics is to activate a language of economy that helps keep that multiplicity and diversity visible, and that resists explanations that smother rather than amplify our everyday economic agency. The idea of postcapitalist politics calls for us to bring diverse economies to the fore – why valorize capitalist practices that subjugate people to unsatisfying or dangerous jobs; render financial systems prone to collapse due to the strain of rising debt levels or loss of ‘investor confidence’; and precipitate systems of resource extraction and usage that threaten global environmental catastrophe? Individuals and groups are already enacting economies that are more-than and other-than capitalist. This means that there are other, and often better, starting points for collective action towards liveable futures than is provided by capitalist relations of economy. A postcapitalist politics is about recognizing these and finding ways to amplify them.
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Postcapitalism/capitalocentrism
The main difference between the two types of postcapitalist visions introduced above is the degree to which they are embedded within, or critical of, a capitalocentric view of economy. Capitalocentrism means a tip-of-the-iceberg approach to economy (Figure 1), where most livelihood practices are omitted from view and a scarce set of capitalist processes dominate discourses concerning ‘the economy’ (Gibson-Graham 1996). Capitalist enterprises, wage labour, private investments, monetary exchange and private property summon all the attention, while a vastly more expansive and heterogeneous set of livelihood practices – including most of what belongs to the ‘informal economy’ and the non-cash-based economy – gets omitted from view. Thus, diverse practices such as non-monetary exchange, care labour, commoning, subsistence farming and fishing, solidarity economies, reciprocal labour exchange, gift economies, community-managed forests, foraging as well as harmful practices such as slave and forced labour or stealing, along with all the human to more-than-human relationships upon which economic activity is based, get sidelined from what constitutes the core of ‘the economy’ and ‘development’. It is safe to say that international development is founded upon capitalocentric discourse. What constitutes actual livelihoods – whatever we may think of their moral value or desirability – is omitted from view in preference of an ideal, Eurocentric and anthropocentrically focused set of economic forms and processes. Capitalocentric perspectives appear in development in language around ‘economic heartlands’, or ‘developed economies’ that privilege particular capital-intensive, hi-tech and consumer-driven sites of economic activity. These locations of economic activity are often assumed to provide the model for the future of ‘developing economies’. What this fails to recognize are the many ways in which people and their more-than-human communities thrive, whether, for example, through Indigenous economic practices that have existed for thousands of years, or newly emerging forms of social entrepreneurship and collective organization. The capitalocentric perspective sidelines long-standing global practices of mutual aid and labour
sharing (Hossein 2019), creating and caring for commons (Waliuzzaman 2020), and Indigenous economic practices that value collective care and the obligations people owe to our more-than-human earth kin (Bargh 2020; Yates 2021). When monetary market exchange or private ownership of land are treated as the necessary preconditions of economic development, a narrow view of actually existing economic relations gets to drive ‘development’ and set the parameters for who it is for and who has a say in it. Thus, economic representations have performative effects on the real world (see Gibson-Graham 2006). Capitalocentric representations, including many systemic accounts of postcapitalism, have particular homogenizing and exclusionary performative effects. They tell stories about a capitalist ‘global economy’, its machinic features and its teleological stages of development, all the while missing the biases that are inherent in such grand visions. This has consequences. By disavowing actually existing diverse livelihoods, capitalocentrism portrays a ‘monoeconomy’ whose control rooms – the privileged spaces of board rooms and parliamentary committees – are reserved for a selected few. This makes it harder to recognize the transformative agency and potential of those who are excluded from such privileged sites of power. When the term ‘postcapitalism’ is used to label a nascent future after capitalism, in the first sense outlined in the Introduction, it often repeats and performs capitalocentric biases. The emphasis continues to be placed on a narrow set of perspectives, with the assumption that they are universally relevant and applicable (see Alhojärvi 2021). Most of the currently popular literature on postcapitalism is produced in the minority world and is often heavily invested in the promises of information technologies (Mason 2015) and/or a state-centric framework of politics (Srnicek & Williams 2015). In its most blunt Anglo-Eurocentric forms, the literature reinforces the idea that ‘the forces that are creating post-capitalist society and post-capitalist polity originate in the developed world’ (Drucker 1993, 13). In contrast, the postcapitalist politics of diverse economies aims to decentre such Anglo-Eurocentric assumptions.
T. Alhojärvi, I. Lyne, P. Placino, K. McKinnon and the Community Economies Collective
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Source: Community Economies Collective, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Figure 1
The diverse economies iceberg
Postcapitalism vs. postcapitalist politics
The scholar-activists working within the broad field of diverse and community economies put forth a very different version of postcapitalist politics (Gibson-Graham 2006). Instead of proposing another ‘ism’ to surpass capitalism, practitioners of community econ-
omies suggest re-reading our very starting point anew, in view of the heterogeneity that gets sidelined from capitalocentrism. It is not about how we need alternatives to capitalism, but rather that we have never been solely (or primarily) capitalist in the first place. This argument is based on scholarship that reads economies for heterogeneity. One empirical
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strategy in this regard entails mapping out, in a place-based context, ● different means of transaction including free market capitalism, alternative market transactions (fair trade, informal trade and barter) and non-market transactions (including household distribution, gifts, state transfers, hunter-gathering and poaching or theft); ● different kinds of labour including waged labour, alternatively paid (including work in a cooperative, reciprocal labour systems and subsistence work), and unpaid labour (including housework, care for others and volunteer work); and, ● different kinds of enterprise including capitalist, alternative capitalist (including social enterprise, or green companies) or non-capitalist (for instance, communal enterprises). This is a strategy to document and develop the language of diverse economies that uncovers the vast range of underwater economic practices that are otherwise hidden by an iceberg model of development. Drawing on diverse actually existing more-than-capitalist practices globally, this body of literature enacts a postcapitalist politics by employing a range of strategies for thinking through the ethical implications of different practices. Community economies literature asks: what are the diverse means by which human communities seek to survive and thrive? Who and what are involved in those diverse economics practices? Who suffers and who benefits? And, perhaps most importantly, which economic practices enable us to survive well along with our more-than-human planetary companions? Learning how to survive well together thus become a practice of postcapitalist politics, and a goal that can direct development (Gibson-Graham, Cameron & Healy 2013). Such learning requires re-centring marginalized economic practices, such as Indigenous economies which give prominence to the interdependence of human communities and communities of Earth-kin (Waitoa & Dombroski 2020); or reproductive economies, which foreground the foundational importance of care work in what is traditionally considered ‘women’s work’ in the home and garden.
Postcapitalist practices
Postcapitalist practice is about re-centring marginalized economic practices and demonstrating their ongoing contribution, and future potential to be the foundation for communities to survive well together. One of the ways in which scholars contribute to this is by pursuing Action Research projects that engage participants in identifying and experimenting with more-than-capitalist economic practices, collaborating on building future economies that will enable communities to survive well (thrive) together. One approach begins with strengths-based community engagements, using tools of Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD). ABCD begins with mapping out a community’s existing assets, whether ‘tangible (such as land and physical buildings) or intangible (such as people’s knowledge, interests and skills)’ (Mathie, Cameron & Gibson 2017, 54), underscoring that people and places possess a plurality of assets and strengths that help nurture lives and contribute to individual and collective well-being. Among these local wealth and capacities are Indigenous and women’s knowledge, long-standing adaptive strategies to environmental hazards, mutual support systems, benefits sharing practices, community-based conflict resolution, and ecologically sensitive resource cultivation and management practices. Recognizing the strengths and expertise that people already hold displaces the teleological assumptions of development discourses that seek to describe linear models of progress or place capitalism as inevitable. In one action research in the Philippines, for example, the Community Economies Collective and Gibson (2009) explored the possibilities of building local enterprises based on the existing capabilities of residents and local resources in place, and whether businesses developed from them can directly improve the well-being of people and the environment. Among the featured social enterprises is the Laca ginger enterprise that was organized by women producing powdered tea from ginger which is abundant in the rural areas of Jagna, Bohol. The women sell their products to stores in the municipality and maintain a suki system (vendor– customer relation) based on trust and loyalty. The women have set aside 10 per cent of the business income for their credit system which
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members can borrow with easy repayment and without interest as a way of distributing surplus that enriches social health. Members practice hungos or reciprocal labour which can be performed by sending another family member to fulfil work commitments in place of a worker who has fallen ill that day and routinely bring in food contributions for the shared lunch that help to build solidarity in the cooperative. They also ensure that they grow the ginger sustainably so that the quality of their tea and the viability of their enterprise will not be compromised in the long run. A capitalocentric account of these enterprises focuses on their supposed inferiority due to being local, small-scale and low-capital-intensive enterprises. In contrast, the Community Economies Collective highlights the performative effect of seeing these economic subjects and the places they are from as full of already existing potentials that can be further strengthened in light of local contexts. Honouring diverse ways of knowing, being and doing, and making visible the more-than-capitalist wisdoms of local communities is another example of postcapitalist political practice, offering recognition that different economic practices in particular places have developed based on their own logic and contingency. In an experimental research, for example, a group of community economies researchers collaborated to create a ‘radically different “map” of Monsoon Asia’s economic geography’ using keywords (Gibson et al. 2018). This new cartography has made present an array of culturally inflected and historically situated economic practices that have been set into motion by local ethics of caring for commons, reciprocal labour, risk and wealth distribution and ecological knowledge. For instance, the keyword sống chung với lũ from Vietnam considers the Indigenous knowledge of living with flood in the Mekong Delta. It takes into account how local people occupy a subject position that is open and adaptive to the yearly overflows of the river using multiple livelihood strategies. This ethic of adaptation greatly contrasts with infrastructural flood control solutions commonly pursued by modernist state technocrats (Gibson et al. 2018). Hence, place-based approaches to sustaining people’s lives require utmost sen-
sitivity to the rhythms and movements of the more-than-human world that constitutes diverse livelihood-making in place.
Summary
In this entry, we identify two distinct uses of the term postcapitalism. The first is the spatially and temporally totalizing idea of a nascent postcapitalism that assumes that capitalism abounds, and sees on the horizon a different economic future in which technology-driven change is forcing the emergence of a new economic system. The second draws on diverse economies thinking to propose that there are already economies in place that function differently to capitalism, but have been sidelined or altogether ignored by capitalocentric visions of development. Rather than looking for system change in the form of postcapitalism, this body of work identifies the heterogeneous practices in place here and now that are more-than and other-than capitalist. This process of identification enacts a postcapitalist politics and entails a shift in focus from noun (ism) to verbs, words for actions describing existing and potential, place-based, ecologically attuned processes of economic development. While a postcapitalist politics based on diverse economies aims to rethink economies and development in radically transformed and transformative ways, it remains necessary to keep assessing these transformations critically. For instance, the diverse economies framework largely emanates from the still largely white academic settings in the minority world; its lessons and appreciations of ‘the local’ are mediated in ‘global English’ that is often unwilfully detrimental to linguistic-cultural diversity; and its language of diverse economies always risks flattening existing collective and Indigeneous vocabularies of economic interdependence. Rather than being an unproblematic exemplary of non-hierarchical praxis, postcapitalist politics presents an invitation to critically study and negotiate all the problematic heritages we still embody and struggle with. It is a call for critical postcapitalist studies as much as it is for an emancipatory politics (Alhojärvi 2021). The bad news is that, in a world riven with all-too-acute forms of oppression and violence, the problems are everywhere. The
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good news is that they are everywhere just to be transformatively negotiated, together. Tuomo Alhojärvi, Isaac Lyne, Pryor Placino, Katharine McKinnon and the Community Economies Collective
References
Alhojärvi, T. 2021. For postcapitalist studies: inheriting futures of space and economy. Nordia Geographical Publications, 50(2), 1–230. Bargh, M. 2020. Indigenous finance: treaty settlement finance in Aotearoa New Zealand. In Gibson-Graham, J.K., & Dombroski, K. (eds), The Handbook of Diverse Economies, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA. Chatterton, P., & Pusey, A. 2020. Beyond capitalist enclosure, commodification and alienation: postcapitalist praxis as commons, social production and useful doing, Progress in Human Geography, 44(1), 27–48. Community Economies Collective and Gibson, K. 2009. Building community-based social enterprises in the Philippines: diverse development pathways. In Amin, A. (ed.), The Social Economy: International Perspectives on Economic Solidarity, Zed Books, London. de Sousa Santos, B. 2016. Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide, 2nd edn, Routledge, London and New York. Drucker, P. 1993. Post-Capitalist Society, Butterworth Heinemann, London. Gibson, K., Astuti, R., Carnegie, M., Chalernphon, A., Dombroski, K., Haryani, A.R., Hill, A., Kehi, B., Law, L., Lyne, L., McGregor, A., McKinnon, K., McWilliam, A., Miller, F., Ngin, C., Occeña-Gutierrez, D., Palmer, L., Placino, P., Rampengan, M., Lei Lei Than, M., Wianti, N.I., & Wright, S. 2018. Community economies in monsoon Asia: keywords and key reflections, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, https://doi .org/10.1111/apv.12186.
Gibson-Graham, J.K. 1996. The End of Capitalism (as We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy, Oxford: Blackwell. Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2006. A Postcapitalist Politics, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Gibson-Graham, J.K., Cameron, J., & Healy, S. 2013. Take Back The Economy, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Gibson-Graham, J.K., & Dombroski, K. (eds) 2020. The Handbook of Diverse Economies, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham. Hossein, C.S. 2019. A black epistemology for the social and solidarity economy: the black social economy, The Review of Black Political Economy, 46(3), 209–29. Mason, P. 2015 Postcapitalism: A guide to Our Future, Allen Lane, London. Mathie, A., Cameron, J., & Gibson, K. (2017). Asset-based and citizen-led development: using a diffracted power lens to analyze the possibilities and challenges, Progress in Development Studies, 17(1), 54–66. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1464993416674302. Srnicek, N., & Williams, A. 2015. Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World without Work, Verso, London. Waliuzzaman, S.M. 2020. A commons perspective on urban informal settlements: a study of Kalyanpur slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh. PhD thesis, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ. Waitoa, J., & Dombroski, K. 2020. Working with Indigenous methodologies: Kaupapa Māori meets diverse economies. In Gibson-Graham, J.K., & Dombroski, K. (eds), The Handbook of Diverse Economies, pp. 502–10, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA. Yates, A.M. 2021. Transforming geographies: performing Indigenous-Maori ontologies and ethics of more-than-human care in an era of ecological emergency, New Zealand Geographer, https://doi.org/10.1111/nzg.12302.
T. Alhojärvi, I. Lyne, P. Placino, K. McKinnon and the Community Economies Collective
Postdevelopment The term ‘postdevelopment’ refers to the work of a movement of scholars and activists working since the 1990s to critique the fundamental tenets of ‘development’. Postdevelopment orients our practical and normative goals away from a universal, top-down approach to development, and towards pluriversal, grassroots understandings (intentionally plural) of aspirations for well-being and strategies to achieve it. The early influential texts in the movement include Arturo Escobar’s Encountering Development (2012, originally published 1995), Wolfgang Sachs’ edited collection The Development Dictionary (2010, originally published 1992), Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash’s Grassroots Post-Modernism: remaking the soil of cultures (2014, originally published 1998), and Gilbert Rist’s critical history of the development sector The History of Development: from western origins to global faith (2012, originally published 1997). Most early scholars of postdevelopment can be situated within the poststructuralist intellectual tradition, with core criticisms centring not only on the failure of development to achieve its goals, but on the problematic effects of development discourse more generally. Its emphasis has been on deconstructing the meaning of development. Activist movements, by contrast, are more focused on activating alternatives to development. Movements associated with postdevelopment can be found around the world but are particularly prevalent in Latin America and India. They include organized movements, such as the Zapatistas in Mexico or the seed sovereignty movement in India (Shiva 2005), and less organized ones, such as Buen Vivir, loosely translated as ‘good living’, or the degrowth movement, notably located predominantly in the global North. Since the 1990s, postdevelopment has burgeoned into a vast field of literature.
Key arguments
The catchphrase of postdevelopment, coined by Escobar (2012), is that it seeks not development alternatives, but an alternative to development. Ziai (2017) summarizes the arguments shared across most postdevelopmentalists. Like Escobar, he identifies
a rejection of the entire paradigm of development as central to the school of thought. Postdevelopmentalists understand ‘development’ as an economic rationality centred on accumulation and underpinned by a capitalist logic that privileges activities that earn money through markets and which cultivate subjects as Homo oeconomicus, all of which makes development an ideology or paradigm of the West. As such, postdevelopmentalists see development as a Eurocentric and hierarchical effort to construct non-industrialized ways of life as inferior and in need of modernization by the West. Postdevelopment is, however, also a claim that development has nonetheless failed in its universalizing project, as well as in its aspirations to improve standards of living.
Critics of postdevelopment
Criticisms of postdevelopment have centred on several themes. One is that postdevelopment goes too far in its unconditional rejection of everything associated with modernity and development, and in doing so dismisses forms of politics, technology and science that can and do benefit the poor (Corbridge 1998). Related to this critique, Matthews (2014) has convincingly argued that postdevelopment fails to take seriously the legitimate aspirations among many of the world’s poor for the goals proffered by mainstream development, while romanticizing ‘non-Western’ ways of life. Another influential critique is that postdevelopment, because it privileges particular ways of life (non-Western ones), is unable to provide a convincing account of the causes of poverty, wealth and inequality. Kiely (1999) argues that postdevelopment emphasizes kindness over political economy and is therefore vacuous. Furthermore, the emphasis on particularity and the absence of bigger picture accounts of forces of accumulation and disadvantage can, he argues, have reactionary political implications. Pieterse similarly argues that postdevelopment ‘articulates meaningful sensibilities but does not have a future programme’ (1998, p. 345). A third core criticism is that postdevelopment itself commits the same sin of which it criticizes development, namely, a paternalistic and possibly universalizing to claim to know what is best for others (Lehman 1997). The argument here is that telling people
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that an ‘alternative’ way of life is best for them is as problematic as prescribing mainstream development, for neither approach adequately respects people’s autonomy to decide for themselves what they want in life. A fourth important criticism is that postdevelopment is unable to provide an adequate account of the state and its role in either delivering on people’s aspirations or thwarting them (Routray 2015). Indeed, Esteva and Prakash (2014), for example, are explicit in their seeking to value ways of life autonomous of the state. This problematically sidelines the numerous legitimate claims people make on the state to provide basic services, which are extremely widespread. It also evades important debates about the role of the state in distribution of wealth and land, and the establishment of legal frameworks that can protect or undermine the aspirations of the people postdevelopment is concerned with. Many of these criticisms, however, pertain much more to the early postdevelopment work than to more recent research, scholarship and activism in this field.
Postdevelopment in practice and a move to optimism
Given the tendency in early postdevelopment scholarship to focus on a small range of social movements (particularly in Latin America), and the intellectual emphasis on discourse and deconstruction, one of the main lines of inquiry pursued by postdevelopment scholars since the turn of the century is the myriad practical ways in which postdevelopment is being actualized. For example, Klein and Boada’s (2019) edited collection maps numerous examples of postdevelopment that go well beyond the quintessential Latin American examples. In doing so they illuminate the entanglements between development and postdevelopment that tend to characterize these practices. Alongside an increasing emphasis on interrogating the nuanced and myriad ways in which people actually engage with the postdevelopment critique ‘on the ground’, the last ten years in particular have seen a move towards a more optimistic tone in some quarters. McGregor, for example, argues that the future of postdevelopment depends on ‘its
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ability to re-imagine agency and place and create new networks and spaces of opportunity for people and communities. For this to occur post-development research must be couched in the languages of hope and possibility’ (2009, p. 1688). More constructive, as opposed to deconstructionist work in this vein includes, for example, Gibson-Graham’s (2006) work on postcapitalist politics which envisages not an oppositional approach to well-being, but a constructive one that is, like Klein and Boada’s collection, wrapped up in entanglements with the dominant development paradigm, but not weakened because of that. While recent work has moved in this more constructive direction, it is important to recognize that scholars’ ability to do that has depended on the fundamental critique delivered by the early postdevelopment school. Samantha Balaton-Chrimes
References
Corbridge, S. (1998). ‘Beneath the pavement only soil’: the poverty of post-development. The Journal of Development Studies, 34(6), 138–48. Escobar, A. (2012). Encountering Development: the making and unmaking of the third world (2nd edn). Princeton University Press. Esteva, G., & Prakash, M. (2014). Grassroots Post-Modernism: remaking the soil of cultures (2nd edn). Zed Books. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2006). A Postcapitalist Politics. University of Minnesota Press. Kiely, R. (1999). The last refuge of the noble savage? A critical assessment of post-development theory. The European Journal of Development Research, 11(1), 30–55. Klein, E., & Boada, C.M. (eds) (2019). Postdevelopment in Practice. Routledge. Lehmann, D. (1997). An opportunity lost: Escobar’s deconstruction of development. The Journal of Development Studies, 33(4), 568–78. Matthews, S. (2004). Post-development theory and the question of alternatives: a view from Africa. Third World Quarterly, 25(2), 373–84. McGregor, A. (2009). New possibilities? Shifts in post-development theory and practice. Geography Compass, 3(5), 1688–702. Pieterse, J.N. (1998). My paradigm or yours? Alternative development, post-development, reflexive development. Development and Change, 29(2), 343–73. Rist, G. (2012). The History of Development: from western origins to global faith (4th edn). Zed Books.
Postdevelopment 491 Routray, S. (2015). The post-development impasse and the state in India. Third World Quarterly, 36(10), 1906–21. Sachs, W. (ed.) (2010). The Development Dictionary (2nd edn). Zed Books.
Shiva, V. (2005). Earth Democracy: justice, sustainability and peace. South End Press. Ziai, A. (2017). Post-development 25 years after ‘The Development Dictionary’. Third World Quarterly, 38(12), 2547–58.
Samantha Balaton-Chrimes
Post-neoliberalism The concept of post-neoliberalism emerged at the beginning of the 2000s. It has its roots in the emergence of the alter-globalization movement and was most importantly shaped by the ascent of progressive governments in Latin America in the following years. From a global perspective, this political conjuncture found its most visible expression in the protests in Seattle (1999), Genoa (2001) and the World Social Forums that started at this time and took place once a year – most often in Porto Alegre but also in Mumbai, Nairobi, Dakar, Tunis – with increasing participation and public attention during its first years of internationalist collaborations fuelled by the conviction that deep transformations were not only possible but also imminent in many respects. But in the case of Latin America, the origins of the term go further back.1 The return to liberal democracy (without questioning fundamental power and property relations) and the increasingly negative consequences of the neoliberalization from the late 1980s onwards led in Latin America to a crisis of functioning and legitimacy of the so-called neoliberal ‘Washington Consensus’. Numerous upheavals throughout Latin America led to important political and socio-economic changes. Since the mid 1990s, and more visibly since the beginning of the new century, social movements, political parties and hence governments in Latin America attracted attention with their explicitly anti-neoliberal discourse and actions (Zibechi 2006; Silva 2009; Svampa 2019). For instance, the indigenous Zapatistas movement in Chiapas, Mexico, organized in August 1996 the ‘First Intergalactic Encounter For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism’ with more than 3,000 participants (Holloway/Peláez 1998). These and many other initiatives and forces led to the electoral victories of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998, Ricardo Lagos in Chile in 2000, Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva in Brazil in 2002, Néstor Kirchner in Argentina in 2003, Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay in 2004, Evo Morales in Bolivia in 2005, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua in 2006, Rafael Correa in Ecuador in 2007, Fernando Lugo in Paraguay in 2008 and Ollanta Humala in Peru in 2011. To describe these heterogeneous developments in the region, various terms were
proposed such as ‘pink tide’, ‘left-wing’ or ‘progressive governments’ (see Barrett et al. 2008; Brand 2016; Philip/Panizza 2011; Webber/Carr 2012; Gold/Zagato 2020). It is in the context of International Political Economy and Development Studies that ‘post-neoliberalism’ as a concept has been discussed most widely. We propose to distinguish between a rather political and an analytical use of the term. The rather political uses of the concept attempt to mark the end of neoliberalism (Borón 2003; Cohen/Gutman 2007; Sader 2009, 2011; Escobar 2010). More specifically, the term ‘post-neoliberalism’ was introduced at the end of the 1990s by intellectuals close to presidential candidate Lula da Silva and had one institutional node in the São Paulo Forum which was already founded in the 1990s (https://forodesaopaulo.org/). Amid intense anti-neoliberal struggles taking place across Latin America, the use of this term served to indicate that a government of the Workers’ Party (PT) would break with neoliberal policies, its political economy and related power relations as well as respective discourses and subjectivities. This had strong knock-on effects upon large parts of the continent. In the following years the term was applied as a self-designation by the above-mentioned governments. This political use had a legitimizing effect for these governments, as neoliberalism was largely delegitimized in the region with the beginning of the new century, a tendency that was further reinforced in the region and worldwide with the global economic crisis from 2008 onwards. The analytical use took up the claim by the Latin American governments and interrogated the new political conjuncture about its discontinuities, but also its continuities with respect to the neoliberal era (Brand/ Sekler 2009; Grugel and Riggirozzi 2009, 2012; Macdonald/Ruckert 2009b; Ruckert et al. 2017). It is true that the concept very often remained loose and not clearly defined (Yates/ Bakker 2014). However, there are systematic reasons why no coherent post-neoliberal framework was implemented and not even politically formulated: on the one hand, capitalist development is not one-dimensional. It should rather be seen as a dialectical process of unifying forces of societies under the dominance of a capitalist mode of (re‑)production and, at the same time, continuous, territorially differentiating and fragmenting dynam-
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ics.2 On the other hand, the emergence and working of specific (dis‑)continuities often have to do with conditions that are external to the social and political forces within countries. Therefore, post-neoliberal strategies (and related discourses; see below) need to be distinguished from post-neoliberal effects. For instance, in Latin America more or less post-neoliberal strategies and their effects are related to factors which cannot be directly created by governments but are rather an external condition: global financial flows, the demand for and prices of commodities on the world market, and so on, a point which we will return to soon. It is important to keep in mind that the term did not attempt to homogenize the heterogeneous developments in Latin America but rather strengthened a perspective which helps us understand the changed political landscape and how it translated to development strategies and models in the region.
Post-neoliberalism as a concept
Various propositions regarding a working definition of the term can be distinguished. A common denominator is that post-neoliberalism as a term reflects the analytical and political-strategic search for alternatives to neoliberalism. Early on in the debate, Brand and Sekler (2009) argued for an intentionally vague concept of post-neoliberalism to create space for shared reflections about current developments on the continent. This included political and analytical conceptions as well. Their proposal expresses the early quest for social and economic alternatives embarked on by governments and social movements. As Macdonald and Ruckert (2009, pp. 6–7) expressed at this early stage: ‘[T]he post-neoliberal era is characterized mainly by a search for progressive policy alternatives arising out of the many contradictions of neoliberalism.’ Later on, Yates and Bakker (2014, p. 65) stressed this contesting character. The term post-neoliberalism, in their view, ‘reflects an attempt to conceptualize the multiple and complex ways in which neoliberal orthodoxy is contested by particular actors (ranging from political parties and national regimes to analysts and civil society groups), via a variety of strategies (ranging from concrete legal and political changes to experiments with alternative ideational projects)’.
Grugel and Riggirozzi (2012, p. 16), went one step forward by attempting to provide a positive definition of the term. They proposed to ‘understand postneoliberalism, with all its fragilities, to reflect an attempt to deliver a democratic and inclusive social contract in Latin America within the confines of market-oriented, export-led growth’. However, more recent contributions (Grugel/Riggirozzi 2018, 2019; Ruckert et al. 2017) trying to take stock of the debate conclude that no clear-cut definition emerged. In that sense, there is also no one ideal type of post-neoliberalism. The debate rather embarked on the denomination of some policy fields and thematic nexuses where (dis‑)continuities between neoliberalism and post-neoliberalism became visible. Ruckert et al. (2017) identify in their survey of existing literature areas which were subject to comparative analysis in the post-neoliberal field: economic, social and labour policies, agriculture and land issues, gender and sexuality, as well as institutional reforms. Grugel/ Riggirozzi (2019) find that (economic) development, the issues of citizenship and democratic inclusion (especially regarding indigenous peoples) as well as, later on, the ecological and social impact of the implemented development strategies, were common themes in the debate. Some of the issues that stand out are briefly addressed in the following.
Common topics within post-neoliberalism debates and practices
The most frequently discussed element of non-neoliberal development (i.e. a sharp discontinuity compared to the neoliberal phase), is the enhanced role of governments in the economy (Lander 2012; Yates/Bakker 2014; Ouviña/Thwaites Rey 2019). Governments exerted pressure on foreign investors to pay more attention to the political goals of the respective country and imposed a greater degree of regulation to achieve these aims. In some cases, property relations were changed through the nationalization of property rights of the means of production. Both strategies – stronger regulations or nationalization – led to a significant increase in state budgets. An additional goal was to lower the profits of the financial sector, with a stronger orientation Tobias Boos and Ulrich Brand
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towards the internal market and supporting ‘productive’ capital. In countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela, a plural economy was identified as a political goal (for a critical assessment of this claim in the Bolivian case, see Webber 2015a, 2015b), that is, promoting and strengthening not only more public enterprises but also community and solidarity economies. Progressive governments aimed to render the state apparatus more accountable, to deepen participatory democracy and to enhance citizenship, to pursue a new social agenda of inclusion (Grugel/Riggirozzi 2012). ‘Thus, in post-neoliberal policy practice, the social has returned to the agenda of the state as a key site for state engineering, and new ways of connecting the market with the social sphere are being proposed, within the parameters of “sound macroeconomic policy”’ (Macdonald/Ruckert 2009, p. 8). This enhanced role of the state and particularly of governments was inscribed into a broad development approach promoted by economists such as Bresser-Pereira (2010) as New Developmentalism. In this paradigm the state takes again a more active role but, unlike in previous periods of state development strategies, governments no longer relied on direct protectionist measures but on a competitive exchange rate and a state budget that was as balanced as possible. While the state was supposed to set the strategic direction and necessary framework conditions, the private sector should provide the necessary investments (for a critique of the paradigm, see e.g. Féliz 2019; Grigera 2014). Another dimension has to do with the effects of this new developmental state, especially in the area of social inequalities and regarding the social structure of Latin American societies. Especially conditional cash transfers showed rapidly and initially a great impact regarding poverty and literacy rates, infant mortality and so on (Lavinas 2014; Gaudichaud et al. 2019; Svampa 2019). Furthermore, parts of the emerging or broadening Latin American middle class were integrated into the political projects of post-neoliberalism through a ‘pact of consumption’ (i.e. increasing income and consumption possibilities) (Boos 2017, 2020). Overall, however, an overall assessment of two decades of post-neoliberalism looks ambiguous in its attempt to lower Tobias Boos and Ulrich Brand
economic inequalities: Demographic and political dynamics during the first years of the twenty-first century have led for some years to increased prosperity in Latin America. Extreme forms of exclusion have also declined. At the same time, however, many inequalities and structural problems remained, and social conflict and polarization deepened (Bringel et al. 2021). Public policies of the last decades seem to have only partially changed this (Benza/Kessler 2020). Persistent social and economic inequalities were main reasons for the outbreak of recent protest in countries like Chile or Ecuador in 2019. One of the most interesting indicators for the discontinuities and novelties with neoliberalism were the stated attempts by the Andean countries to decolonize the state, as expressed in new constitutions in Bolivia and Ecuador (Schavelzon 2015, Andreucci/ Radhuber 2017). At the beginning, new principles for the very structure of the state, its logics (‘to de-patriarchalize the state’) and for public policies were formulated in order to comprehensively transform societies and enable and secure a real break with previous periods. However, despite these important ambitions, the evaluation for this ambitious goal to achieve the decolonization of the state (and society) appears rather complex. On a symbolic level, the new constitutions and the election of Evo Morales as the first indigenous president of Bolivia, for example, were tremendous achievements. Nonetheless it may be observed that those states with progressive governments remained and still remain structurally neo-colonial, hierarchical, non-transparent and authoritarian (Prada Alcoreza 2013; Lander et al. 2013; Villalba 2013; Modonesi 2017; Gaudichaud et al. 2019; Lang 2021). Furthermore, the pink tide seems not been able to reverse the further neoliberalization of the state in Latin America (as elsewhere), that is, its ontological grounding in the market (Gold/Zagato 2020). From the outset there has been a tension between a national development project led by the state and its emerging elites and the proclaimed goals of pluralization, decolonization and decentralization of the state (Merino 2018). This tension has been progressively resolved in favour of the
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former which was often called progressive neo-developmentalism. Very much related to the question of how far a transformation of the post-colonial state can and should be, a major topic of the debate about post-neoliberalism is the dominant political economy of Latin American countries (i.e. the resource extractivist economy supported by the state and deeply embedded in social structures and imaginaries) (Gudynas 2021; Svampa 2019; Boos et al. 2020; linking extractivism and post-neoliberalism, cf. Ruckert et al. 2017; Grugel/Riggirozzi 2018). Maristella Svampa (2015) emphasized a broad ‘commodity consensus’ of dominant national and international forces and of the aspirations of a majority of the population that was the basis of neo-extractivism in times of high world market prices and demand after 2003/04 and until around 2014. Distributional policies also towards the lower and middle classes were not combined with a redistribution of power and wealth (which was, on the contrary, even more centralized). Highly uneven global economic structures were not questioned but intensified and the exploitation of natural resources and its selling on the world market is considered as the most important competitive advantage of Latin American countries but it is also linked to deeply inscribed imaginaries (see the seminal study on Venezuela by Coronil 1997). Extractivist economies and supporting policies are deepening social-ecological contradictions and crises. And they need to counter mostly local resistances against the destruction of livelihoods and the environment, tend to criminalize protests and have therefore a strong authoritarian bias.
Further debates and outlook
In general, the assessment of the post-neoliberal era remains contested. Nonetheless, there is a strong consensus within the debate that the post-neoliberal governments were more moderate in their practice as their rhetoric suggested (Grugel/Riggirozzi 2019). Their reformist agenda brought some (temporary) improvements; however, they were not able to bring about more long-term and lasting structural transformations. The deep roots of neoliberalism and successful processes of neoliberalization in Latin American societies became visible from the mid-2010s onwards, when right-wing gov-
ernments took over in various countries. Besides electoral defeat, most striking was the persistence of neoliberal subjectivities which became apparent in these years. The strength of neoliberalism in Latin America and globally has been its capacity for restructuring common sense and its prerogative for the interpretation of what is desirable and possible. It is open to discussion if growing rightwing and conservative forces in the region are properly described by the term neoliberalism. However, the insight of persisting neoliberal thought and subjectivities during the first two decades in the twenty-first century sparked a new wave of research into, for example, the history of political thought of neoliberalism (Slobodian 2018), neoliberal subjectivities (Brown 2019; Gago 2017) and neoliberal think tanks and networks (Fischer/ Plehwe 2017). The debate on post-neoliberalism was very much linked to emancipatory social movements and progressive governments. In the wake of the Latin American post-neoliberal conjuncture, there have been attempts to position the term in the European context. Most notably this was the case for the architects and intellectuals around the Podemos experience in Spain and Syriza in Greece (Agustin/Briziarelli 2018). Chantal Mouffe’s (2019) call for left populism and radical democracy, for example, is above all a critique of the neoliberal excesses of capitalism. However, in recent years the critique of neoliberalism was also formulated by the political far-right. In a way we can detect a recent of post-neoliberalism which can be divided between right-wing, authoritarian and nationalist projects such as that under former (and perhaps future) US president Donald Trump. On the other hand, again in Latin America, since 2019, emancipatory social mobilizations in countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile and Colombia were very broad (Bringel et al. 2021; Tauss/Boos 2020). Protesters in Chile claimed that the country is ‘the one where neoliberalism was born and where it will die’. In some countries the protests had strong institutional resonances such as the installation of an Assembly for a new Constitution in Chile or the election of a leftist candidate Pedro Castillo to president in Peru. But also the victory of Alberto Fernández in Argentina in 2019 indicates a new counter-movement to his predecessor Mauricio Macri who was considered as a response to 12 years of Tobias Boos and Ulrich Brand
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‘post-neoliberal’ governments (for recent conjunctural analyses, see Boos et al. 2020; Bringel et al. 2021). It is yet an open question whether future progressive governments will draw far-reaching conclusions from the shortcomings and authoritarian tendencies of the former ones gathered under the term ‘post-neoliberalism’ and if the term will remain a political reference. However, as an analytical term, ‘post-neoliberalism’ seems to make sense: it serves to examine the continuities and dis-continuities of the dominant development model from a perspective of urgent and comprehensive social-ecological transformations which go not just beyond the neoliberal development model but beyond structural capitalist forms of societalization. Tobias Boos and Ulrich Brand
Notes
1. We would like to thank Laura Rodríguez and Johannes Waldmüller for useful comments, and Segal Hussein for research assistance. 2. Hence, an analysis of societies with similar economic structures does not prevent ‘due to innumerable different empirical circumstances, natural environment, racial relations, external historical influences, etc. from showing infinite variations and gradations in appearance, which can be ascertained only by analysis of the empirically given circumstances’ (Marx 1968, p. 331). Used in this sense, the term post-neoliberalism allows us to take a closer look at the continuities and discontinuities within spatially and temporally uneven capitalist development.
References
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Modonesi, M. (2017), Revoluciones pasivas en América Latina, México: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Azcapotzalco. Mouffe, C. (2019), For a Left Populism, New York: Verso. Ouviña, H./Thwaites Rey, M. (eds) (2019), Estados en disputa: auge y fractura del ciclo de inmpugnación al neoliberalismo en América Latina, Bogotá D.C., Colombia: Ediciones Desde Abajo. Philip, G./Panizza, F. (2011), The Triumph of Politics: The Return of the Left in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, Cambridge: Polity Press. Prada Alcoreza, R. (2013), Potencia, existencia y plenitud: El camino de la guerra y el camino de la sabiduría. Reflexiones en torno al sumak kawsay/suma qamaña, https://rebelion.org/?s =Potencia%2C+existencia+y+plenitud+El+ camino+de+la+guerra+y+el+camino+de+la+ sabidur%C3%ADa. Ruckert, A./Macdonald, L./Proulx, K.R. (2017), Post-Neoliberalism in Latin America: A Conceptual Review, Third World Quarterly, 38(7), 1583–602. Sader, E. (2009), Postneoliberalism in Latin America, Development Dialogue, 51, 171–9. Sader, E. (2011), The New Mole: Paths of the Latin American Left, London: Verso. Schavelzon, S. (2015), Plurinacionalidad y Buen vivir: Dos conceptos leídos desde Bolivia y Ecuador post-constituyentes, Quito/Buenos Aires: Abya Yala and CLACSO. Silva, E. (2009), Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America, New York: Cambridge University Press. Slobodian, Q. (2018), Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Svampa, M. (2015), Commodities Consensus: Neoextractivism and Enclosure of the Commons in Latin America, South Atlantic Quarterly, 114(1), 65–82. Svampa, M. (2019), Neo-extractivism in Latin America: Socio-environmental Conflicts, the Territorial Turn, and New Political Narratives, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tauss, A./Boos, T. (2020), Insurrektion und Protest: Die Mobilisierungen in Ecuador, Chile, Bolivien und Kolumbien 2019, PROKLA. Zeitschrift für Kritische Sozialwissenschaft, 50(199), 373–93. Villalba, U. (2013), Buen Vivir vs Development: A Paradigm Shift in the Andes? Third World Quarterly, 34(8), 1427–42. Webber, J.R. (2015a), Managing Bolivian Capitalism, Jacobin, https://www.jacobinmag .com/2014/01/managing-bolivian-capitalism/. Webber, J.R. (2015b), Bolivia’s Passive Revolution, Jacobin, https://www.jacobinmag .com/2015/10/morales-bolivia-chavez-castro -mas/.
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Poverty measurement The way in which poverty is measured matters, not only in assessing the number of people affected but also in shaping policies, programmes, and services. Before it is possible to measure poverty, it is necessary to conceptualize and define it. As Ruth Lister (2004: 5) has argued, ‘measures of poverty represent ways of operationalizing definitions so that we can identify and count those defined as poor and gauge the depth of their poverty’. Researchers of poverty have also argued that measures of poverty – indeed any study of poverty – must be designed to support action to end it. Without this objective, studying or measuring poverty cannot be morally justified (Lister, 2004; Piachaud, 1987). As Clarke has pointed out in this Encyclopedia, conceptualizing and clearly defining poverty is essential – and determines the approach taken to both measurement and policies. While poverty measurement is often presented as a technical exercise, it is also highly political. A range of normative and ideological decisions determine what is measured and how. While the most common approach to poverty measurement focuses on money, usually income, over recent decades multidimensional approaches have become increasingly influential. More recently still, participatory approaches have sought to reconceptualize poverty and co-construct knowledge with people who have lived experience – with important implications for the future of poverty measurement. This entry begins with an overview of the ways in which poverty lines are established to identify ‘the poor’. It then reviews issues around what is counted and how, before turning to consideration of the shift towards multidimensional measurement of poverty and participatory approaches.
Establishing poverty lines
The establishment of a poverty line is the first step in measurement. The poverty line is the level below which individuals are considered ‘poor’. In setting poverty lines, definitions are key. Before a poverty line can be established, it is necessary to determine whether they are based on absolute or relative definitions of poverty.
Absolute poverty Absolute poverty is the level below which basic needs – such as food, shelter, and clothing – cannot be met. Two steps are necessary to establish an absolute poverty line (Ravallion, 1998). First, it is necessary to specify what represents a minimum standard of living. Economists generally make this determination based on assumptions about the level of utility required to meet minimum standards of living, taking account of the need for the associated bundles of goods to be sufficiently consistent and specific to allow comparisons across time and place. Despite the participatory turn in thinking about poverty measurement, discussed below, the basket of essential goods is generally determined by experts, not by those experiencing the privations of poverty. The second step requires the calculation of the amount of money required to achieve the agreed level of utility. The resulting level of income is then determined to be the cut-off between the poor and the non-poor, or the poverty line. In some countries, such as Indonesia, the poverty line reflects the cost of achieving the daily calorific intake required for life to be sustained. Elsewhere, the policy line is based on the cost of basic needs, beyond food, such as shelter, clothing, and transport. Absolute poverty lines are most commonly used by countries of the global South. The International Poverty Line (IPL) is arguably the most prominent example of an absolute measure of poverty. The IPL was introduced by the World Bank in 1990 and originally set at US$1 per day per person, based on the national poverty lines of 15 of the world’s poorest countries. The IPL is set low and is used to describe ‘extreme poverty’; people living below it are unable to meet all their basic needs. The IPL is periodically updated to reflect increases in the cost of essential items. In 2015, the IPL was updated to US$1.90 per day per person, and in 2022 was updated once more to US$2.15. In 2018, the World Bank introduced two additional poverty lines, set at US$3.20 and US$5.50, which, respectively, reflect typical national poverty lines in lower middle-income countries and upper middle-income countries. In the period from 1990, remarkable progress was made in addressing extreme poverty globally. The percentage of people living in extreme poverty declined from 36 per
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cent in 1990 to around 10 per cent in 2019, based on the IPL. However, if the higher poverty line of US$3.20 is used, approximately 25 per cent of the world’s population lived in poverty in 2019. If the IPL is further increased to US$5.50 per day, almost half of the world’s population lived in poverty in 2019. Regardless of the poverty line used, the COVID-19 pandemic is reversing progress towards addressing extreme poverty and dramatically increasing the numbers of people living below all international poverty lines (Sumner et al., 2020). While the IPL refers to the money needed per person per day, measures of absolute poverty are rarely focused on the individual. Rather, data are collected through household surveys and refer to household income. Calculations can provide estimates of individual-level poverty, but problematically assume there is equal allocation of resources within households. Thus, poor individuals who live in non-poor households are generally not captured in assessments of poverty. While absolute poverty lines may appear to provide an objective assessment, determined by basic needs, they are somewhat arbitrary. As Atkinson (1983: 226) has pointed out, ‘there is no one level of food intake required for subsistence, but rather a broad range where physical efficiency declines with a falling intake of calories and proteins.’ When poverty is measured based on an absolute poverty line, no consideration is given to the presence or absence of public goods or to the time and energy expended in achieving income or in undertaking unpaid and uncounted work that is essential to the survival of the household. Relative poverty Relative poverty is not measured according to the income required to purchase a fixed basket of goods, but in comparison with income across the society. A relative poverty line requires determination of income distribution within society, and then sets the poverty line at a percentage of median income – usually either 50 per cent or 60 per cent below median household income. Like absolute poverty lines, relative poverty lines measure household income and calculate the likely poverty of population sub-groups, such as children or the elderly, or household types, such as single or dual parent families. Sharon Bessell
The concept of relative poverty was developed by Peter Townsend, who characterized poverty not only as a lack of income but as the inability of people on low incomes to participate in society (Townsend, 1979). While Townsend highlighted the material and non-material dimensions of poverty, his definition of relative poverty was operationalized as a single, income-based measure, able to be determined by data already collected through household surveys. While relative income remains the most common measure of relative poverty, the emergence of large data sets and developments in statistical techniques have opened the way to measuring relative poverty beyond income – including assessing the three dimensions identified by Townsend: lack of material deprivation, social participation and trust (Ferrangina, Tomlinson and Walker, 2013). Relative measures of poverty are most often used in countries of the global North and are used by the OECD to compare across countries.
How to count?
Central to poverty measurement are decisions on how those living below the poverty line should be counted. Sen (1976, 1979) and others have argued that measuring poverty is based around two distinct processes: identification and aggregation. The operationalization of definitions of poverty and establishment of poverty lines, discussed above, is the process of identification – that is, the determination of the level below which people are classified as poor. Generally, as reflected in both absolute and relative poverty lines discussed above, poverty is identified through a lack of income. The process of aggregation recognizes that different people will experience various forms of deprivation, requiring ‘some relative scaling of deprivations’ to enable the construction of an overall-indicator (Sen, 1979). Sen observed that there is greater ambiguity in the process of aggregation than there is in the process of identification. Poverty is commonly assessed using either the poverty head count or the poverty gap ratio. The poverty headcount is used to determine the number of people who fall below the established poverty line, generally according to population-weighted sub-group estimates based on national surveys. The poverty head-
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count can reveal how many people are living in poverty and, if consistent measurement is used, how trends are emerging over time. The poverty headcount cannot, however, reveal the severity or levels of poverty experienced by those living below the agreed poverty line. The poverty gap ratio is used to measure the severity of poverty amongst those below the poverty line. The poverty gap shows the mean shortfall of the population from the poverty line, thus indicating how far below the poverty line people are and providing some indication of the severity. Those who are not poor have zero shortfall, while the mean shortfall of the poor from the poverty line is revealed. While the poverty gap provides more information than the poverty headcount, it is not able to reveal the distribution of income amongst the poor. While the poverty headcount and the poverty gap are most commonly used to count those living in poverty, the shortcomings of each have resulted in the development of a range of indices, designed to better reveal the distribution of poverty. For example, the Foster–Greer–Thorbecke indices assess the distribution of income among those below the poverty line, providing greater sensitivity to the severity of poverty (Foster, Greer and Thorbecke, 1984). This method has influenced the approach used by a range of international organizations, including the World Bank’s PovcalNet (Foster, Greer and Thorbecke, 2010). The headcount ratio, the poverty gap ratio, and the Foster–Greer–Thorbecke indices are all decomposable poverty measures, in that they can calculate both overall poverty and that of specific sub-groups (based, for example, on ethnicity, gender, or geography). However, Sen (1976) criticized the headcount ratio and poverty gap ratio because they do not take account of shifts in income poverty among the poor; the headcount ratio remains unaltered even if poor people become poorer. Sen proposed two axioms, the monotonicity axiom and the transfer axiom. The monotonicity axiom requires that ‘given other things, a reduction in income of a person below the poverty line must increase the poverty measure’ (Sen 1976: 219). The transfer axiom requires that ‘given other things, a pure transfer of income from a person below the poverty line to anyone who is richer must increase the poverty measure’ (Sen 1976: 219). According to Sen, both the
headcount ratio and the poverty gap violate these axioms and are therefore not fit for purpose. The indices developed by Foster, Greer and Thorbecke are decomposable, but avoid the shortcomings identified by Sen by providing a means of calculating the extent to which particular subgroups contribute to total poverty, and estimating the extent to which reducing the poverty of a specific sub-group would reduce poverty overall.
Income and multidimensional poverty measurement
While both absolute and relative poverty lines currently used within countries and by international agencies generally rely on income to identify the poor, the concept of multidimensionality has become increasingly influential. The first of the Sustainable Development Goals, which aims to end poverty in all its forms, adopts both income-based and multidimensional definitions. Target 1.1 aims to eradicate extreme poverty, using the IPL to measure achievement. Target 1.2 aims to reduce at least by half the proportion of people living in multidimensional poverty, based on national definitions. It has long been recognized that income alone does not reveal the complexity of poverty. Indeed, many conceptualizations of poverty are multidimensional, taking account of both the material core of poverty (Lister, 2004) and the non-material aspects of poverty that relate to shame, stigma, and social exclusion. Recognition of multidimensionality has led to the development of multidimensional poverty measures. The most well-known and influential is the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) developed at the University of Oxford and adopted by UNDP and a number of countries, often to complement income-based measures. The MPI is a composite index composed of three dimensions (health, education, and standard of living) with ten associated indicators. The MPI draws on existing data, which ensures it can be readily adopted by countries but limits what is measured to data that are already collected. This results in some constraints, particularly in its ability to measure non-material aspects of poverty. A particular drawback of existing data, and consequently of the MPI, is the use of the household, rather than the individual, as the unit of analysis. This means that calculations of individual poverty generally assume equal Sharon Bessell
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distribution of resources within the household, masking the ways in which gender, generation, and ability/disability in particular determine the allocation of resources. More recent attempts to measure multidimensional poverty have sought to overcome the propensity of household-based measures to ignore intra-household inequalities. At the same time, there have been efforts to expand multidimensionality to include those aspects of poverty most likely to reveal gendered differences in its extent and nature (Espinoza-Delgado and Klasen, 2018; Bessell, 2015). The Individual Measure of Multidimensional Poverty (IMMP) (formerly the Individual Deprivation Measure) measures poverty at the individual level through a set of purpose-designed surveys and includes dimensions that are especially sensitive to gender differences, such as time use, paid and unpaid work, and family planning (Bessell, 2015). The IMMP also measures non-material dimensions of poverty, including relationships and voice, that cannot be assessed through money-metric measures or multidimensional measures that are reliant on existing data. The shift from unidimensional, income-based to multidimensional measures of poverty has expanded the disciplinary focus of poverty measurement from primarily, if not exclusively, economics to include perspectives from sociology, anthropology, political science, and psychology. The multidimensional shift has been described as ‘the most important development of poverty research in recent years’ (Kakwani and Silber, 2008: xv).
Participatory approaches
The discussion above indicates the technical nature of poverty measurement. What is often not sufficiently recognized is that at every point, technical decisions are shaped by normative assumptions. Moreover, the highly technical nature of the language used to explicate poverty measurement acts to exclude non-experts from engaging in debates. The focus on the statistics of poverty and the measures on which those statistics are based have often dominated political debates (Lister, 2016). Lister argues that while the importance of statistics and poverty measures is clear, it is necessary to move beyond them to understand the experience of poverty Sharon Bessell
and to recognize the relational and symbolic aspects of poverty as well as the material (Lister, 2016). Such perspectives build on a growing body of scholarship based on participatory research, including the Voices of the Poor research undertaken by the World Bank in the late 1990s. More recent participatory efforts include the work of ADT Fourth World, which bridges the global North/global South divide by undertaking research across starkly different contexts to reveal both the commonalities and differences in experiences of poverty. This work has resulted in the identification of so-called ‘hidden dimensions’ of poverty that are rarely assessed by mainstream poverty measures, but are of critical importance to people with lived experience of poverty. These hidden dimensions include both material and social deprivation, maltreatment, and disempowerment – all of which are invisible within almost all poverty measures (Bray et al., 2019). The exception is the IMMP, which assesses the nature of work, voice and participation in the community, and experiences of respect or humiliation. Significantly, the IMMP is grounded in participatory research, with the measure and associated survey instruments based on the dimensions identified as most significant by women and men with lived experience of poverty (see Pogge and Wisor, 2016; Bessell, 2015). Moves towards the democratization of poverty measurement through participatory research and the co-construction of knowledge has the potential to move beyond technocratic approaches that enable narratives that depoliticize poverty and shame. This creates the potential for poverty measures to better reflect the experience of poverty and to play a role in efforts towards social justice (Lister, 2016). As such, the emerging shift towards participation may turn out, in the long run, to be as significant as the shift towards multidimensionality.
Concluding comments
The various approaches to poverty measurement canvassed here each assess different aspects of poverty, depending on the definition that is being operationalized. Each has both strengths and weaknesses. While poverty measurement is deeply contested, different approaches need not necessarily produce tension; rather, they can be under-
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stood as contributing to the nuanced knowledge base required to address and, ultimately, end poverty. Given the complexity of poverty and its deeply structural causes, it is difficult to imagine a single measurement that can provide the breadth and depth of knowledge required. Understanding the definitions of poverty that drive different measures and appreciating the choices on which they are based is critical if the resulting statistics are to inform policies in ways that bring about greater social justice. It is only through the critical evaluation of poverty measures – as well as the statistics they produce – and using them in ways that are fit for purpose that we can move towards achieving the globally agreed goal of ending poverty in all its forms for everyone, everywhere. Sharon Bessell
Foster, J., J. Greer and E. Thorbecke (1984) ‘A class of decomposable poverty measures’, Econometrica, 52, 761–76. Foster, J., J. Greer and E. Thorbecke (2010) ‘The Foster–Greer–Thorbecke (FGT) poverty measures: 25 years later’, Journal of Economic Inequality, 8, 491–524. Kakwani, N. and J. Silber (2008) The Many Dimensions of Poverty, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Lister, R. (2004) Poverty, Cambridge: Policy Press. Lister, R. (2016) ‘“To count for nothing”: Poverty beyond statistics’, Journal of the British Academy, 3, 139–65. Piachaud, D. (1987) ‘Problems in the Definition and Measurement of Poverty’, Journal of Social Policy, 16(2), 147–64. Pogge, T. and S. Wisor (2016) ‘Measuring poverty: A proposal’. In M. Adler and M. Fleurbaey (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Well-Being and Public Policy (pp. 645–76), Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ravallion, M. (1998) ‘Poverty lines in theory References and practice: Living standards measurement Atkinson, A.B. (1983) The Economics of study’, Working Paper No. 133, Washington Inequality, 2nd edition, Oxford: Oxford DC: World Bank. University Press. Bessell, S. (2015) ‘The individual deprivation Sen, A. (1976) ‘Poverty: An ordinal approach to measurement’, Econometrica, 44(2), 219–31. measure: Measuring poverty as if gender and inequality matter’, Gender & Development, Sen, A. (1979) ‘Issues in the measurement of poverty’, The Scandinavian Journal of 23(2), 223–40. Economics, 81(2), 285–307. Bray, R., M. De Laat, X. Godinot, A. Ugarte and R. Walker (2019) The Hidden Dimensions of Sumner A., E. Ortiz-Juarez and C. Hoy (2020) ‘Precarity and the pandemic: COVID-19 and Poverty, Montreuil: Fourth World Publications. poverty incidence, intensity and severity in Espinoza-Delgado, J. and S. Klasen (2018) developing countries’, WIDER Working Paper ‘Gender and multidimensional poverty in No. 2020/77, World Institute for Development Nicaragua: An individual based approach’, Economics Research, United Nations World Development, 110, 466–91. University. Ferragina, E., M. Tomlinson and R. Walker (2013) ‘Poverty, participation and choice: The legacy Townsend, P. (1979) Poverty in the United Kingdom: A Survey of Household Resources of Peter Townsend’. Available at https://www and Standards of Living, Berkeley and Los .jrf.org.uk/sites/default/files/jrf/migrated/files/ Angeles: University of California Press. society-poverty-participation-full.pdf.
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Queer development studies Queer development studies is an area of research within the larger field of development studies. In this subfield, researchers explore questions of gender and sexuality at the intersection of foreign aid, development, humanitarianism, and global human rights. Two Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual (2SLGBTQIA+) persons around the world are targeted for violence and social exclusion based on real or perceived sexuality, gender identity, gender expression, and/or sex characteristics.1 According to the United Nations Free & Equal campaign, more than a third of the world’s countries criminalize same-sex relationships. Many countries force transgender people to undergo medical treatment such as hormone replacement therapy and sterilization (i.e. hysterectomy or vaginoplasty) to obtain legal documentation recognizing their gender (United Nations Free & Equal, 2017, n.d.). Approximately 1.7 per cent of people are born intersex, and children are regularly subject to unnecessary surgeries to ‘correct’ sex characteristics that do not conform to binary standards of male and female. Focused on the experiences of gender and sexually diverse communities transnationally, queer development studies is a location for ‘sexuality, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics’ (SOGIESC)-inclusive policy, planning, and programming to better meet the needs of 2SLGBTQIA+ communities. Queer development studies intervenes into development scholarship by offering a queer theory lens. Queer theory is a diverse field of scholarship which aims to unsettle the sex and gender binary and focuses on the identities and experiences of 2SLGBTQIA+ communities. Through many theoretical frameworks, such as poststructuralism, feminism, and psy-
choanalysis, queer theorists critically analyse identity in relation to structural contexts, paying attention to the question of who is excluded and included in ‘normative’ society. The term ‘queer theory’ was first used by scholars as early as the 1980s to describe their work. Teresa de Lauretis – who convened the first queer theory conference – used the term in her 1991 article ‘Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities’ to describe a field of inquiry that rejected heterosexuality as a standard of sexual relations, that embraces the diversity of scholarship in what was previously known as ‘gay and lesbian studies’, and to embrace intersectional analyses which pays attention to race and class in addition to sexuality and gender. Queer theorists grapple with the question of inclusion and exclusion – should 2SLGBTQIA+ people be included into the current structure of society, or should society be fundamentally transformed through the unsettling of sex and gender binaries? Debates about gay marriage, military service, and civil rights are central issues in queer theory. Theorists including Dean Spade and Jack Halberstam, among others, argue against inclusion in the status quo in favour of reimagining society entirely (Spade, 2011; Halberstam, 2011). In queer development studies, scholars take up this debate by discussing if development should be made inclusive of 2SLGBTQIA+ people or if development norms and practices need to be challenged fundamentally.
Queering development
Scholars concerned with the overwhelming heterosexism and cissexism of the field aim to advance ‘queer development’ by making the case for SOGIESC inclusion.2 The queering of development has meant that gender analyses – that have historically paid attention to the experiences of women in the context of global patriarchies – now push beyond
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the sex/gender binary. Rather than explore gender as the inequitable relation between men and women, SOGIESC analyses offer a robust exploration of the functioning of gender and sexuality norms across gender. While practitioners and scholars are moving towards gender and development beyond the binary, often experts continue to centre the experiences and needs of cisgender women. Sexuality turn Referred to as the ‘sexuality turn’ in development studies, in the early 2000s scholars and practitioners began to articulate how the field of development incorrectly treated non-normative sexuality as a ‘luxury’. Suggesting that sexuality – other than heterosexuality – was a kind of preference among those Western and privileged, development scholars and practitioners long dismissed sexuality as key to development. Basic needs such as food, water, and shelter were assumed to be disconnected from sexuality. For those dismissive of sexuality as a key indicator of poverty, it was basic needs that had to be met first, and then, perhaps, the questions of sexuality could follow. For scholars of sexuality and development, access to basic needs is predicated on heterosexuality, and often marriage, where men and women access employment, housing, health, and social services through normative family structures. Due to criminalization and stigma, sexually diverse people were not just ignored but excluded from development interventions. Sexuality, when paid attention by development scholars and practitioners, was long relegated to the realm of sexual health and HIV/AIDS where dangers, death, and disease were the overwhelming concern. Gay men, men who have sex with men, and sex workers were often the objects of scholarly and programmatic interventions around transmission, condom use, and healthy sexual practices. Pleasure, desire, identity, and subjectivity were too rarely the object of development’s concern. However, as Andil Gosine points out in his foundational article ‘Rescue, and Real Love: Same-sex Desire in International Development’ (2015, p. 10), the recognition that ‘not all of the “world’s poor” are heterosexual poses a significant challenge to dominant thinking and practice in international development’. This challenge was
met by advocates who began to include sexuality in their approach to social exclusions by paying attention to how sexually diverse communities experience SOGIESC-related poverty. The United Nations Development Programme’s ‘LGBTI Inclusion Index’ as part of the Sustainable Development Goals is an example of such inclusion measures. The cost of homophobia Economic-focused organizations in development include sexual diversity by making the argument that homophobia hurts the economy. Perhaps most well-known is Lee Badgett’s (2020) costing out of homophobia. The initial research in India was financed by the World Bank and offered an economic frame for including sexually diverse experiences in the organization’s work. Badgett used traditional neoliberal financial analysis to show that homophobia causes social exclusions (e.g. violence, incarceration, job loss, family rejection) that led to negative individual outcomes (e.g. lower education, low productivity, poor health outcomes) but, most importantly, economic costs including a burden on health and social services and lower economic output. The costing-out of homophobia has become a popular tool for communicating the need to address SOGIESC issues in development. It has also been met with criticism by scholars and practitioners for defining quality of life for sexually diverse people through market terms, and for presenting sexually diverse people as liabilities to the state.
Que(e)rying development
While some development scholars and practitioners are keen to include 2SLGBTQIA+ people in development, some use queer theory to push for the transformation of development. Early scholars, including Susie Jolly, brought queer theorizing into the frame of development in the year 2000 by asking how the theories of Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, Leo Bersani, and David Halperin, among others, could inform and challenge development to broaden its scope to include sexuality and gender in its diversity, but to also challenge development norms such as materialism. For Jolly, development’s focus on economic outcomes – as measured by such indicators as GDP – needs to give way to non-material aspects of poverty, including Corinne L. Mason
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social class, social isolation, and social networks. The move towards social exclusion frameworks offered an opening to include diverse gender and sexualities to be considered in key indicators of well-being, and Jolly, among others, saw queer theory as an entry point into transforming development paradigms. Scholars in queer development studies, such as Amy Lind (2009), continue to ‘que(e) ry development’ by using queer theory to critically analyse SOGIESC inclusion. These scholars ask critical questions about the imperial implications of 2SLGBTQIA+ inclusion in the project of development using post-colonial, radical, or post-development frameworks. Here, concepts central to development studies – including temporal progress and modernity – are taken up by queer scholars like Rahul Rao (2014) who analyse how homophobia and transphobia are incorrectly mapped onto ‘backwards’ nations who are promised ‘progress’ via development by becoming 2SLGBTQIA+ inclusive. Corinne L. Mason
Notes 1.
Two Spirit is a term used by some Indigenous people in what is colonially known as North America to describe cultural and spiritual sexual and/or gender identity. An Indigenous person may identify as having both a masculine and a feminine spirit. Terms and roles of Two Spirit people are specific to each nation. 2. Heterosexism refers to the assumption that heterosexuality is normal and common, requiring 2SLGBTQIA+ people to ‘come out’. Cissexism refers to the assumption that there are two genders with specific roles and capacities in society – man and woman – based on binary sex assignments at the point of birth.
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References
Badgett, L. (2020) The Economic Case for LGBT Equality: Why Fair and Equal Treatment Benefits Us All. Boston, Beacon Press. de Lauretis, T. (1991) ‘Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities’. differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 3(2), iii–xviii. Gosine, A. (2015) ‘Rescue, and Real Love: Same-sex Desire in International Development’. IDS Sexuality and Development Programme. https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/ handle/20.500.12413/5891/Resue%20and %20Real%20Love.pdf?sequence= (accessed 30 June 2021). Halberstam, J. (2011) Queer Art of Failure. Durham, Duke University Press. Jolly, S. (2000) ‘“Queering” Development: Exploring the Links between Same-sex Sexualities, Gender, and Development’. Gender & Development, 8(1), 78–88. Lind, A. (2009) ‘Governing Intimacy, Struggling for Sexual Rights: Challenging Heteronormativity in the Global Development Industry’. Development, 52(1), 34–42. Rao, R. (2014) ‘Global Homocapitalism’. Radical Philosophy. https://www.radicalphilosophy .com/article/global-homocapitalism (accessed 13 July 2021). Spade, D. (2011) Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law. Boston: South End Press. United Nations Free & Equal (2017) ‘Intersex Fact Sheet’. https://www.unfe.org/wp-content/ uploads/2017/05/UNFE-Intersex.pdf (accessed 20 June 2021). United Nations Free & Equal (n.d.) ‘The United Nations’ Global Campaign Against www Homophobia and Transphobia’. https:// .unfe.org/about-2/ (accessed 20 June 2021).
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Religion and development Ever since the first traces of humanity, there have been signs of humans trying to relate to something beyond them (Armstrong 2010). From the Neolithic ceremonial site in England of Stonehenge, to the caves in France of Lascaux, which are thought to have been used for ceremonies to link to the unseen world, to the Olmec temples in Mexico, to the cathedrals of medieval Europe, all are testimonies of the long-enduring social reality of humans expressing a link to some transcendental reality. Germanic languages referred to this reality as god(s) and Latin language as deity/ es (deus in Latin). Religion, from the Latin re-ligere, to link again, is in its most basic form a relationship with an unseen reality that is beyond time and space. Despite its enduring feature in the course of human history, and more than 80 per cent of the world’s population estimated to profess a belief in some god(s) today, religion has been a latecomer as a subject of interest and relevance for thinking about and doing development. It was not until the 2000s that it became a concern for those researching and working in the field of international development. This entry on ‘religion and development’ is divided into three sections. The first examines some definitional challenges with regard to what ‘religion’ and ‘development’ are, and the consequent difficulties in mapping what the field of study is. A definition of ‘religion and development’ is proposed as an inter-disciplinary research field that researches the relation between beliefs in god(s) and life in society, with an emphasis on improving people’s lives. The second section surveys how religion has been incorporated in development theory and practice since the start of the development era in the 1950s to the global development challenges era of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The third section discusses how research on ‘reli-
gion and development’ is currently evolving, and the ways in which concern for religion, and greater attention to sources of wisdom beyond Western canons, might radically transform the very project of development at the time of climate emergency.
Religion and development: what is it?
There are probably no concepts in the social sciences that have been more controversial and elusive as those of ‘religion’ and ‘development’ (Tomalin 2013). What does being developed mean? Which criteria should we use to assess whether one country is more developed than another, or more developed than it was in the past? At the core of the concept of development is the idea of betterment, or improved living conditions. There are, however, divergent views about the normative criteria used to judge whether life is better or worse in one country than other or than in the past (Sen 1988). Income, and a country’s gross domestic product, has long been a dominant criterion to judge what counts as development or progress. Today, a wide range of criteria are being used to reflect the multidimensional nature of people’s lives. To promote development is not only about increasing people’s incomes and how many possessions they have but also about improving their health, giving opportunities to access education, following a healthy and sustainable diet, preventing people from living in fear, allowing them to take part in decisions that affect their lives, and so on. In other words, to promote development is to strive to provide the conditions in which people can live well as human beings in all the dimensions of human life – social, economic, political, cultural, psychological, ecological, and more. In the same way that endeavouring to live well has been what humans have tried to do for millennia but has only come under
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the banner of ‘development’ or ‘progress’ from the Industrial Revolution onwards, so has religion. The link with an unseen reality known under the banner of ‘religion’ arose from the Reformation in Europe and the ‘discovery’ of new worlds outside Europe, when there was a need to compare different ways of being in the world derived from different ways of relating to the unseen reality (Thomas 2005). Defining religion has been a contentious task. Most commonly, it is conceived as a set of beliefs in god(s). Yet, for many people, their relationship to the unseen world is not a matter of beliefs one adheres to or not, as if god(s) were an argument or proposition whose existence one could accept or reject, but a way of life, a way of being in the world. The turning of religion into a set of beliefs that one can accept or reject, as an option among others, is a product of Western modernity (Taylor 2007). Research on ‘religion and development’ has generally taken religion to include a number of inter-related elements: 1. Beliefs in god(s) and what these beliefs entail for behaviour and practices: e.g. the belief that coral reefs are Allah’s creation and that carrying out practices that destroy them, such as dynamite fishing, is ‘haram’ or forbidden; 2. Discourses, texts and teachings: e.g. the teaching of giving two per cent of one’s income to charitable work through zakat in Islam, or the social teachings of the Catholic Church in relation to the ownership and use of property for the sake of the common good; 3. Institutions and organisations: e.g. the institution of waqf in Islam, which is an endowment to charitable ends, or the faith-based organizations, which are civil society organizations that inscribe themselves within a certain religious tradition like Islamic Relief, Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, and many others (Clark et al. 2007); 4. Religious leadership and communities: e.g. the role of faith leaders in conveying health messages about Ebola virus transmission to the population given their trusted role and role of religious community mobilization in dealing with virus outbreak;
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5. Practices, rituals, and prayers: e.g. the ritual of pilgrimage and the impact of the practice of Hajj on people’s lives or on the economy or potential role of rituals and religious ceremonies for deepening ecological commitment; 6. Interpretation of texts: e.g. the practice of itjihad in Islam or biblical hermeneutics in Christianity about drawing from a religious text implications for living today (Deneulin and Bano 2009), such as drawing from the biblical story of Genesis implications to change our relationship to nature (Pope Francis 2015: 62–75); 7. Lived religion, or how people live out their relationship to god(s) in everyday life. On the basis of the above, ‘religion and development’ could be broadly defined as an inter-disciplinary research field that analyses the relation between whatever has to do with beliefs in god(s) and life in society, with a particular emphasis on improving people’s lives. This definition can also not lose sight of the fact that religion is never something pure, something totally detached from power relations, personal interests, or wider economic, social or political relations. This is why there is a lot of heterogeneity among religious traditions and why they are never static. Their teachings, interpretations, practices, institutions, and so on are always evolving. A lot of research in ‘religion and development’ has tended to see religion, and its constitutive features, as independent variables that are influencing, either positively or negatively a set of pre-determined development objectives (Deneulin and Rakodi 2011; Jones and Petersen 2011), for example, the influence of religious leadership to promote gender equality, or the influence of faith-based organizations in providing health and education, or the influence on religious teachings on maternal health or girl’s education, and so on. In recent years, with the climate change emergency and the urgent need for structural economic, social, and cultural transformation called for by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, work has begun beyond that instrumental approach to research what religious traditions themselves conceive of development and what it means to live well as a human being. Before turning to the future of the ‘religion and development’ field in the
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third section, the next section gives an overview of how religion has been incorporated into the international development field since its emergence.
Religion and development: a brief history
Development as the project of improving people’s lives was born from the decolonization era. Yet, people have been motivated by their beliefs in god(s) to improve other people’s lives and relieve other people’s sufferings for centuries before. In Ancient Rome, the early Christian communities were distributing food to the hungry and caring for the sick, the poor, the orphans, and the widows. Throughout the world, higher education institutions were set up within religious traditions to pursue knowledge such as Nalanda University in fifth-century India within Buddhism, Al-Azhar University in tenth-century Egypt within Islam, or the University of Oxford in thirteenth-century England within Christianity. In nineteenth-century Europe, women religious orders sprang up to provide primary and secondary education for girls. During the colonization era, missionary societies in Africa and Asia played a significant role in health and education provision, though in many instances religion reinforced or perpetuated colonialism rather than questioned its underlying injustice. As Desmond Tutu, the South African anti-apartheid bishop is attributed to have said: ‘Before the white man came to Africa, the white man had the Bible and the African had the land; after the white man came, Africans had the Bible and the white men had the land.’ When the United Nations proclaimed 1960–70 the ‘first development decade’ after many colonies became independent, religion was conceived by the development community at the time as an obstacle to economic growth and modernization, or at best, as a provider of education and health and other services that the state did not have yet the capacity to deliver. In many newly independent countries, the state took over the schools and hospitals that missionary societies had been running. With the era of development proclaimed, many non-governmental development organizations (NGOs) appeared within various religious traditions in the late 1960s and 1970s to help people in the
ex-colonies improve their lives. These organizations, known today as faith-based organizations, rose to prominence in the 1980s when the number of NGOs worldwide rose exponentially as part of the neo-liberalization policies of the Thatcher/Reagan years and the rolling back of the state in the provision of basic services. In the 1990s, with the more prominent role of civil society in development, one has also witnessed a greater role of religious communities and faith-based organizations in policy advocacy, social movements, and the defence of human rights. However, the latter had already started in Latin America in the 1970s where some sections of the Catholic Church played a role in opposing dictatorships. Despite this long involvement of religious organizations in development, it was not until the new millennium that the international development community looked at religion as something relevant for its project of reducing poverty and improving people’s lives. A landmark publication in that regard was the World Bank World Development Report 2000/01, and its background study Voices of the Poor, which gathered the voices of thousands of people who lived in poverty on how they understood what it meant to live well (Narayan et al. 2000). One of its main findings was that religion permeated people’s conception of living well and how sacred places were important to people’s lives. Another finding was that religious leaders commanded much greater trust than politicians and government representatives. These findings opened the door to partnerships between international development organizations and religious communities and faith-based organizations to work together in reducing poverty, which is what has been referred above as the instrumental relation between religion and development. They can be crucial partners in delivering services to the poorest who are hardest to reach, for religious networks are present in the most remote places that the state has neglected. They can also be crucial partners in policy advocacy such as the 2005 Make Poverty History campaign or the 2000 Jubilee Debt Relief campaign, or the 2015 Paris climate change negotiations, which saw a large participation by religious organizations and leaders.
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Religion and development: the climate emergency
Religious communities and organizations are now seen as critical to promote the SDGs. Given the omnipresence of religion in people’s lives in the majority of the world, there is a significant potential for religion to change people’s behaviours, to motivate them for action, and to mobilize resources to meet the goals. For example, religious communities already take care of the elderly and vulnerable, and channelling more resources to their work can help better reach the goal of ‘ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing for all at all ages’ (SDG 3). Or more resources can be channelled towards the vast network of schools that religious organizations manage such as madrasas, and the curriculum could be adapted in the light of the SDGs (e.g. how addressing climate change is part of respecting Allah and his creation). Beyond that instrumental relation between religion and the SDGs, there is a more fundamental research agenda for the ‘religion and development’ field. At the core of the development project is the aspiration to live better lives as human beings. The international development community provides few answers as to what it is to live a good human life. Is the accumulation of more goods, and the invention of more technologies part of what it is to fulfil our humanity? All religious traditions have some contributions to make regarding these questions. Born from the process of colonization and decolonization, international development has come under increased pressure to decolonize, to become more aware of the power imbalances which structure it into a ‘global North’ and a ‘global South’. This includes a greater awareness of different sources of knowledge and who decides on the legitimacy of some form over others. Since the Enlightenment, the pursuit of knowledge has been based on the premise that humans have received the power to subdue the earth and to analyse it as an external reality to themselves. To be human has been conceived as being separate from other living organisms. This view of what it is to be human is, however, not shared universally.
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In the words of an indigenous group in Colombia: ‘We are part of nature because we are water, air, earth and life of the environment created by God. Therefore, we ask that the maltreatment and extermination of “Mother Earth” cease. […] We want that our indigenous cry be heard in the whole world’ (Pope Francis 2020: 17). For indigenous peoples of the Amazon, whose ways of being and living in the world do not separate the material world from the unseen dynamism of life and unity of all living systems, development is not about pursuing a set of pre-determined goals. Rather, it is about ‘harmony with oneself, with nature, with other human beings, and with the supreme being, as there is inter-communication between the whole cosmos’ (Pope Francis 2020: 12). The climate emergency era, brought about by an anthropological vision of the human– nature separation and dominion of the former over the latter, is transforming the ‘religion and development’ field. On the one hand, the increasing number of disasters caused by extreme weather patterns is intensifying the humanitarian response, making ‘religion and development’ slowly evolve into ‘religion and humanitarianism’. On the other hand, the climate emergency is urging each person on the planet to rethink what it is to live well as human beings and how to use our human freedom in a way which can protect planet Earth. ‘Religion and development’ may well merge to form a new inter-disciplinary field to meet the global challenge of striving for a good human life for all in a common home. Séverine Deneulin
References
Armstrong, K. (2010). The Case for God: What religion really means. Vintage, London. Clarke, G., Jennings, M. and Shaw, T. (eds) (2007). Development, Civil Society and Faith-Based Organisations. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Deneulin, S. and Bano, M. (2009). Religion in Development. Zed Books, London. Deneulin, S. and Rakodi, C. (2011). ‘Revisiting religion: Development studies thirty years on’. World Development, 39(1), 45–54. Jones, B. and Petersen, M.J. (2011). ‘Instrumental, narrow, normative? Reviewing recent work on religion and development’. Third World Quarterly, 32(7), 1291–306.
Religion and development 511 Narayan, D., Chambers, R., Shah, M. and Petesch, Sen, A. (1988). ‘The concept of development’. P. (2000). Voices of the Poor: Crying out for In H. Chenery and T.N. Srinivasan (eds), change. Oxford University Press, New York. Handbook of Development Economics, 9–25, Pope Francis (2015). Laudato Si’: On the care Elsevier, Amsterdam. for our common home. http://w2.vatican.va/ Taylor, Ch. (2007). A Secular Age. Belknap, content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/ London. papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si Thomas, S. (2005). The Global Resurgence .html [accessed 24 June 2020]. of Religion and the Transformation of Pope Francis (2020). Post-Synodal Apostolic International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Exhortation: Querida Amazonia. http:// New York. www.sinodoamazonico.va/content/ Tomalin, E. (2013). Religions in Development. sinodoamazonico/en/documents/post-synodal Routledge, London. -apostolic-exhortation--querida-amazonia- .html [accessed 24 June 2020].
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Resilience Introduction
The term resilience is used in a variety of ways and in many different contexts. A simple definition is provided by Brian Walter and David Salt (2012) who describe resilience as the ability to absorb ‘disturbances’ but still retain structure and function. It is used in a range of knowledge fields: originating in the sciences, when Crawford Holling (1973) wrote about resilient ecological systems, then becoming established in fields of natural resource management, engineering and design, and in the social sciences such as geography, anthropology, social psychology, development and disaster studies. Resilience has become a ‘buzzword’ of our time. It is commonplace to hear individuals, communities, organizations and systems described as resilient. Resilience has also become a buzzword in development discourse and practice. World Bank programmes, for instance, refer to ‘resilient cities’, ‘resilient institutions’ and climate risk management ‘resilience strategies’. As noted by developer thinker Andrea Cornwall (2007), buzzwords tend to garner general abstract consensus around the importance of certain concepts but they equally can be vague and ‘fuzzy’, providing little sense of what a concept actually ‘looks like’ or how it translates in practice and in specific contexts. Here, we provide some clarity around the concept of resilience and how it is used in development today. We provide contextual examples drawing on development practice in Chile and Cambodia. It is common in contemporary development practice and discourse for resilience to be framed within scientific understandings of how ecological systems work. An alternative framing and the position we take as authors, combines science and social science perspectives and defines resilience as an ability of humans and nonhumans to ‘survive well’ in the face of change and crisis (Gibson-Graham, Hill and Law, 2016). Within this frame, disturbances can be understood as a range of human and nonhuman processes including recovering from severe illness, emotional, and or socio-cultural trauma; navigating a significant economic shock; or surviving an extreme weather event. If resilience is understood as the ability
to survive well, then development can thus be thought about as the active work of creating and maintaining the conditions of possibility for surviving well. This includes economic and livelihood conditions, and sociocultural and ecological ones. As Walter and Salt’s description of resilience thinking emphasizes, it includes ‘understanding and engaging with a changing world’ (2012, p. 2) in order to be better positioned to ‘build capacities to work with change [and development] as opposed to being a victim of it’ (p. 14).
Historical underpinning: the socio-ecological systems approach and the ability of systems to ‘bounce back’ or ‘bounce forward’
Resilience originates from ecosystems sciences where the term was used to address persistence and change in ecological systems. It was later extended into ‘social-ecological systems’ with a focus on managing complex interactions between groups of human beings (social systems) and ecological systems and exploring how they work together and adapt to change (Berkes and Folke, 1998; Folke et al., 2010). The concept of ‘social-ecological resilience’ situates people, social and economic structures, nature and ecological systems and materiality as interdependent. The ability to adapt and transform to ensure continued survival grows out of these interdependencies (Folke et al., 2010). In a social-ecological system adaptability is the capacity to harness action to ‘bounce back’ after disturbance and re-establish some kind of stable condition. Transformability is the capacity to ‘bounce forward’ and “create a fundamentally new social-ecological system when ecological, political, social or economic conditions make the existing conditions untenable” (Folke, 2006, p. 262; Gibson-Graham, Hill and Law 2016). The combined ability of a social-ecological system to adapt or transform is a measure of how resilient the system is, of its capacity for resilience. Key resilience thinkers Gunderson and Holling (2002) identify cycles of continuous change applicable to both human and natural systems as those associated with resilience. They highlight the importance of preparedness in the process of reorganizing and subsequently harnessing resources
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and opportunities in new ways. Preparedness means acknowledging and recognizing system limits before low-level ‘persistent’ or punctuated acute events create disturbances that deplete resources beyond a point where a new cycle of reorganization is possible. In thinking about change and how to assist human and natural systems in responding to change, development institutions such as centres for disaster preparedness often face difficult dilemmas. Resilience focuses on how far these efforts to change and adapt systems can be pushed, and at what rates, without collapse. This enables learning from and planning for the future through scientifically informed adaptations, to fix what is currently problematic and unsustainable in complex systems. While some scholars see it within the broader field of sustainability science (Turner II, 2010), resilience speaks to interdependent transformation in the face of change in ways that sustainability does not. Resilience is more open-ended in the way it prioritizes emergent processes and ongoing change in order to identify dynamic support systems that respond to shocks and disturbances (Redman, 2014). To summarize thus far, resilience thinking prioritizes awareness that change is constant and that processes of change often unfold in surprising, unpredictable ways. Resilience thinking is about understanding how to best support dynamic systems in response to shocks and disturbances. It has advanced the understanding of complex adaptive systems and reframed the instability of living systems in terms of tipping points, system plasticity and ongoing change. Resilience thinking has contributed to the understanding of global warming and what sustainable futures in a climate-changed world may entail in terms of critical thresholds, living within planetary boundaries and making necessary societal transitions and transformations.
Controversies: anthropocentric reasoning, narrow economic reasoning, and an alternative framing of resilience
One major source of controversy arises from resilience thinking within the sciences (hereafter referred to as resilience science) embracing ecological economics, and framing the environment as ‘natural capital’
providing ‘ecological services’ to sustain ‘the economy’. Consequently, in the view of Gibson-Graham et al. (2016), resilience science represents ‘the economy’ as stocks and flows of capital that restructure and reconfigure according to the spontaneous operations of markets. Regarding the exclusions that systems thinking in resilience science entails, Gibson-Graham et al. ask: “What of all the diverse human economic activities that cannot be capitalized and priced?” and “What of the relations between human and environments that are not about “servicing” but are about mutual care and stewardship?” (Gibson-Graham et al., 2016, p. 705). Through its representation of ‘the economy’ as an extension of market logics, resilience science defers to development driven by human needs and desires which, for Gibson-Graham et al., have been bonded to an ever-increasing condition of unsustainability. This condition equates in development discourse to the idea that there is a one-size-fits-all linear model of progress which prescribes how societies maintain their ability to bounce back if already ‘developed’, and bounce forward if ‘developing’, ‘under-developed’ or ‘marginalized’. Societies are positioned along a human progress continuum that leads to a mainstream, largely Western capitalist model of development, even though other linear lines of progress have also been added recently, embodied in the Sustainable Development Goals. Design theorist Tony Fry concurs, expressing that this kind of human ‘progress’ has negated our interdependence within more-than-human systems and constrained resilience. Fry (2017) calls for a decolonial project which he names ‘The Sustainment’, and which Gibson-Graham et al. (2016) also draw upon, that signifies a voyage of discovery more than equal to the Enlightenment. According to Fry, The Sustainment is not ‘sustainability,’ with its propensity to sustain the unsustainable, as ‘business as usual,’ for the globalizing ‘North.’ … Rather, Sustainment is a vital intellectual, political and pragmatic project of discovery marking a vital turn of ‘humanity.’ It acknowledges that in order ‘to be sustained’ another kind of earthly habitation and understanding is required. (Fry, 2017, p. 15)
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Fry and Gibson-Graham et al.’s reference to The Sustainment signals key issues in development today. While resilience science represents ‘the economy’ in a way that “fails to overcome the separation of human and non-human worlds and shores up an instrumentalism that is dangerous” (Gibson-Graham et al., 2016, p. 706), The Sustainment, in contrast, signifies a radically different development trajectory. It starts with understanding that nothing will change unless our mode of being changes, and that which has to change extends to every dimension of human, environmental, economic, social, cultural and psychological existence. This understanding transcends resilience science by imagining radical economic change as the re-embedding of economies in ecologies, which in turn enacts processes where we learn how to survive well together with earth others, in the name of fostering the planetary conditions for survival (Gibson-Graham et al., 2016; Barron, 2018).
Usefulness in development today: two practical examples
Today, the lived experience of different communities around the world suggests there are diverse economic pathways for development and resilience-building that are more ecologically and culturally attuned. Mapuche communities in Chile, for example, are reconceptualizing resilience and reflecting on what resilience in development means from an indigenous perspective (Atallah et al., 2018). Seen from an indigenous perspective, resilience places emphasis on the colonial or neo-colonial ‘other’ and can be a reminder of who and what was taken away by colonization/genocide. Resilience from an indigenous perspective should take into account the long-practised and ongoing decolonial/resistance practice by Mapuche communities. It is important to acknowledge the continued occupation and/or reclamation of ancestral lands by thousands of Mapuche Lof (communities/spaces) notwithstanding forceful and fraudulent reduction of land base. In these communal spaces, despite marginalization and dependency, examples of resilient ‘auto-gestion’ (self-management) are emerging and recreating powerful models around the making and sharing of commons, as the basis for enduring traditional knowl-
edge and diverse economies, and for dynamic, open-ended experiments of surviving well with others (Guzman & Krell, 2020). The Mapuche Lof includes more-than-humans in a complex net of reciprocity and common ethical bonds. Creating resilience takes into account the indigenous concept of Buen Vivir or Kume Mongen, which focuses on positive life-affirming projects, through indigenous-led protocols, ways of knowing and biocultural well-being deeply rooted in territory. Mapuche resilience as Kume Mongen involves, at the same time, harnessing and reassembling modern technologies, methods and tools under Mapuche cultural (and political) control through visionary economies that incorporate both monetary and non-monetary elements. Mapuche Resilience, in this way, rather than simply counteracting racism and trauma as some contemporary thinkers such as Atallah et al. (2018) have emphasized, may be better comprehended as continued non-linear striving for Kume Mongen that challenges the current dynamic systemic conditions created by lingering colonialism. In other words, the Mapuche are constituting their own form of resilience to reconstruct their territory at the frontlines of climate disaster by broadening non-linear indigenous futures and pathways of hope for generations to come. Turning to Asia we find an example of resilience building in a community where non-humans play a key role. In eastern Cambodia, a 1.5-kilometre-long Bamboo Bridge connects the people of Koh Pen Island, in the middle of the Mekong River, to mainland Kampong Cham Town for nine months each year and plays a key role in local resilience-building specifically attuned to the temporal rhythms of Mekong. The bridge is built at the beginning of the dry season, and then taken down before water levels on the Mekong River rise high above the bridge’s height after the monsoon rain arrives. Built for generations, it predates the traumatic era of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. In the 1980s it brought people together in non-cash economies. Since then, the Bamboo Bridge has provided seasonal employment that fits into the year-round livelihoods of 30 skilled craftsmen and women, many of whom are also farmers, fishers or local builders. The yearly building cycle has preserved remarkable craft skills while fostering interdepend-
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encies between humans and natural bamboo resources lining the lower Mekong riverbanks (Gibson-Graham, Hill and Law, 2016). Things changed again in 2017 when a concrete bridge arrived, built with government money alongside construction projects on the Island funded by the Asian Development Bank (Gibson & Salazar, 2019). However, this mainstream did not spell the end of the Bamboo Bridge completely. While the Bridge is no longer the larger structure it once was (capable of bearing motor bikes, cars and trucks), today it is still constructed as a footbridge with funding from provincial authorities that recognized its importance as a tourist attraction. This keeps traditional bamboo building practices and skills alive while helping to sustain organic, longstanding practices of resilience. These skills and interdependencies with bamboo have also been circulated, for example, through the construction of a yoga retreat close by, with buildings and furnishings built and manufactured of bamboo by a new generation of skilled local craftspeople.
Discussion: issues for further investigation
Where are interesting openings to foster resilience building today? One avenue is working with younger generations, including university students, to build out from socio-ecological resilience to foster cultural and community resilience in diverse contexts. Students can be taught how to trouble the concept of social-ecological resilience in collaboration with others, through thinking processes and methods that build collective resiliences in the process. While historically much of resilience-thinking has focused on systems, development is about people learning to act in concert with one another and with systems, hence the value of creating learning opportunities for future generations. A second avenue for further investigation is to identify and experiment with tools and strategies that foster greater interdisciplinary engagement among resilience scholars, just sustainabilities scholars, transition management scholars (a growing sub-field of sustainability studies) and human geography and development studies scholars and practitioners. There is also further work to be done in rethinking human-centric actions and impacts
on the planet. Investigation into human interdependence with the planet and resilience building derived from embedding indigenous and local communities’ knowledge and practices remain important growth areas within development discourse. Much more work is needed in this space. Isaac Lyne, Ann Hill, Elizabeth Barron, Alison Guzman and Ignacio Krell
References
Atallah, D.G., Contreras Painemal, C., Albornoz, L., Salgado, F., & Pilquil Lizama, E. (2018). Engaging critical community resilience praxis: a qualitative study with Mapuche communities in Chile facing structural racism and disasters. Journal of Community Psychology, 46(5), 575–97. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.21960. Barron, E.S. (2018). Who values what nature? Constructing conservation values with fungi. In R. Lave, S. Lane, & C. Biermann (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Physical Geography, pp. 373–93. London: Palgrave. Berkes, F., & C. Folke. (1998). Linking Social and Ecological Systems: Management Practices and Social Mechanisms for Building Resilience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cornwall, A. (2007). Buzzwords and fuzzwords: deconstructing development discourse. Development in Practice, 17(4–5), 471–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/09614520701469302. Folke, C. (2006). Resilience: the emergence of a perspective for social–ecological systems analyses. Global Environmental Change, 16(3), 253–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha .2006.04.002. Folke, C., Carpenter, S.R., Walker, B., Scheffer, M., Chapin, T., & Rockstrom, J. (2010). Resilience thinking: integrating resilience, adaptability and transformability. Ecology and Society, 15(4): 20. https://www.jstor.org/stable/ 26268226. Fry, T. (2017). Design for/by “The Global South”. Design Philosophy Papers, 15(1), 3–37. https:// doi.org/10.1080/14487136.2017.1303242. Gibson, K. (Executive Producer), & Salazar, J.F. (Director) (2019). The Bamboo Bridge [motion picture], Australia: Matadora Films. Gibson-Graham, J.K., Hill, A., & Law, L. (2016). Re-embedding economies in ecologies: resilience building in more than human communities. Building Research & Information, 44(7): 703–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218 .2016.1213059. Gunderson, L.H., & Holling, C.S. (2002). Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Systems of Humans and Nature. Washington, DC: Island Press.
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516 Elgar encyclopedia of development Guzman, A., & Krell, I. (2020). Impact evaluation Turner II, B.L. (2010). Vulnerability and resilreport: mutual support/Rekvlvwun 2014–2018. ience: coalescing or paralleling approaches for Maple Microdevelopment, Villarrica, Chile. sustainability science? Global Environmental https://www.communityeconomies.org/ Change, 20, 570–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j publications/reports/impact-evaluation-report .gloenvcha.2010.07.003. -mutual-support-group-2014–2018. Walker, B., & Salt, D. (2012). Resilience Holling, C.S. (1973). Resilience and Stability of Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People Ecological Systems, Annual Review of Ecology in a Changing World. Washington, DC: Island and Systematics, 4, 1–23. Stable URL: www Press. .jstor.org/stable/2096802 Redman, C. L. (2014). Should sustainability and resilience be combined or remain distinct pursuits? Ecology and Society, 19(2), 37. https:// www.jstor.org/stable/26269581.
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Right to development The idea of a Right to Development is anchored in the 1986 UN Declaration on the Right to Development (UN, 1986). The concept is said to date back to ideas implicit in the 1944 ILO Declaration of Philadelphia and to early drafts of the UN Declaration on Rights and Duties of States in the 1940s (Alston, 1979; Sengupta, 2002). However, the term itself appears to have been first used in 1966 by the Senegal Foreign Minister, in a plea to the General Assembly for the creation of a New International Economic Order. The term was subsequently popularized by representatives from developing countries during the 1970 UN debate over the New International Economic Order, and particularly advanced by the Non-Aligned Movement. The Non-Aligned Movement was formed in 1961, and played an active, even leading role in the early work of the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation established that same year. The Non-Aligned Movement consistently supported and argued for the right of peoples to self-determination, and the 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development originated with their calls for a New International Economic Order acknowledging the rights and duties of former colonial powers in the era of decolonization – as well as debate over resources and global economic justice for newly independent developing countries (Gouwenberg, 2009). The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR, 2010) argued the concept is also rooted in the provisions of the 1945 Charter of the United Nations and the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights, as well as the two International Human Rights Covenants. Certainly, the World Conference on Human Rights, Teheran 1968, expressed a belief in the ‘collective responsibility of the international community’ to ensure minimum standards of development, seen as important to realizing human rights (UNHCHR, 2010). The conference proclamation declared that ‘the achievement of lasting progress in the implementation of human rights is dependent upon sound and effective national and international policies of economic and social development’ (UN, 1968, para. 13). This squarely laid the foundation for the idea of a human right to development. Then, in 1977, the UN Commission on Human
Rights openly proclaimed the existence of such a human right and requested the UN Secretary-General study ‘the international dimensions of the Right to Development as a human right in relation with other human rights … taking into account the requirements of the New International Economic Order’ (UNHCHR, 2010). This culminated in promulgation of the 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development (UN, 1986), Article 1 of which declares that: The right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized … The human right to development also implies the full realization of the right of peoples to self-determination. (UN, 1986)
Article 2 expressly makes entire populations and groups of people rights-bearers of this right, not just individuals, clearly indicating that states have not only duties, but also rights under this declaration – a concept clearly appealing to peoples and governments of newly decolonized and/or less developed countries. The Right to Development is a so-called third-generation right. Vasak (1977) borrowed from the three maxims of the French revolution, liberty, equality, fraternity, to develop this typology. It postulates first-generation rights as those pertaining to civil–political freedoms, second-generation rights as economic–social–cultural, and third-generation rights as group/collective or solidarity rights, such as rights to self-determination, healthy environment and intergenerational equity. This typology, however, is heavily contested, seen by some as largely Western, and often closely linked with political debates around civil–political versus economic–social–cultural rights (Alston, 1982; Marks, 2004a, 2004b). It also plays towards undermining the notion clearly enshrined in International Law, that human rights are indivisible and mutually reinforcing (Uvin, 2004). Regardless of typology, the Right to Development (and many other so-called third-generation rights), is fundamentally different to individual human rights in
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that it makes the international community a duty-bearer alongside the state, and states as potential rights-bearers alongside groups and individuals (Umbricht, 1979). This presents a challenge to many rights advocates and organizations, both because their approach is often strongly adversarial to the state, and because it makes individuals, NGOs, international organizations, and (multinational) corporations other direct duty-bearers, not merely via state regulation (Uvin, 2004). Traditionally, only states are subjects of international law, and it is their duty to enforce it over individuals, organizations, and corporations under their jurisdiction. During the 1991 Global Consultation on the Right to Development as a Human Right, the advisor to the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights suggested the Right to Development is ‘a human right in the context of relations between developing and developed countries’ (UN, 1991). It was clearly originally perceived as ‘the logical next step in the programme of decolonization’ (Beetham, 2006, pp. 79–80). The Right to Development was reaffirmed in the Vienna Declaration (UNHCHR, 1993), at the World Conference on Human Rights, where it was explicitly noted as an integral human right, highlighting the idea that human rights are indivisible, interdependent and interrelated. The Right to Development now features prominently in the mandate of the UN Human Rights Council and is also a key part of the UN Development Programme’s mandate (Bunn, 2000). This is despite it being consistently opposed in the UN by the US and, at least until 2008, very largely also by the EU (Gouwenberg, 2009). Nonetheless, the 2000 UNDP Human Development Report on Human Rights and Development clearly took up the theme, mentioning and discussing the 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development no less than seven times. The language of a Right to Development even made its way into the 2000 UN Millennium Declaration, which stated: We, heads of State and Government, … will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected. We are committed to making the right to development a reality for everyone and to freeing
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In 1995, the General Assembly required the High Commissioner for Human Rights to establish a new branch whose primary responsibility would be the promotion and protection of the Right to Development (Marks, 2004a). The subsequent open-ended Working Group on the Right to Development continues its work today. The UN today argues that the right to development is at the core of the Sustainable Development Goals, a good example of the way in which human rights has become a cross-cutting theme running across all UN policies and programmes in key areas such as peace and security, development and humanitarian assistance (UN, 2021). The Right to Development is, however, a highly contested concept. Since its inception, the Right to Development discussion has been polarized, largely between decolonized countries and former colonial powers (and their settler societies). This is despite the fact that the Declaration ‘was, in effect, an attempt to revive the immediate post-war consensus about human rights developed by US President Roosevelt, based on four freedoms – including the freedom from want’ (Sengupta, 2001). The preamble to the Declaration argues that ‘The Right to Development unifies civil and political rights with economic, social and cultural rights into an indivisible and interdependent set of human rights and fundamental freedoms’ (UN, 1986). Yet Forsythe (1989, p. 349) goes as far as to suggest the UN was not at all clear about the right when the Declaration was promulgated, that it ‘adopted a resolution endorsing the right to development, then found itself in the position of trying to decide just what it meant’. More recently, the West, in particular, has championed the ‘rights-based approach to development’ over the Right to Development (e.g. see ACFID, 2009; Nyamu-Musembi & Cornwall, 2004; also see Rights-based approach to development in this Encyclopedia). Questions have been raised over ‘the foundational basis of this right, its legitimacy, justiciability, and coherence’, as well as the identity of the duty bearers, the nature of the responsibilities it conveys upon those duty bearers, and the identity of the rights bearers
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(Sengupta, 2002). Despite being reaffirmed by consensus at the 1993 Vienna World Conference, it has evoked responses ranging from being hailed a major human rights breakthrough to being debunked as a distracting or dangerous ideology (Chowdhury et al., 1999). It has even been claimed it will be detrimental to the poor rather than benefit them (Bunn, 2000), and that it is used to try to claim a ‘right to everything’ (Kirchmeier, 2006). The Right to Development evolved from quite different origins than the majority of human rights, originally being a claim against developed countries, linked to demands for a new international order more favourable to the economic development of post-colonial states. This alone marks it as different. Developing states largely interpret the right as meaning the international community are duty-bearers who are required to provide a more equitable and democratic international trading and financial system, debt relief, international assistance and cooperation to poorer nations (Gouwenberg, 2009). It is therefore often perceived as implying that the developed world has a duty to transfer resources and provide international aid, and that this is a human rights issue rather than a charitable aid donation one (Marks, 2004b; Umbricht, 1979). On the other hand, developed states predominantly emphasize the individual as the central subject of all human rights, and the state they live within as the primary duty-bearer, and argue the Right to Development is invoked by some governments as a smokescreen for individual rights abuses as much as to try to make economic claims against the developed world (Ware, 2010). The US, the principal opponent of UN resolutions and language around the Right to Development, argues that if there is such a right at all, it can only be a right of the individual to develop his/her capabilities through the exercise of the full range of civil and political rights (Gouwenberg, 2009). However, others argue this re-definition demonstrates a ‘conceptual inflation’ or ‘terminology creep’ to individualize and remove any collective claims on what was clearly originally promulgated as a collective right (Beetham, 2006). Many argue that such individualistic conceptions of human rights, focused primarily on civil–political liberties, are simply an ‘ideological disguise for cultural imperialism’ (Freeman, 2002;
see also Donnelly, 1988; Pollis, 2000). At the time, the USSR strongly supported the Right to Development, while the US maintained development comes from entrepreneurialism and a liberal economy – and that the Right to Development is invoked as a pretext for violating civil and political rights (Marks, 2004a). The US thus object(ed), at least in part, on ideological grounds. Certainly, the Right to Development explicitly confers primary responsibility on the developing state, particularly to ensure national and international conditions favourable to the realization of the Right to Development, and equality of opportunity for all within their country (specifically including a fair distribution of income). Yet it concurrently confers upon developed states the duty to cooperate in empowering developing states in their advancement of this right (Sengupta, 2002). The right makes equity and justice essential to development, for both domestic and international duty bearers (Sengupta, 2001, 2000). The Declaration presupposes that donors will facilitate the efforts of developing countries to advance the Right to Development by relaxing resource constraints, including in areas such as trade, debt, technology, and finance (Andreassen & Marks, 2006). However, the Right to Development also requires policies and institutions at the international level not damage a country’s economic development or encourage a markedly unequal form of development (Beetham, 2006). While the Right to Development does demand the international community offer differential treatment to developing countries, increased aid, debt relief, revision of structural adjustment policies, fairer trading rules, regulation of transnational corporations, and avoiding unilateral coercive economic measures, it also demands national governments respect individual human rights, and ensure participation, equity, and accountability (Sengupta, 2001). The Right to Development places a number of legal obligations on states, particularly that they formulate policies with a view to the development of all their people, eliminate massive and flagrant violations of human rights, and respect the principles of international law concerning friendly relations and cooperation among states (Bunn, 2000). And most significantly, it requires the state ensure non-discrimination and fair distribution of the benefits of develAnthony Ware
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opment, and that its policies are in accord with human-centred participatory approaches (Marks, 2005). If the government of a developing country claims the Right to Development against the international community on behalf of its citizens, the legitimacy of such a claim depends on the existence of appropriate mechanisms to ensure that the entire population enjoys the benefits of the right, rather than it being a source of elite privilege (Andreassen & Marks, 2006).The chair of the UN’s Open-Ended Working Group on the Right to Development, argues that the Right to Development also entails a legitimate right to reprimand parties which fail to deliver on their obligations. He suggests such reprimand could involve compensation or reparation, on the one hand, or international pressure or sanctions against a government, on the other (Sengupta, 2001). Multilateral (but not unilateral) sanctions are therefore regarded as a legitimate tool, even under the Right to Development. The key contribution of the concept lies in highlighting the centrality of equitable access to resources and the profit from them, whether global trade or natural resources, and both within countries and between countries – and seeing any denial of access to the requirements for development as a human rights violation (Beetham, 2006). ‘When development is seen as a human right, it obliges the authorities, both nationally and internationally, to fulfil their duties’ (Sengupta, 2001). The Right to Development becomes a claim to equity and justice in resource distribution and opportunity, domestically and globally. It holds both the state and the international community as duty-bearers. The Right to Development has not been expressly articulated in international conventions, instead still being the subject of debate and resolutions in the UN. There would be significant economic implications if developed nations accepted into law the developing world’s conception of a Right to Development of poorer nations. The UN Working Group on the Right to Development argued that implementation of Millennium Development Goal 8, which calls for a global partnership for development should be based on the Right to Development (Kirchmeier, 2006), and likewise for the Sustainable Development Goal 17. Anthony Ware
Nonetheless, contemporary Western discourse on human rights displays little awareness of the Right to Development, preferring the language and framing of the rights-based approach to development (Nyamu-Musembi & Cornwall, 2004). For example, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) makes no reference to the Right to Development in any of its White Papers on Eliminating World Poverty (1997, 2000 or 2006), despite discussing the rights-based approach to development, while the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office specifically advised proponents of the rights-based approach to exclude any reference to the Declaration. DFID makes it quite clear that it does not ground development assistance in the Declaration on the Right to Development, and that its assistance is based on a moral – not legal – obligation to alleviate poverty (Piron, 2002). Anthony Ware
References
ACFID (2009). Millenium Development Rights: How Human Rights-Based Approaches Are Achieving the MDGs. Case Studies from the Australian Aid and Development Sector. ACFID. Alston, P. (1979). The Right to Development at the International Level. In R.J. Dupuy (ed.), The Right to Development at the International Level (Workshop, The Hague, 16–18 October 1979). Sijthoff & Noordhoff. Alston, P. (1982). A Third Generation of Solidarity Rights: Progressive Development or Obfuscation of International Human Rights Law?. Netherlands International Law Review, 3, 307–22. Andreassen, B.A., & Marks, S.P. (eds) (2006). Development as a Human Right: Legal, Political, and Economic Dimensions. Harvard School of Public Health, François-Xavier Bagnoud Centre for Health and Human Rights. Beetham, D. (2006). The Right to Development and Its Corresponding Obligations. In B.A. Andreassen & S.P. Marks (eds), Development as a Human Right: Legal, Political, and Economic Dimensions (pp. 33–45). Harvard School of Public Health, François-Xavier Bagnoud Centre for Health and Human Rights. Bunn, I. (2000). The Right to Development: Implications for International Economic Law. American University International Law Review, 15(6), 1425–68. Chowdhury, S.R., Denters, E.M.G., & de Waart, P.J.I.M. (eds) (1999). The Right to Development in International Law. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.
Right to development 521 Donnelly, J. (1988). Human Rights: A New Standard of Civilization?. International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs), 74(1), 1–23. Forsythe, D.P. (ed.) (1989). Human Rights and Development: International Views. Palgrave Macmillan. Freeman, M. (2002). Human Rights: An Interdiciplinary Approach. Cambridge University Press. Gouwenberg, A.E. (2009). The Legal Implementation of the Right to Development. A Study of the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies. Leiden University. http://www .grotiuscentre.org/files/200909ReportRTD.pdf. Kirchmeier, F. (2006). The Right to Development Where Do We Stand? State of the Debate on the Right to Development. Occasional Paper no. 23. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Marks, S.P. (2004a). The Human Right to Development: Between Rhetoric and Reality. Harvard Human Rights Journal, 17, 137–68. Marks, S.P. (2004b). The Right to Development in Context. In A. Sengupta (ed.), The Right to Development: A Primer. Sage. Marks, S.P. (2005). The Human Rights Framework for Development: Seven Approaches. In A. Sengupta, A. Negi, & M. Basu (eds), Reflections on the Right to Development (pp. 23–60). Sage. Nyamu-Musembi, C., & Cornwall, A. (2004). What is the “Rights-Based Approach” All About? Perspectives from International Development Agencies. IDS Working Paper 234. Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. https://www.ids.ac.uk/download.php?file= files/dmfile/Wp234.pdf. Piron, L.H. (2002). The Right to Development: A Review of the Current State of the Debate for the Department for International Development. DFID Social Development Department. http:// www.odi.org.uk/resources/download/1562.pdf. Pollis, A. (2000). A New Universalism. In A. Pollis & P. Schwab (eds), Human Rights: New Perspectives, New Realities. Lynne Rienner. Sengupta, A. (2000). Realizing the Right to Development. Development and Change, 31, 553–78. Sengupta, A. (2001). Right to Development as a Human Right. Economic and Political Weekly, 36(27), 2527–36. Sengupta, A. (2002). On the Theory and Practice of the Right to Development. Human Rights Quarterly, 24(4), 837–89.
Umbricht, V. (1979). Right to Development. In R.J. Dupuy (ed.), The Right to Development at the International Level (Workshop, The Hague, 16–18 October 1979). Sijthoff & Noordhoff. UN (1968). The Proclamation of Teheran. In Final Act of the International Conference on Human Rights. United Nations. A/CONF32/41. UN (1986). Declaration on the Right to Development. Resolution A/RES/41/128. United Nations General Assembly. UN (1991). The Realization of the Right to Development: Global Consultation on the Right to Development as a Human Right. HR/ PUB/91/2. United Nations Centre for Human Rights. UN (2000). United Nations Millennium Declaration. Resolution A/RES/55/2. United Nations General Assembly. UN (2021). Human Rights. https://www.un.org/ en/sections/issues-depth/human-rights. UNDP (2000). Human Development Report on Human Rights and Development. United Nations Development Programme. UNHCHR (1993). Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. A/CONF.157/23, issued by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/ huridoca.nsf/(symbol)/a.conf.157.23.en. UNHCHR (2010). Development – Right to Development. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. http:// www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/development/ right. Uvin, P. (2004). Human Rights and Development. Kumarian Press. Vasak, K. (1977). Human Rights: A Thirty-Year Struggle: The Sustained Efforts to Give Force of Law to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. UNESCO Courier, 30, 11. Ware, A. (2010). Human Rights and the Right to Development: Insights into The Myanmar Government’s Response to Rights Allegations. In E. Morrell & M.D. Barr (eds), Crises and Opportunities: Proceedings of the 18th Biennial Conference of the ASAA 2010. The University of Adelaide, 5–8 July. Asian Studies Association of Australia Inc (ASAA). http:// asaa.asn.au/ASAA2010/reviewed_papers/.
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Rights-based approach to development The rights-based approach (RBA) is a distinctive approach to development, based on a conception that the key underlying causes of poverty are discrimination, marginalization, exclusion and the intersectionality of disadvantage. RBA is thus based on a view that one key – if not the most effective – path to long-term alleviation of poverty and inequality is to secure improvements in respect of human rights. It sees human rights as instrumental to sustainable development impact, and therefore seeks to leverage international human rights declarations, conventions and law to transform power relations, and achieve development outcomes by securing equitable distribution of services, resources and power. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) speaks of the RBA as a conceptual framework that ‘seeks to analyse inequalities which lie at the heart of development problems and redress discriminatory practices and unjust distributions of power that impede development progress’ (OHCHR, 2006: 15). Human rights are framed in terms of ‘rights-holders’ and ‘duty-bearers’. Most human rights declarations, conventions and law refer to individuals as rights-holders (although so-called third-generation rights do ascribe rights to whole groups of people, even nations/states, but none of these are embedded in international law at this time). The primary duty-bearer, tasked with ensuring an individual’s rights are protected is the government of the state within which they hold citizenship. This even applies to so-called stateless people, as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that everyone has the right to a nationality, which is widely taken to mean a right to citizenship somewhere. This framework means governments have the duty to ensure that the human rights of citizens and residents are fully respected; they are vested with the duty of ensuring the rights of citizens and residents are not violated by either themselves or by other actors. Certainly, governments can perpetrate human rights abuses. However, even when they are not the cause or perpetrator of particular rights violations, human rights instruments ascribe them the ‘duty’ of protecting people from such rights
abuses by others. This may include companies, powerful elite, rebel groups, gangs, or any other perpetrators. Governments have a range of policy and coercive tools available to fulfil this duty, including legislation, regulation, and legitimate use of force. In other words, the rights-based approach to development is premised on the idea that governments are primarily responsible for the alleviation of poverty and inequality amongst their population, and that human rights are an instrumental key component in achieving this. There are a diversity of other duty-bearers behind national governments also charged with the duty of protecting peoples’ rights, including the international community, multilateral and non-government agencies, civil organizations, businesses, parents, community members and so on, each within their sphere of power and influence. Likewise, governments themselves are not monolithic, with a diverse range of levels of government, departments, agencies and government sponsored organizations, as well as armies and security services, which all share the duty of protecting human rights (with poverty seen as a rights violation). All these actors have obligations as duty-bearers under international human rights law. In practice, given the primary duty bearer is the national government, RBA is often seen as primarily a ‘vehicle for increasing the accountability of government organisations to their citizens’ (Ferguson, 1999: 23), and ensuring governments deliver pro-poor policies and services to the poor. When it comes to implementation, the approach is most often related to the processes of empowerment, forms of advocacy, and the use of legal instruments in defence of groups of people who are poor, discriminated against or marginalized (Broberg & Hans-Otto, 2018).
Historical origins
The United Nations (UN) was formed as the world emerged from the Second World War, with human rights and development two of the defining issues that helped precipitate its emergence. Discussion of human rights was taken up at the first session of the General Assembly in 1946, and resulted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was primarily motivated by a determination that atrocities such as those committed in the two world wars (including the Holocaust)
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should never occur again. Development, originally conceived of as post-war reconstruction, was equally high on the post-war agenda, to which decolonization was quickly added. Human rights entered the development discourse during the 1970s–80s, via the push by the Non-Aligned Movement for a ‘right to development’ (see Right to development in this Encyclopedia; see also UNDP, 2000; Uvin, 2007). Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say that development entered the human rights discourse at that time (Uvin, 2007), driven in large part by the fact the development sector received over a hundred times the funding of the human rights sector (Uvin, 2004: 13). Either way, that confluence initially culminated in the United Nations promulgating a Declaration on the Right to Development in 1986 (UN, 1986). This Right to Development, however, remains a highly contested formulation, opposed by a large number of states including most donor countries. The right was largely promoted by countries that gained independence during the era of decolonization, and was clearly perceived by them as ‘the logical next step in the programme of decolonization’ (Beetham, 2006: 79–80), as a way to redress the power and resource inequalities they felt remained after colonization. The Right to Development is a so-called third-generation right, ascribing rights to whole nations. By adopting rights language, it framed former colonial states as rights-holders and made former colonial powers (and the wider international community more generally) as the primary duty-bearers for global poverty and underdevelopment (Umbricht, 1979) – and sought to affix international legal obligations to that duty. Unsurprisingly, former colonial powers and their settler societies (such as the United States and Australia) never accepted they were primary duty-bearers for global inequality, ahead of national governments. Almost all abstained or voted against the 1986 Declaration. As the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights noted at the time, it was framed in legal terms as ‘a human right in the context of relations between developing and developed countries’ (UN, 1991). Nonetheless, while little progress has been made towards implementing the Declaration on the Right to Development, the push to unify these two central missions of UN activ-
ity continued to gain traction in 1990s. Over the decade following the 1986 Declaration, ‘bilateral and multilateral aid agencies published a slew of policy statements, guidelines, and documents on the incorporation of human rights in their mandate’ (Uvin, 2007: 599), culminating in Sen’s idea of development as the removal of factors that limit freedom (Sen, 1999). The UNDP’s 2000 Human Development Report explored this convergence further, arriving at a set of implications for development practice, including the need for awareness-raising about human rights norms, advocating to governments to bring laws into alignment with international human-rights standards, and promotion of rights-enabling economic environments (UNDP, 2000). It argued that while human rights had been largely perceived in legal terms and pursued by lawyers and activists, and development in economic terms pursued by economists and policymakers, the two shared a common goal: the freedom, well-being and dignity of all people (UNDP, 2000: 8). The UNDP thus argued they should be brought closer in implementation. The World Bank Annual Report (2001) agreed, suggesting a central aspect of poverty was that the poor ‘often lack legal rights that would empower them to take advantage of opportunities and protect them from arbitrary and inequitable treatment’. The RBA was thus developed as an alternative framework to bring human rights and development together without the baggage of the Right to Development. It was initially articulated and championed primarily by Western leaders and thinkers. Subsequent explorations, mostly by academics and leaders closely engaged with NGOs, fleshed out the key theoretical and practical frameworks (see e.g. Hamm, 2001; Nelson & Dorsey, 2003; Harris-Curtis, 2003; Uvin, 2004; Cornwall & Nyamu-Musembi, 2004; Nyamu-Musembi & Cornwall, 2004). On the back of this work, the RBA has now been mainstreamed across much of the development sector.
Politicization of development
The RBA signalled a shift in development thinking from a primary focus on needs to rights, and from charity to duty (Uvin, 2007). Uvin (2004: 2–3) noted the extent to which it involved Anthony Ware
524 Elgar encyclopedia of development a radical [change] … demanding profound changes in choices of partners, the range of activities undertaken and the rationale for them, internal management systems andfunding procedures, and the type of relationships established with partners in the public and non-governmental sectors.
Definitions diverge greatly between various authorities and agencies. One definition suggests that RBA simply means ensuring every programme, policy or process of development remains conducive to, and furthers the realization of and overall respect for, universally recognized human rights (Gouwenberg, 2009). However, most articulations of the RBA reconceptualize poverty as the direct result of disempowerment, discrimination, marginalization and exclusion, rather than more random deprivation, bad fortune, poorly conceived or implemented policy or the failure of individuals themselves to embrace opportunities. It thus promotes improvements in respect and protection of human rights as one (if not the) primary means of alleviating poverty and inequality. In so doing, RBA frames poverty as a human rights violation: Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, for example, declared as early as 1997 that poverty itself is a violation of numerous basic human rights (Robinson, 1997; Alston & Robinson, 2005: 26). The UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights has had a Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights since 2006. The RBA thus redefines the nature of poverty and underdevelopment as deeply political, pointing to root causes such as social or structural horizontal inequalities and institutional discrimination. It thus points to new, more political processes and mechanisms for pursuing development outcomes than had previously been the norm, including citizens and the international community leveraging what they can to advocate for or demand new policies and government processes, and assisting in the formulation of these (where possible). It also promotes awareness-raising about human rights amongst poor, marginalized and discriminated-against groups, together with work to empower the ability of these groups to claim their rights be protected by their government. It thus seeks to hold duty-bearers to account under international human rights legislation, particularly Anthony Ware
national governments, and empower the poor or marginalized ‘to claim their rights and to change the social structures that keep them poor’ (ACFID, 2009: 6). In particular, the RBA seeks to assist marginalized poor people assert their rights to a fair share of resources and power within their country, including provision of basic services and an equitable application of the law, ‘making the process explicitly political’ (Nyamu-Musembi & Cornwall, 2004: 3). A central aim of an RBA is ‘a positive transformation of power relations’ for those in poverty (Nyamu-Musembi & Cornwall, 2004: iii), in which they claim a voice in decision-making and policymaking. Cornwall and Nyamu-Musembi (2004) argue that the RBA offers attractive normative, pragmatic and ethical advantages. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and the promulgation of all subsequent human rights declarations, conventions and law through the United Nations, set a powerful univeral framework, transcending local variations in culture, politics or economy. RBA thus sets out ‘a vision of what ought to be … a normative framework to orient development cooperation’ with universal applicability, not troubled by questions of local applicability (Cornwall & Nyamu-Musembi, 2004: 1416, citing Hausermann, 1998). This, in turn, embues development assistance with a highly desireable ethical and moral dimension. The fact the approach is grounded in international human rights legislation makes it distinctively different to other approaches to development, strongly politicizing development. To many, an RBA is a normative framework for development that ‘puts politics at the very heart of development practice’ (Nyamu-Musembi & Cornwall, 2004: 12). Its foundation is the centrality of the relationship between rights-holders and duty-bearers to poverty and the development process, and thus makes development an exercise of changing power structures first and foremost, in large part via application of (international) law. In this, the RBA focuses development thinking and actors on issues of power, putting the spotlight on politics at the location of the development programming, and importantly includes the power dynamics inherent in the practice of international development itself. It brings a normative dimension to development that most commonly promotes genuinely inclusive and democratic
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processes, particularly in decision-making over the resources and institutions that affect people’s lives, and links these inherently have with development.
Critiques
As with everything, there are a number of significant critiques of the RBA. On the positive side, the RBA can serve as an opportunity to reflect more broadly on the power dynamics inherent in the practice of global development itself, and on questions of ethics around poverty, inequality and aid. It is also a way of reframing participation: Ferguson (1990), for example, argued that development in Lesotho at that time distracted time-poor participants with excessive low-impact, hyper-local planning and organizing activities with no political impact. This, he argued, served to further marginalize them from political realities and power, via engagement in seemingly positive development activities that primarily served to strengthen the presence and power of the State. The RBA seeks to reverse this dynamic, engaging the poor and marginalized in politics and contestations over power. Nonetheless, the RBA remains contested (Oestreich, 2020). One negative critique, sketched out above, is that it was developed in large part to disempower and unwind the 1986 UN Declaration on the Right to Development, which had been developed and adopted by a majority of UN member states but rejected by the powerful former-colonial powers and their settler societies. There is thus a sense in which the RBA was adopted by the donor community largely because it brought rights and development together in a way that did not engage the ideology of the Right to Development, meaning it was a way to avoid the claims inherent in that Declaration making foreign aid a human rights duty (Nyamu-Musembi & Cornwall, 2004: 22). This alone, raises significant concerns about the politics of what is meant to be a universal and normative approach, and concerns about the projection of highly political normative agendas within development. It might be concluded that the RBA has been used to deflect concerns about Western historical responsibility, if not culpability, for global inequality, and the ongoing economic and political hegemony of nations and institutions. Certainly, although RBA is well-institutionalized as a norm, it is not
nearly as widely accepted by states themselves (Oestreich, 2020). It is noted, for example, that through this period the UK Department for International Development (DFID) commissioned multiple major White Papers on Eliminating World Poverty (1997, 2000, 2006, 2009) – none make any reference to the Right to Development in any way at all, while all discuss the rights-based approach to development at length. There is evidence the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office specifically advised proponents of the rights-based approach to exclude any reference to the Declaration. A second critique is that the practice of most international human rights organizations, and organizations promoting the RBA, have focused primarily on civil and political rights. International law is clear in saying that all human rights, both civil–political (CP) and economic–social–cultural (ESC), are indivisible and mutually reinforcing (Uvin, 2004: 14). Nonetheless, most rights discourse and RBA focuses on the CP rights, which are priorities for Western nations, rather than the ESC rights most strongly promoted by much of the rest of the world, arguing ESC rights are at best laudable aspirations, but not enforceable rights (for example, see Ignatieff, 2000; Neier, 2003). Given the plethora of ESC rights declarations, conventions and international law passed by the UN, this preoccupation with CP rights furthers the argument the RBA involves a degree of Western cultural imperialism and projection of international soft power. The RBA is often used as a means for donor nations to frame bilateral and multilateral aid as a secondary duty, if not an act of charity. Under international law, the State is the principal duty-bearer with respect to the human rights of the people living within its jurisdiction. However, the international community at large also has a responsibility to help realize universal human rights. This latter duty is often neglected. Donor countries and major international institutions, while insisting that they now see the people in recipient countries as rights-bearers, widely neglect to see themselves as bearing any defined duties that contribute to the concrete realization of these rights. Beyond the acknowledgement that the primary duty flows from the recipient state to its citizens, it is not clear where the donor countries position themselves in the Anthony Ware
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‘rights–duties’ equation (Nyamu-Musembi & Cornwall, 2004: 11). At most, as the UN Sustainable Development Group1 (UNSDG, 2003: 1) concluded, human rights standards should guide all development cooperation and programming, notably by ‘development of the capacities of “duty-bearers” [i.e. recipient governments] to meet their obligations and/or of “rights-holders” to claim their rights’. Beyond this, as Nyamu-Musembi and Cornwall (2004: 17) argue, ‘agencies can proclaim their commitment to human rights, yet the bulk of their practice remains entirely unaffected by nice-sounding policies as it is framed by older or competing development models that remain hegemonic in practice.’ Three other unintended consequences are that: (a) it focuses exclusive attention on humans, with no attention or thought to the non-human world, and how provision of human rights or meeting human needs may impact the animal world or environmental systems. It gives no thought or priority to environmental sustainability, and promotes human exceptionalism; (b) it tends towards giving priority to severe or gross types of rights violations even if these affect only a small number of people, while ignoring approaches that would offer a basis for justifying a focus on less severe types of violations that affect a larger number of people (Nyamu-Musembi & Cornwall, 2004: 3); and (c) the RBA, being inherently political, is logically at odds with the explicitly non-political formulation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Alston, 2005; Nelson, 2007). As Nelson (2007: 2041) argued, ‘The MDGs are a careful restatement of poverty-related development challenges, in language that avoids reference to rights’ in order to mobilize resources and ensure cooperation of states globally. There is strong adversarial relation to the state built into the human rights notion, domestically and internationally (Uvin, 2004: 14). The MDGs and SDGs recognize that some RBA language and activities are likely to provoke strongly post-colonial reactions in some contexts. They recognize that in highly contested contexts in which sections of the international community are also partially implicated for poverty and deprivation, blaming the current economic or humanitarian situation solely on failures of a current regime can be highly Anthony Ware
provocative, and limit access by international agencies. Critical to the issue is that Western governments and agencies regularly couch their most stinging rebukes of belligerent regimes and governments in human rights language, even using human rights rebukes as cover to call for regime change. A more sympathetic examination of the complexity of the political and economic trauma within the country should evoke a less self-righteous approach, which research has demonstrated to be far more conducive to evoking change (Ware, 2012). Anthony Ware
Note 1.
The UN Development Group comprised: UNICEF, UNFPA, UN Habitat, UNCTAD, the World Bank, International Labour Organization and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
References
ACFID. 2009. Rights in Sight: Australian aid and Development NGOs on Human Rights. Australian Council for International Development (ACFID): Canberra. Alston, Philip. 2005. ‘Ships Passing in the Night: The Current State of the Human Rights and Development Debate Seen through the Lens of the Millennium Development Goals’, Human Rights Quarterly, 27(3): 755–829. Alston, Philip & Mary Robinson (eds). 2005. Human Rights and Development: Towards Mutual Reinforcement, Oxford: Oxford University Press Beetham, David. 2006. ‘The Right to Development and Its Corresponding Obligations’, in Bård A. Andreassen & Stephen P. Marks (eds), Development as a Human Right: Legal, Political, and Economic Dimensions, Harvard School of Public Health, François-Xavier Bagnoud Centre for Health and Human Rights: Cambridge, MA. Broberg, Morten & Hans-Otto Sano. 2018. ‘Strengths and Weaknesses in a Human Rights-Based Approach to International Development: An Analysis of a Rights-Based Approach to Development Assistance Based on Practical Experiences’, The International Journal of Human Rights, 22(5): 664–80. Cornwall, Andrea & Celestine Nyamu-Musembi. 2004. ‘Putting the “Rights-Based Approach” to Development into Perspective’, Third World Quarterly, 25(8): 1415–37. DFID. 1997. Eliminating World Poverty: A Challenge for the 21st Century. White Paper on International Development, UK Department for International Development (DFID): London.
Rights-based approach to development 527 DFID. 2000. Eliminating World Poverty: Making Globalisation Work for the Poor. White Paper on International Development, UK Department for International Development (DFID): London. DFID. 2006. Eliminating World Poverty: Making Governance Work for the Poor. White Paper on International Development, UK Department for International Development (DFID): London. DFID. 2009. Eliminating World Poverty: Building our Common Future. White Paper on International Development, UK Department for International Development (DFID): London. Ferguson, C. 1999. Global Social Policy Principles: Human Rights and Social Justice, UK Department for International Development (DFID): London. Ferguson, J. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gouwenberg, Anna E. 2009. The Legal Implementation of the Right to Development. A Study of the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden University. Hamm, Bridgitte. 2001. ‘Human Rights Approach to Development’, Human Rights Quarterly, 23(4): 1005–31. Harris-Curtis, Emma. 2003. ‘Rights-Based Approaches: Issues for NGOs’, Development in Practice, 13(5): 558–64. Hausermann, Julia. 1998. ‘A Human Rights Approach to Development’, discussion paper commissioned by DFID in preparation for DFID 2000, London: Rights and Humanity. Ignatieff, Michael. 2000. The Rights Revolution, Toronto: Anansi Press. Neier, Aryeh. 2003. Taking Liberties: Four Decades in the Struggle for Rights, New York: Public Affairs. Nelson, Paul. 2007. ‘Human Rights, the Millennium Development Goals, and the Future of Development Cooperation’, World Development, 35(12): 2041–55. Nelson, Paul & Ellen Dorsey. 2003. ‘At the Nexus of Human Rights and Development: New Methods and Strategies of Global NGOs’, World Development, 31(12): 2013–26. Nyamu-Musembi, Celestine & Andrea Cornwall. 2004. What is the “Rights-Based Approach” All About? Perspectives From International
Development Agencies. IDS Working Paper 234. Institute of Development Studies: University of Sussex, UK. Oestreich, Joel E. 2020. ‘Headwinds and Tailwinds to the Rights-Based Approach to Development: A Regime Theory Perspective’, Journal of Human Rights, 19(4): 449–63. OHCHR. 2006. Frequently Asked Questions on a Human Rights-Based Approach to Development Cooperation. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: New York and Geneva. Robinson, Mary. 1997. Realizing Human Rights: The Romanes Lecture, Oxford: Clarendon. Sen, Amartya Kumar. 1999. Development as Freedom, Oxford University Press: Oxford. Umbricht, Victor. 1979. ‘Right to Development’, in Rene-Jean Dupuy (ed.), The Right to Development at the International Level (Workshop, The Hague, 16–18 October 1979), Sijthoff & Noordhoff: Pays-bas, the Netherlands. UN. 1986. Declaration on the Right to Development. Resolution A/RES/41/128, issued by the United Nations General Assembly. UN. 1991. The Realization of the Right to Development: Global Consultation on the Right to Development as a Human Right. HR/ PUB/91/2. Centre for Human Rights (Geneva), United Nations: New York. UNDP. 2000. Human Development Report: Human Rights and Human Development. New York: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). UNSDG. 2003. The Human Rights Based Approach to Development: Cooperation Towards a Common Understanding Among UN Agencies, UN Sustainable Development Group. Uvin, Peter. 2004. Human Rights and Development, Boulder, CO: Kumarian Press. Uvin, Peter. 2007. ‘From the Right to Development to the Rights-Based Approach: How “Human Rights” Entered Development’, Development in Practice, 17: 598–9. Ware, Anthony. 2012. Context-Sensitive Development: How International NGOs Operate in Myanmar, Boulder, CO: Kumarian Press. World Bank. 2001. Annual Report 2001. World Bank Group: Washington, DC.
Anthony Ware
Rising powers Rising powers as a term is used for countries that are increasingly influencing global affairs. The term refers mainly to countries from the global South but to some extent also to other countries (like Russia). Rising powers are crucial in many regards. They are essential parts of a system of international actors (e.g. contributing to the trend of multipolarity), they are crucial for dynamics of the global affairs (establishment of new international platforms and institutions) and they are a key for global challenges and problem-solving approaches. The rise of South–South Cooperation is attributed mostly to this country group.
Defining rising powers and main characteristics of the country group
Like other attempts at country classification, the term rising powers is controversial, competing partly with designations including emerging economies or powers, middle-income countries, medium-sized powers or regional powers (Paul 2016; Scholvin 2016; Manicom/Reeves 2014). The continuing definitional controversy is justified, going hand in hand, as it does, with core underlying concepts and assumptions about international relations (IR) and global development. For the purposes of this entry, finding a suitable term to describe the dynamic of country types and their demarcation from traditional country classifications is paramount (Klingebiel 2018; Stephen 2021; Hurrell 2019; Paul 2018). In this respect, past IR discourse has been shaped by the following time-honoured debates, according to which the international system is dominated by one or a few superpowers and, in parts, by further big powers. Depending on the school of theory to which one adheres, there were, or are, various ways of classifying countries and the options for controlling the same above and beyond this very small group of states. Traditional realist approaches, developed by Hans Morgenthau or Kenneth Waltz, for instance, would describe the medium-sized powers as a category beneath the super- and big-powers in the hierarchy of nations, which are unable to trigger processes of change of
any great import within international relations. According to this view, medium-sized powers are not proactive but reactive stakeholders within the international system. States in the sense of liberal, neoliberal or institutionalist theories, including, in particular, those developed by Robert Keohane, Joseph Nye and Stephen Krasner, display a different profile. According to these concepts, medium-sized powers certainly are able to shape international relations, be it via niche diplomacy, norm-setting roles, the use and expansion of multilateral channels or the establishment of international regimes to pursue rule-making within specific policy domains. These two tendencies naturally do not encompass all schools of thought. Here, it is initially merely important to demonstrate that the new and dynamic medium-sized powers constitute a new type of power which differs significantly from the earlier discourses. In this respect, the term rising powers creates a meaningful distinction to and demarcation from medium-sized powers such as Australia and Canada, which continue to exist and which are also subjected to a new set of circumstances (Cooper 2013). Broadly speaking, states which have predominantly experienced a dynamic economic development in the first two decades of the 2000s, which make a pronounced claim to the shaping of the international system, be this primarily at a regional or at a global level, and whose claim is fundamentally accepted by other stakeholders, should be described as rising powers. In addition, countries falling into this category are anxious to pursue group interests as rising powers on a global scale by means of new associations (Paul 2016; Prys 2012; Flemes 2009). According to this characterization, Brazil, China, India and, to a certain extent, Russia, form the core of a group identity of this nature. These countries are joined by Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Turkey, South Africa and South Korea. Despite the similarities, the heterogeneity of such a group is naturally undeniable. The vast absolute economic powers of China in comparison with those of South Africa, or the populations of the two countries, display enormous differences. In terms of economic potential, a ratio of 34:1 exists between the two countries, while the population ratio is 25:1.1
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Increasingly the label rising power seems to underestimate significantly the role of China. Even the term ‘rising super-power’ would neglect the position of the country as a game changer. China’s economic and military potential has a growing influence over norms, standards, and conventions in global affairs (Leonard 2021). Interestingly, a plethora of relatively new ‘country clubs’, such as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) and MIKTA (Mexico, Indonesia, Korea, Turkey, Australia) have been formed in recent years, which are based on similarly implicit understandings. The group of rising powers is also a significant element of a comparatively new club governance model, together with the traditional G7 (group of 7), namely the G20 (group of 20). Here it is important to outline two aspects of these dynamic club concepts. Firstly, the question of whether some club approaches are based on a membership profile which includes domestic democratic governance in respective rising powers. If such a governance feature of specific clubs might exist the question whether these clubs are striving to pursue external policies which are facilitating democratic norms is relevant. In this respect, several observers anticipate that IBSA and MIKTA display potential (Husar 2016); however, such an intention is virtually impossible to confirm as far as the policies promoted by these clubs are concerned. In addition, the internal democratic model, particularly in the case of Turkey, is under pressure (Aydın-Düzgit 2016), with the result that it appears less plausible for this country to systematically promote a foreign relations policy aligned to democratic values. A second aspect is the new-found heterogeneity of these clubs, and the permeability in terms of their membership structure. As far as membership is concerned, these clubs do not exclusively include rising powers from the global South. On the contrary, the examples of Russia and Australia demonstrate that a former superpower and a traditional middle-sized power can find a place within the collective strategic promotion of interests.2 Based on OECD estimates several middle-income countries (including China and Turkey) will most likely graduate in the 2020s from the group of developing countries
and thereby lose their eligibility for receiving official development assistance (ODA). Against this background, there are two relevant conclusions for the debate on rising powers. Firstly, it needs to be stressed that rising powers have a significant potential to shape processes and trigger change, something which differs significantly from traditional discourses relating to medium-sized powers. This sphere of influence is related to shifts in political influence, as the comparative authority of the remaining traditional superpower, the USA, is experiencing ever greater restrictions, and big- and medium-sized powers are also suffering a relative loss of importance. At the same time, the power potential of rising powers – as far as China’s foreign exchange reserves are concerned, for example, or Turkey’s role in the Near and Middle East crisis zones – is increasing. Secondly, it is becoming increasingly apparent that global challenges need to be solved by developing and implementing international networks which are not only as large as possible, but often also transnational in nature. This applies, inter alia, to security, global health and climate protection-related topics. There is little point in setting CO2-related global targets without including China, for example, as the rising powers have evinced tremendous increases in emissions in recent years (Schnellnhuber/ Messner et al. 2011). China accounts for 30 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions (2020) and more emissions than all developing countries combined (Rivera/Movalia/Pitt/ Larsen 2021). Rising powers have the strong incentive that their roles as global or at least regional stakeholders are acknowledged (Culp 2016; Manicom/Reeves 2014; Paul 2016). At the same time, the discussion regarding the question of which norms and standards could be applied by this group of countries as far as their contribution to a global common good or, more specifically, to the provision of transnational collective goods is concerned, requires further elaboration. In recent years, a debate around whether the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ (CBDR) could serve as a road map has developed (Pauw et al. 2014; Besharati 2013). The CBDR principle, which derives from the environment economy, would, if only abstractly, determine a fundamental shared responsibility of rising powers in the solving Stephan Klingebiel
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of global problems, yet simultaneously recognize the differing capacities available in terms of addressing these topics, particularly as far as the OECD world is concerned. The establishment of such a principle would improve the development, diffusion and implementation of activities related to the provision of transnational public goods in at least two ways: firstly, rising powers would accept a basic responsibility; secondly, the principal would recognize the limited capacity (in terms of financial resources, technical capacity, for instance, to sharpen norms and standards developed by international regimes) of rising powers to contribute to the actual provision of transnational public goods compared to high-income countries. With a few notable exceptions, intergovernmental negotiations have been unable to draw on such a principle as a point of reference to date. A more detailed examination of the principles surrounding the international involvement of this country group is still pending.
Rising powers as providers of South–South cooperation
Rising powers form the core group of South–South cooperation (SSC) providers. Especially China is a main SSC development partner for a number of developing countries on the African continent and beyond. Other rising powers such as India, South Africa, Turkey, Brazil and Mexico are engaged in this field as well. In addition, just few non-rising powers from the global South act as providers of SSC as well; Rwanda is such an exception. The 2000s are marked by a significant increase in SSC. However, there is still no common understanding of what precisely SSC is and how it should be monitored (Chaturvedi et al. 2021; Bracho 2021). Generally speaking, there is no global approach for development cooperation, but two major sub-systems can be named. First, the long predominant system of development cooperation provided by OECD countries: Official Development Assistance (ODA). Second, a heterogeneous set of practices led by rising powers identified under the SSC umbrella. Neither group nor development approach is entirely fixed or stable. On the contrary, development cooperation is a decentralized Stephan Klingebiel
policy area in which different principles and practices are increasingly intertwined (Esteves/Klingebiel 2021). For example, the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD includes the Republic of Korea – a country formerly of the global South. Different understandings of development cooperation are contested in international development debates. For instance, the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) is intended to be the main platform for actors on aid and development effectiveness topics, but it is not a global platform since major actors like Brazil, China and India are not participants. ODA and SSC are running on parallel tracks, with no relevant exchange taking place (Bracho 2021; Esteves/Klingebiel 2021; Mello e Souza 2021). SSC by rising powers is organized and defined to a limited extent. IBSA is an exception in this regard; the group provided a definition of SSC in 2018. This definition can also be regarded as an implicit definition for most SSC providers While emphasizing the principles of ‘respect for national sovereignty; national ownership and independence; equality; non-conditionality; non-interference in domestic affairs; and mutual benefit’, IBSA partners claim that ‘SSC is completely different from the North–South/donor–donee cooperation, and that ODA templates are not a good basis for SSC’. Nevertheless, a clearly defined group of SSC providers and a jointly shared approach are not yet available. For example, Rwanda’s support for African partner countries is quite outside of the current SSC mainstream discourse of SCC providers coming from the group of rising powers. Based on the ‘Buenos Aires Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries’ adopted in 1978, the 2nd High-Level United Nations Conference on South–South Cooperation (this new Buenos Aires Plan of Action conference is abbreviated as BAPA+40) took place in March 2019 in Buenos Aires. However, BAPA+40 as a main event on SSC and triangular cooperation failed to find new ways forward. SSC is an important illustration for contested global governance and the politicization of international institutions and counter-institutionalism by rising
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powers from the global South. According to Chaturvedi et al. (2021) there are two main forms of contestation: ‘politicization of international authorities’ (also called regime-shifting or institution-shifting) and ‘counter-institutionalization’ (also called regime-creation or institution-creation). Using these concepts for development cooperation, actors can therefore either challenge existing international institutions by working through them, or create new international institutions that better address their needs. The creation of new international institutions such as the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) by rising powers provide relevant examples in this regard. Therefore, the concept of contested cooperation describes the current development cooperation landscape that is shaped by ongoing processes of institution-shifting and institution-creation within established forms of development cooperation and new types of cooperation. Stephan Klingebiel
S. et al. (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Development Cooperation for Achieving the 2030 Agenda. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 367–91. Chaturvedi, Sachin/Janus, Heiner/Klingebiel, Stephan/Xiaoyun, Li/Mello e Souza, André/ Sidiropoulos, Elizabeth/Wehrmann, Dorothea (2021). Development Cooperation in the Context of Contested Global Governance. In: Chaturvedi, S. et al. (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Development Cooperation for Achieving the 2030 Agenda. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 1–21. Cooper, Andrew F. (2013). Squeezed or Revitalised? Middle Powers, the G20 and the Evolution of Global Governance. Third World Quarterly, 34(6), 963–84. Culp, Julian (2016). How Irresponsible Are Rising Powers? Third World Quarterly, 37(9), 1525–36. Esteves, Paulo/Klingebiel, Stephan (2021). Diffusion, Fusion, and Confusion: Development Cooperation in a Multiplex World Order. In: Chaturvedi, S. et al. (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Development Cooperation for Achieving the 2030 Agenda. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 185–215. Flemes, Daniel (2009). Regional Power South Africa: Co-operative Hegemony Constrained Notes by Historical Legacy. Journal of Contemporary 1. Several calculations regarding data for 2020, African Studies, 27(2), 135–57. based on https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/ Hurrell, Andrew (2019). Rising Powers and the countries/china/#economy and https://www.cia Emerging Global Order. In: Baylis, John/Smith, .gov/the-world-factbook/countries/south-africa/ Steve/Owens, Patricia (eds), The Globalization #economy. of World Politics: An Introduction to 2. It should also be noted that the membership strucInternational Relations. Oxford: Oxford tures in some of the old club formats are undergoing University Press, 85–98. significant changes. This applies, above all, to the rigorous shifts in membership of the Organisation Husar, Jörg (2016). Framing Foreign Policy for Economic Co-operation and Development in India, Brazil and South Africa, On the (OECD), which no longer constitutes an unadulLike-Mindedness of the IBSA States. Cham: terated group of Western industrial nations, taking Springer. the comparatively new members South Korea and Klingebiel, Stephan (2018). Transnational Public Chile as examples. Goods Provision: The Increasing Role of Rising Powers and the Case of South Africa. Third World Quarterly, 39(1), 175–88. References Aydın-Düzgit, Senem (2016). Turkey Has Leonard, Mark (2021). The Age of Unpeace: How Connectivity Causes Conflict. London: Bantam Given Up on Democracy Outside Its Borders, Press. Too. Foreign Policy. Available at: https:// Manicom, James/Reeves, Jeffrey (2014). foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/12/turkey-has Locating Middle Powers in International -given-up-on-democracy-outside-its-borders Relations Theory and Power Transitions. In: -too/(accessed 5 January 2022). Gilley, Bruce/O’Neil, Andrew (eds), Middle Besharati, Neissan Alessandro (2013). Common Powers and the Rise of China. Baltimore, MD: Goals and Differential Commitments: The Georgetown University Press, 23–44. Role of Emerging Economies in Global Development. Bonn: German Development Mello e Souza, André (2021). Building a Global Development Cooperation Regime: Failed but Institute (Discussion Paper 26/2013). Necessary Efforts. In: Chaturvedi, S. et al. Bracho, Gerardo (2021). Failing to Share the (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Development Burden: Traditional Donors, Southern Cooperation for Achieving the 2030 Agenda. Providers, and the Twilight of the GPEDC Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 349–66. and the Post-War Aid System. In: Chaturvedi,
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532 Elgar encyclopedia of development Paul, T.V. (2016). Accommodating Rising Powers: Past, Present and Future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paul, T.V. (2018). Restraining Great Powers, Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Pauw, Pieter et al. (2014). Different Perspectives on Differentiated Responsibilities: A State-of-the-Art Review of the Notion of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities in International Negotiations. Bonn: German Development Institute (Discussion Paper 6/2014). Prys, Miriam (2012). Redefining Regional Power in International Relations: Indian and South African Perspectives. London: Routledge. Rivera, Alfredo/Movalia, Shweta/Pitt, Hannah/ Larsen, Kate (2021). Preliminary 2020 Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Estimates.
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Rhodium Group. Available at: https://rhg.com/ research/preliminary-2020-global-greenhouse -gas-emissions-estimates/ (accessed 5 January 2022). Schnellnhuber, Hans Joachim/Messner, Dirk et al. (2011). World in Transition: A Social Contract for Sustainability. Flagship Report of the German Advisory Council on Global Change. Berlin: WBGU. Scholvin, Sören (2016). The Geopolitics of Regional Power: Geography, Economics and Politics in Southern Africa. London: Routledge. Stephen, Matthew D. (2021). Emerging Powers and Emerging Trends in Global Governance. In: Mills, Kurt/Stiles, Kendall (eds), Understanding Global Cooperation: Twenty-Five Years of Research on Global Governance. Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 445–65.
Rural–urban migration
Dual economic theory
from a stagnating economy based on a traditional rural sector to a growing economy driven by the development of a modern urban sector. There are three assumptions in this model. First, Lewis divides the less-developed economies into two sectors: the traditional subsistence sector with a large population and the modern capitalist sector with high labour productivity. Second, there is ‘surplus labour’ in the agricultural sector, so the marginal productivity in this sector is zero or even negative. The agricultural sector can supply a perfectly elastic labour force to the modern industrial sector as long as the wages are just equal to the mean product in the agricultural sector. Third, as long as the surplus labour is not fully absorbed by the industrial sector, urban wages will not increase as labour productivity increases. Given these assumptions, the supply price of surplus labour in the traditional sector to the capitalist sector is relatively low. The marginal productivity of the capitalist sector is much higher than the wage obtained by surplus labour in the traditional sector. Therefore, the capitalist sector can obtain not only an unlimited supply of labour but also profit from the difference between marginal productivity and labourers’ wages. Furthermore, the capitalist sector maintains a comprehensive source of funds due to a higher tendency to save, which can ensure the development of the sector, enhance the absorption capacity of the surplus labour, and ultimately achieve the ideal state of equal marginal productivity in the two sectors. In addition, the capitalist sector continues to expand so that economic growth will continue until the surplus labour in the economy disappears. When labour and capital become scarce, the wage level has to rise. In this way, industrialization can be achieved. The Lewis model is the first model to systematically discuss the problem of dual economic structure. It establishes the logical analysis framework of structuralism in development economics. Lewis encouraged the government to support rural–urban migration to promote labour and capital accumulation in the modern sector and accelerate urbanization.
The Lewis model Lewis (1954) first proposed the dual economic theory, which explains the transition
The Ranis–Fei model Ranis and Fei (1961) propose an improved model based on the Lewis model. This
Defining rural–urban migration
Rural–urban migration is a process of people moving from rural areas to cities within a country. The concept differs from international or intercontinental migration. Rural– urban migration is a dominant source of the growth of urbanization in developing countries. Individuals migrate from rural to urban areas to obtain a better income level, an opportunity to enhance capital skills, a more liveable living environment, and so on. Migration has great importance in promoting labour income and reducing the gap between rural and urban areas. In addition, it is often viewed as a means of labour market adjustment in the intersectoral shift from agriculture to the second or third sector, such as manufacturing and services. It is a long-term, gradual process, and countries usually take many decades to complete it. Economists believe that developing countries generally have prominent characteristics of a dual economy, that is, the coexistence of the traditional agriculture economy with backward technology and the modern industrial economy with high labour productivity. They believe that with the effective migration of surplus rural labour, developing countries will eventually realize the unification of the dual economy, that is, the modernization of the economy. The migration of surplus rural labour from rural to urban areas is the main aspect of urbanization. Related studies have produced several classic theoretical models of the dual structure, including Lewis’ dual economic structure model, Ranis–Fei’s model, Jorgenson’s dual economy model, and Todaro’s labour migration model. These models can be classified into two types: the first type is based on classical dual economic theory and includes the Lewis model and the Ranis–Fei model, and the second type is based on neoclassical dual economic theory and includes the Jorgenson model and the Todaro model.
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model clearly identifies the two sectors in the dual structure of less-developed countries as the agricultural and industrial sectors which is different from Lewis’s model. They inherit Lewis’s exogenous assumptions of the real wage in the industrial sector, and they use ‘institutional wage’ to represent it. Furthermore, they refine the Lewis model’s division of economic development stages. In the first stage of economic development, the opportunity cost of labour transfer in the agricultural sector is small or close to zero, so the elasticity of the labour supply curve in the industrial sector is infinite, and the outward transfer of labour does not affect the total agricultural output. In the second stage, the marginal productivity of agricultural labour is higher than zero but lower than the institutional wage, and labour is no longer available in seemingly infinite supply. Disguised unemployment exists in both the first and second stages. At this time, agricultural development not only passively adapts to industrial development but also becomes a restrictive factor of industrial development. If the level of agricultural productivity continues to increase, the second stage that hinders economic development will disappear, and the economy can continue to develop. When the third stage is reached, the marginal output of labour is higher than the institutional wage at the initial point of economic development. According to Ranis and Fei, the transition from an agricultural society to a dual economy and eventually to a mature economy, is an essential type of growth. The major feature of the dual economy is the coexistence of a substantial agricultural sector and an active industrial sector. In their model, agricultural development is a necessary condition for the smooth progress of structural transformation, which overcomes the Lewis model’s neglect of agricultural development. Both the Lewis and Ranis–Fei models describe a general mechanism occurring at an initial stage of economic development, which justifies the assumed scarcity of capital and the abundance of labour in these models. They provide solid theoretical support for the policy guidance of migration from rural to urban areas. The policy implication of these models is that governments should ensure that migration from rural to urban areas is at least not impeded and is ideally even facilitated. The model also suggests Xinjie Shi and Bingyu Huangfu
that the government ensures high-enough investments to enable the take-off to occur. These implications tend to argue in favour of policies favouring investments in modern labour-intensive industries to exhaust the disguised unemployment in rural areas.
Neoclassical dual economic theory
Out of a systematic reflection on the Lewis and Ranis–Fei models, some economists tried to explain the dual economic problem under the neoclassical framework. Their starting point was to deny the existence of surplus labour with zero marginal productivity. They consider that the difference between the traditional and modern sectors is mainly reflected in the mode of production, which can be gradually eliminated through resource allocation under the neoclassical framework. The Jorgenson model and the Todaro model can be considered to represent neoclassical dual economic theory. The Jorgenson model The Jorgenson (1961) model assumes that there are two sectors involved in the economic system: the backward or traditional agricultural sector and the advanced or modern industrial sector. Land and labour are the two elements used for agricultural production. Under the premise of fixed land supply, agricultural production is determined by labour input. The marginal productivity of labour is higher than zero, and there is no surplus labour with zero marginal productivity. Industrial production uses two elements, capital and labour, and there is a relative shortage of capital. The absolute amounts of wages and profits are rising, but the relative shares remain the same. Due to the continuous advancement of technology, the output of the two sectors is a monotonically increasing function of time. Given these assumptions, the Jorgenson model proposes that the existence and scale of agricultural surplus is the basis for the development of the industrial sector. If the population growth rate leads to the decline or disappearance of agricultural surplus, the development of the industrial sector will also tend to stagnate, capital will continue to depreciate without new capital renewal, and the economy will quickly fall into a ‘low-level equilibrium trap’. To sustain economic devel-
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opment and avoid falling into that trap, it is necessary for the industrial sector to accumulate capital. However, the prerequisite is the existence of a positive agricultural surplus. When an agricultural surplus emerges, the development of the modern sector becomes possible. That is, when the agricultural output reaches the required amount for the fastest population growth, there will be surplus labour in the agricultural sector. This part of the surplus labour needs to be transferred, and the speed of the transfer of agricultural labour to the industrial sector depends on the growth rate of the agricultural surplus. The Jorgenson model emphasizes the continuous growth of the agricultural surplus by reducing the growth rate of the rural population and promoting agricultural technological progress. The constant growth of agricultural surplus is the ‘watershed’ between the low-level equilibrium trap and continuous economic growth. In this model, the point of economic growth transfers from the development of the modern industrial sector, as proposed in the Lewis model, to agricultural development, and the agricultural surplus replaces disguised unemployment as the source of capital accumulation and the only condition for labour transfer. The policy conclusion of this model is that technological progress is vital for agriculture and that reducing population growth is essential for reducing poverty and unemployment. The Todaro model The Lewis and Ranis–Fei models do not consider urban unemployment or offer a detailed analysis of the actual process of labour transfer. To compensate for this shortcoming, Todaro (Todaro, 1969; Harris & Todaro, 1970) pointed out that the dual economic theoretical framework does not analyse the defects of urban unemployment. Todaro tried to establish a rural–urban migration model to expand dual economic theory to explore the reasons for population mobility and analyse the policy significance of the model. Todaro proposes a two-stage theory of rural–urban migration. He accepts the argument that the Lewis and Ranis–Fei models equate economic development with the transformation of the economic structure, but he does not consider that rural–urban migration occurs in just one stage. Todaro believes that there are two stages of population migration.
In the first stage, rural surplus labourers first find temporary jobs in the traditional urban sectors, and after some time, they can enter the formal urban sectors for employment. In this model, an urban job-seeker evaluates their discounted expected income stream in the city, considering the endogenous probability of being employed. Since the transfer of rural labour is based on the expected urban–rural income gap rather than the actual urban–rural income gap, even though there is also a large amount of unemployment in the city, the rural population is still continuously pouring into the city. This leads to a severe imbalance in the urban labour market and further compounds the unemployment problem. Therefore, Todaro believes that adopting the industrialization strategy of investing in capital in the modern industrial sector according to the Lewis model cannot solve the problem of rural surplus labour in developing countries. In contrast, employment opportunities in rural areas should be expanded, and comprehensive development in rural areas should be encouraged to reduce the imbalance between urban and rural employment and alleviate the flow of rural populations to cities. The government should pay more attention to cancelling intervention policy regarding urban wages, supporting the development of rural areas and agriculture, and enhancing the ability of agriculture to absorb employment instead of blindly promoting the migration of labour to cities. The main contribution of Todaro’s framework is thus the link it creates between urban unemployment and migration flows, which is more in line with the actual situation in developing countries. Todaro affirms that the migration of labourers from rural to urban areas is a rational decision, and the work of government departments is to guide and provide services rather than to force restrictions on the flow of people.
Representative migration patterns globally
According to the different levels of modernization, the current status of rural–urban migration in countries around the world can be divided into the following five categories. The first category is the rural–urban migration that occurred in the earliest modernized countries, such as the United Kingdom Xinjie Shi and Bingyu Huangfu
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and the United States. In these countries, rural–urban migration was spontaneously generated and synchronized with the process of industrialization and urbanization, with little human interference or hindrance. There was no phenomenon of disconnection or advancement from industrialization and urbanization. In these countries, the application of agricultural science and technology continuously increased agricultural labour productivity, and the rapid development of urbanization and industrialization promoted a great demand for labour. These factors all accelerated the migration of labour from rural to urban areas. The second category mainly refers to the rural–urban migration of countries whose economic and social development level is close to but not as high as that of the developed countries in the first category and that have basically completed industrialization and urbanization. These countries include, for example, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil. The progress of rural–urban migration in these countries is slower in comparison to the countries in the first category, and their industrialization and urbanization processes are not as smooth or well-coordinated. The third category refers to the countries and regions that have reached a high level of industrialization, urbanization, and modernization but have not yet completed the transformation from an agricultural society to an industrial society. Representative countries include Indonesia, the Philippines, and most countries in Latin America. Compared with the second-category countries, the third-category countries and regions have more tortuous experiences with rural–urban migration, as it is often disturbed by social conflicts and political events. The populations in these countries are limited by many policies aiming to prevent migration from rural to urban areas. For example, nativist policies benefit locally born persons, and rural development schemes are used as an indirect way of deterring migration to cities. The incompleteness of farmers’ social mobility is more prominent in these countries, and the method of mobility is more traditional. The fourth category refers to rural–urban migration in countries and regions that have made much progress in industrialization, urbanization, and modernization, but the entire society has not yet shaken off the state Xinjie Shi and Bingyu Huangfu
of an agricultural society. The rural–urban migration in China makes China a typical representative of this category. This type of migration is similar to the third type but also manifests a massive impact of the population pressure and the relative poverty and decline in rural areas on the movement of farmers. However, rural–urban migration in China has a unique characteristic which is referred to as the household registration system. The household registration system was initiated in 1955 and required that all residents live in the place where they were born and obtain permission if they wished to move. This system strictly controlled the scale of cities, which led to a severe urban–rural division and hindered the process of urbanization in China. After the ‘reform and opening up’, the household registration system gradually changed based on fairness and efficiency considerations. From relaxing restrictions on migration to lowering the conditions for household registration and eventually abolishing agricultural and non-agricultural household registration and implementing the residence permit system, the reform of the household registration system has continuously made breakthroughs. Also, it has promoted the balanced development of China’s urban and rural society, facilitated the flow of the labour force, and accelerated urban– rural integration. According to the Seventh National Census and the Annual Migrant Investigation Report, 63.89 per cent of the population lived in urban areas in 2020, with a total of 285.6 million migrant workers who have left agriculture to work in cities. This suggests that China will soon join the countries in the second category. The last category is rural–urban migration in countries or regions with the lowest national economic income or the greatest poverty in the world, such as Rwanda and Burundi in Africa and Nepal in Asia. Rural migration in this type of country or region is often not caused and promoted by industrialization and urbanization but due to conventional agricultural society. Such mobility does not eliminate the constraints of traditional agricultural society, so it is typical of classical rural mobility. In Africa, significant population growth and extreme poverty have become the main phenomena of urbanization. The influx of large numbers of farmers has brought African cities to the verge of
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collapse, and urban poverty has become the bottleneck of urbanization in Africa. The apartheid system (1948–94) used extreme controls to monitor what was meant to be the temporary migration of rural workers to cities. Because urbanization and economic development have not been synchronized for a long time, the abnormal development of urbanization has put African cities in a long-term predicament. Housing shortages, unemployment and poverty, and frequent natural disasters have become major obstacles restricting the development of African cities. In summary, the scale of migration in the first category of countries or regions stabilizes at a relatively low level, and the rate of migration gradually slows down. In the countries or regions in the other categories, rural–urban migration is basically increasing. Xinjie Shi and Bingyu Huangfu
References
Harris, J.R., & Todaro, M.P. (1970). Migration, unemployment & development: a two-sector analysis. American Economic Review, 60(1), 126–42. Jorgenson, D.W. (1961). The development of a dual economy. The Economic Journal, 71(282), 309–34. Lewis, A. (1954). Economic development with unlimited supplies of labour. The Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies, 22(2), 139–91. Ranis, G., & Fei, J.C. (1961). A theory of economic development. American Economic Review, 51(4), 533–65. Todaro, M.P. (1969). Model of labor migration and unemployment in less developed countries. American Economic Review, 59(1), 138–48.
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Save the Children
Historical background
Save the Children is a child-focused development NGO that seeks to ‘save and improve children’s lives around the world’ by ensuring, for instance, healthcare, food, shelter, education, and child protection (Save the Children 2022b). The organization characterizes itself as ‘a global membership organisation, made up of Save the Children International and thirty national members’ (Save the Children 2022a). These thirty national members are: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Eswatini, Fiji, Finland, Germany, Honduras, Hong Kong SAR, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States. In spring 2022, more than 25,000 Save the Children staff worked in 122 countries (Save the Children 2022a). Since Save the Children is such a long-standing player and had a tangible impact on its field of work by developing child sponsorship approaches, this entry presents a short sketch of the historical evolution of the organization. Another aspect of Save the Children’s work that stands out is its contribution to the development of children’s rights and child rights-based approaches to development practice. These are of crucial importance for attempting to tackle the structural causes underlying children’s rights deficits and for broadening the basis for realizing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). This Convention was adopted in 1989 and is a prime international articulation of children’s rights. The CRC contains a comprehensive and universally applicable set of child rights obligations for all its 196 states parties (United Nations Treaty Collection 2022) covering nearly all aspects of children’s lives.1
As early as 1919, Eglantyne Jebb, together with her sister Dorothy Frances Buxton, founded the Save the Children Fund (SCF) in the UK. In 1920 they established the International Save the Children Union, based in Geneva, Switzerland. These steps were part of their response to witnessing child hunger and starvation in various European states after the First World War (Save the Children 2022c; Mahood 2009: 173–4; Watson 2014: 22). Eglantyne served as the honorary secretary of the SCF and vice-president of the Save the Children International Union until her death in 1928 (Mahood 2009: 2, 164–5). It is interesting that, right from the start and in line with the vision of its founders, Save the Children reached out both to children at home and abroad. This is still the case today. According to Mahood and Satzewich, the ‘British based SCF was one of the first non-governmental western aid organizations whose main purpose was to provide relief to children outside of the national context within which funds were raised’ (Mahood and Satzewich 2009: 80). They confirmed that, in the early 1920s, the SCF ‘supported famine relief in a number of countries (…) including, Armenia, France, Germany, Hungary, Austria and within Britain itself’ (Mahood and Satzewich 2009: 60). They qualified the creation of the SCF as an interesting example of early, internationally oriented child saving. Like other charities at the time, and many charities today, the Fund advanced a number of claims about why individuals should care about children in far off places. (…) these claims also generated social, political and economic opposition. (Mahood and Satzewich 2009: 58)
Especially the extensive work on famine relief support for children in Russia in the early 1920s was subject to fierce criticism (e.g. about feeding ‘the enemy’) at the time.
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Nevertheless, in its early years Save the Children already did well in raising funds. Perhaps this was the result of being ‘one of the first British charities to hire a professional fundraising specialist’ (Mahood and Satzewich 2009: 77) and/or of developing a strategy for using photographs, film and advertisements for fundraising campaigns (Mahood 2009: 176–7). A ‘child adoption’ or individual child sponsorship scheme was introduced as well. This entailed that an individual donor could ‘adopt’ a specific child for two shillings a week, to cover, for instance, daily milk rations and/or meals for the child (Watson 2014: 25). According to Mahood: SCF staff matched prospective foster-parents with child refugees in the orphanages and refugee camps in Austria, France, Germany and Hungary and from among Russians ‘scattered throughout Europe’. In exchange for the food the selected children were given, it was hoped that a ‘correspondence would spring up between the child and the foster parents which would be fruitful for good’. (Mahood 2009: 177)
Although it is not certain where exactly the original idea of this form of child sponsorship came up for the first time, the early practice by the SCF definitely laid the basis for a model of child sponsorship that soon would be applied much more widely, for example by Quakers, the US-based Christian Children’s Fund (now Childfund), Foster Parents Plan (now Plan International), and Save the Children USA (Watson 2014: 18–20, 24–7). While overall the SCF’s adoption scheme was a fundraising success, problems already manifested at the time, which would subsequently force various organizations working with individual child sponsorship approaches to adjust them or give up on that process altogether. According to Watson: Key problems included ongoing confusion and miscommunication over lists of adopted children, discrepancies in payments made by godparents, difficulty in administering gift giving, concern that short-term sponsorships left children vulnerable in coming winters, a strong feeling that some families should pay a portion of the costs of their food parcels to avoid the demoralization of dependency. (Watson 2014: 36–7)
In addition, some of the children were disappointed because they did not receive communications from their ‘godparent’, and some ‘godparents’ were disappointed because of the characteristics of the child assigned to them (Watson 2014: 37). Much later, as of the 1970s, the child sponsorship model started to become subject of both professional and public criticism. It was fiercely scrutinized within the Save the Children organization as well. For instance, Save the Children USA reportedly and explicitly realized the shortcomings of direct individual support of children and their families, for instance in terms of not addressing the structural causes of poverty, inequality, exclusion or marginalization. To create breakthroughs, funding was then pooled to enable more collectively oriented community-based programmes. Part of the child sponsorship funding received by Save the Children USA (accounting for 75 per cent of its income in the 1970s) was gradually replaced by grants from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other public donors. This resulted in child sponsorship accounting for less than 25 per cent of Save the Children USA’s income at the end of the 1990s (Dowd et al. 2014: 97–8).
Child rights-based approach
Philanthropy, charity and child sponsorship approaches characterized much of the work done in the early days of the existence of Save the Children. Paternalistic and needs-based outlooks were no stranger to the organization or for that matter to the sector in which it was active. However, interestingly, Save the Children founder Eglantyne Jebb showed a keen interest in children’s rights as well. She took it upon herself to draft the (Geneva) Declaration of the Rights of the Child. This Declaration first was incorporated in the 1923 Charter of Save the Children International Union. In 1924, with an introductory preamble added, the Declaration was adopted by the League of Nations (OHCHR 2007: 3; Mahood 2009: 2, 194–201; Mahood and Satzewich 2009: 79). Jebb deliberately opted for having ‘men and women of all nations’, rather than states, recognize that ‘mankind owes to the Child the best that it has to give’ (League of Nations 1924: preamble). The Declaration thus does not impose obligations Karin Arts
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on states. This was fuelled by her idea that for effectively working on children’s rights one needs to go beyond governments and mobilize the entire community instead (Mahood 2009: 197–8). It is remarkable that, despite its title, the core content of the Declaration is not expressed explicitly in terms of children’s rights. Instead, after emphasizing the imperative of acting in a non-discriminatory manner or ‘beyond and above all considerations of race, nationality or creed’, the ‘men and women of all nations’ (League of Nations 1924: preamble) accepted five main duties to ensure what essentially are the equivalents of five sets of specified child rights listed in the Declaration. These are the child rights to development (both materially and spiritually); support when hungry, sick, backward, delinquent, orphan or waif; be the first to receive relief in times of distress; be enabled to earn a livelihood and be protected against (economic) exploitation; and to an upbringing that makes the child conscious that ‘its talents must be devoted to the service of fellow men’ (League of Nations 1924: paras 1–5). The Geneva Declaration clearly reflects Jebb’s preoccupation with the events of the First World War and its impact on children. This is visible in the strong emphasis on provisioning basic services and meeting essential material needs (such as food, nursing, shelter). It is striking that child protection is only called for in relation to economic exploitation and that the notion of child participation is completely absent. This shows that the child was merely seen as an object of protection and not yet as a subject of rights. However, drafting the Declaration and having it adopted by the League of Nations was a path-breaking step for the international codification of children’s rights. It would be followed by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child adopted in 1959 and the comprehensive and fully binding United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted in 1989. Over time, Save the Children changed its ways of working from emphasizing needs-based individual support of children to rights-based community support. The individual child sponsorship model is still used but in an adjusted form, for instance by Save the Children US. There, in 2022 individuals can still sponsor a child and be in individual Karin Arts
contact with that child. However, the individual sponsorship contributions are combined so that they can collectively fund projects in their community. Alternatively, individual Save the Children US sponsors can opt for a ‘lifeline sponsorship’. This entails making monthly financial contributions to support to a sponsorship community. In return the sponsor receives updates about a particular child, but without a ‘one-on-one relationship or ability to communicate with the child’ (Save the Children US 2022). A third available form is ‘programme sponsorship’. Here the monthly financial contributions support Save the Children programmes in a specific country. Programme sponsors receive updates on the programmes and their results in the country involved. Thus, through the years, child sponsorship faded somewhat into the background and collaborative community engagement, child rights programming, advocacy and lobby have become prominent features of Save the Children’s work. The organization also regularly publishes useful child rights studies and material on child rights-based work and methodologies. Key examples include child rights situational analyses (see e.g. Dixon 2013; IHRPS 2016; Save the Children US 2020) and comprehensive child rights programming guides (Save the Children Sweden 2005; International Save the Children Alliance 2007).
Concluding remarks
This brief sketch of the evolution and work of Save the Children shows that the organization has clearly left its mark in the field of national and international support for children’s causes. This entry has highlighted three main contributions. First, Save the Children made a historic contribution to the codification of children’s rights through initiating the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child. Even though imperfect, because it formulated adults’ duties rather than framing children’s rights explicitly, the Geneva Declaration was an invaluable early start to the conceptualization of children’s rights. Second, through developing what initially was an individual and later also a collective child sponsorship model, Save the Children coined another important contribution to the field. These ideas would be replicated by various other organizations. And third and
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last, especially in the twenty-first century the work of Save the Children gradually became increasingly characterized by a comprehensive child rights-based approach. The experiences gained are regularly shared through publicly available reports and guides on children’s rights issues and child rights-based methodologies. These support Save the Children itself, but other interested parties as well, to understand better the theory and practice of child rights-based approaches. Karin Arts
Note 1.
Although the Convention lacks a gender perspective and does not address issues relating to positive notions of children’s sexuality, digital matters, or the environment. See Arts (2014: 272–3).
References
Arts, Karin (2014), ‘Twenty-Five Years of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: Achievements and Challenges’, Netherlands International Law Review 61: 267–303. Dixon, Peter (2013), Child Rights Situation Analysis Guidelines, Save the Children. Dowd, Amy, Gustavson, Céline and Morna, Earl (2014), ‘Excellence or Exit: Transforming Save the Children’s Child Sponsorship Programming’, in Brad Watson and Matthew Clarke (eds), Child Sponsorship: Exploring Pathways to a Brighter Future, pp. 96–112, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. IHRPS [Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies] (2016), Child Rights Situation Analysis Within the ASEAN Region, Mahidol University and Save the Children Sweden. International Save the Children Alliance (2007), Getting It Right for Children: A Practitioner’s Guide to Child Rights-Based Programming, London: Save the Children UK. League of Nations (1924), ‘Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child’, adopted 26 September 1924, accessed 26 April 2022 at http://www.un -documents.net/gdrc1924.htm.
Mahood, Linda (2009), Feminism and Voluntary Action: Eglantyne Jebb and Save the Children, 1876–1928, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mahood, Linda and Satzewich, Vic (2009), ‘The Save the Children Fund and the Russian Famine of 1921–23: Claims and Counter-Claims about Feeding “Bolshevik” Children’, Journal of Historical Sociology 22(1): 55–83. OHCHR [Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights] (2007), Legislative History of the Convention on the Rights of the Child Vol. 1, New York and Geneva: United Nations, UN doc. HR/PUB/07/1. Save the Children (2022a), ‘Who We Are’, accessed 26 April 2022 at https:// www .savethechildren.net/about-us/who-we-are. Save the Children (2022b), ‘What We Do’, www accessed 26 April 2022 at https:// .savethechildren.net/what-we-do. Save the Children (2022c), ‘100 Years for Children’, accessed 26 April 2022 at https:// www.savethechildren.net/about-us/100-years -children. Save the Children Sweden (2005), Child Rights Programming: A Handbook for International Save the Children Alliance Members, Save the Children’s Child Rights Programming Co-ordinating Group, 2nd edn. Save the Children US (2020), Conducting a Situational Analysis: A Guide for Save the Children’s Sponsorship Programs, Fairfield: Save the Children US. Save the Children US (2022), ‘How Does Child Sponsorship Work?’, accessed 26 April 2022 at https://www.savethechildren.org/us/ways-to -help/sponsor-a-child. United Nations Treaty Collection (2022), ‘Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General’, Chapter IV-11, accessed 26 April 2022 at https://treaties.un.org/pages/ ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no= IV-11&chapter=4&clang=_en. Watson, Brad (2014), ‘A Typology of Child Sponsorship Activity’, in Brad Watson and Matthew Clarke (eds), Child Sponsorship: Exploring Pathways to a Brighter Future, pp. 18–40, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Karin Arts
Sexual and reproductive health and rights What are sexual and reproductive health rights?
In 1994, the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) defined sexual and reproductive health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, rather than merely the absence of illness and disease. It affirmed that sexual and reproductive health is a fundamental human right. Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) can only be achieved through recognition of sexual and reproductive rights. This refers to the right every individual has to make informed decisions regarding what happens, and when, to their bodies. This includes choices about if and when to become sexually active, with who, and in what way; options and access to contraception and reproductive healthcare; partners and marriage, including whether and when to have children; and access to the information, services, and resources to navigate these choices free from discrimination, violence, and coercion. The World Health Organization (WHO) provides definitional differences between sexual health and reproductive health, although they are generally considered to be interlinked and therefore there are overlaps in their definitions: Reproductive health: addresses the reproductive processes, functions, and system at all stages of life. Reproductive health implies that people are able to have a responsible, satisfying and safe sex life and that they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so. Sexual health: requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination, and violence.
SRH involves providing people with information and healthcare that enables them to engage in safe sexual practices, have respectful relationships, and make informed choices about whether to continue with or end a pregnancy. This includes, but is not limited to, extending coverage of modern contraception;
safe and legal abortion and post-abortion care; safe delivery, antenatal and postnatal care; prevention, screening, and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and cervical cancer as well as reproductive tract infections and cancers; treatment for infertility; support services for people experiencing gender-based violence; and comprehensive sexuality education and other mediums of sexual health information.
Sexual and reproductive health rights and the Sustainable Development Goals
When the United Nations agreed to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, it was recognized that gender, and with it sexual and reproductive health and rights, is a cross-cutting issue. Within the goals, there are specific targets that address sexual and reproductive health and rights, namely target 3.7 which reads: By 2030, ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, including for family planning, information and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes.
And target 5.6 which reads: Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences.
Understanding sexual and reproductive health rights
There are many aspects to sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR). Below is a broad, non-exhaustive categorization. Contraception/family planning Globally, there are currently 214 million women of reproductive age (15–49) who wish to avoid pregnancy but are not using an effective method of contraception. This means that globally one in eight women of reproductive age have an unmet need for contraception. There are a number of different methods of contraception to reduce the unmet
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need, including condoms, IUDs, implants, injections, and pills. Most types of contraception are used by women, but some types are used by men. In international development, the focus is on increasing access to contraception services, including the training of clinical staff and community education, as well as advocacy on the need to increase contraceptive uptake. Abortion Abortion is a critical part of sexual and reproductive health and rights. Abortion is a reproductive right and ensures that women have bodily autonomy. One in ten maternal deaths each year relate to unsafe abortion. Most of these deaths occur in developing countries and are preventable. Almost every abortion death and disability could be prevented through sexuality education, use of effective contraception, provision of safe, legally induced abortion, and timely care for complications. In international development, abortion is often distinct from other sexual and reproductive health projects, and not all donors will support funding. Abortion is also illegal in many countries. STIs including HIV Sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV/AIDS, are infections which can be passed from one person to another during sexual activities that involve direct skin-to-skin contact and/or the exchange of bodily fluids. Worldwide, every day more than one million people acquire a treatable STI. However, due to stigma and lack of knowledge, most people will not receive treatment, which can lead to cancer, infertility, and a lower quality of life. STIs disproportionately affect women compared to men. In international development, STIs are often standalone projects, but will always be included when discussing other sexual and reproductive health topics such as contraception. Comprehensive sexuality education Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) comes by different names including life skills education, relationship and sexuality education, and family life education. Countries
use many different names, but the objective remains the same: providing all young people with evidence-based, age-appropriate information to help them develop the skills and values they need to grow up healthy and happily. Good-quality CSE includes education about human rights, human sexuality, gender equality, puberty, relationships, and sexual and reproductive health. In international development, CSE involves the development of in and out of school curricula, as well as the training of teachers, health workers, and community workers on how to teach this topic to adolescents and children. Cervical cancer Human papilloma virus (HPV) is a common STI, and if left untreated can develop into cervical cancer. Cervical cancer is one of the most preventable and treatable forms of cancer if detected early and managed effectively, yet women are dying in developing countries, at up to 13 times the rate of developed countries that have well-functioning vaccination and screening programmes. Vaccinating against HPV costs just US$10–25 per person and would avert more than three million cervical cancer deaths. In international development, the focus is on eradicating cervical cancer through vaccination drives, screening and treatment programmes, and community education. Cervical cancer is sometime managed under non-communicable diseases and cancer programmes, but just as often within the reproductive, maternal, and child health programmes. The WHO has a specific global strategy on eradicating cervical cancer.
Investing in SRHR
Investing in family planning is also one of the most cost-effective interventions in global health and development. SRHR is often seen as a litmus test for progress towards universal health coverage as these services require a well-functioning health system.1 SRHR often also requires changes in policy and legislative barriers. Many SRH interventions require multi-sectoral action and policies beyond the health sector. Access to sexual and reproductive healthcare and information saves lives. Unsafe sex, early pregnancy, and unsafe abortion are sigNate Henderson
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nificant causes of death and disability among women and girls in low- and middle-income countries. Addressing the unmet need for modern contraception could prevent up to a third of maternal deaths. Cervical cancer is one of the most preventable and treatable forms of cancer if detected early and managed effectively, yet women continue to die in disproportionate numbers in developing countries. Treatable STIs are very common; however, due to stigma and lack of knowledge, most people will not receive treatment, increasing their risks of cancer, infertility and a lower quality of life. Every dollar invested in SRHR saves between US$4 and US$31 in other areas like education, public health, and water and sanitation. The Global Disease Control Priorities Project identified the provision of SRHR information and services as one of the most cost-effective health interventions. Reducing unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections supports educational and employment opportunities for women and, in turn, contributes to greater household and community income. Investing in SRHR services in low- and middle-income countries is associated with an average benefit–cost ratio of 8.7:1 for all social and economic benefits and projected to rise to almost 39:1 by 2050. Investing in SRHR is also a critical step towards achieving economic development and growth. Poor sexual and reproductive health outcomes are associated with substantial negative economic consequences. By reducing overall health system costs, and increasing workforce productivity and capacity, promoting SRHR is at the core of economic development. Links to other development areas Aside from links to the broader health system, there are direct links with maternal and child health, and SRH services often sit within this portfolio in ministries of health. Targeting of adolescents and unmarried people with information on SRH can be a challenge given cultural norms and expectations around sexual debut. Evidence shows that access to comprehensive sexuality education is a critical enabler for young people to increase their self-esteem and efficacy and increases their life skills.
Nate Henderson
SRH and rights are critical for advancing gender equality, health, and well-being and for overcoming systemic disadvantage and exclusion, and are often linked with strengthening individuals’ and communities’ resilience and capacity to adapt to climate change. SRHR needs are amplified during humanitarian and emergency situations, and existing inequalities and vulnerabilities are exacerbated. This results in the SRHR of women, girls, and priority populations disproportionately affected during crises. Investment in voluntary, rights-based contraception also significantly reduces climate change vulnerability. This is identified as #7 on Project Drawdown’s list of 100 diverse and cost-effective strategies to address climate change with a measurable impact.2
Global gag rule
The global gag rule prohibits foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) who receive US global health assistance from providing legal abortion services or referrals, while also barring advocacy for abortion law reform – even if it’s done with the NGO’s own, non-US funds. The policy allows access to abortion only in cases of rape, incest, or when a woman’s life is at risk. President Ronald Reagan first enacted the global gag rule – also known as the Mexico City Policy – in 1984. Every president since Reagan has decided whether to enact or revoke the policy, making NGO funding vulnerable to political changes happening in the United States. The rule forces organizations to choose whether to provide comprehensive sexual and reproductive healthcare and education without US funding or comply with the policy in order to continue accepting US funds.
Conclusion
Sexual and reproductive health and rights are critical enablers of women’s development and are a central part of any well-functioning health system. Like many international development interventions, SRHR needs to be integrated into other sector approaches including education, youth, gender, livelihoods, and disability. As set out in the United Nations Population Fund’s strategic agenda, the aim of SRHR in international development is to achieve zero unmet need for contraception;
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zero preventable maternal deaths; and zero gender-based violence and harmful practices. Nate Henderson
Note
1. See https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/ 26410397.2020.1841379. 2. See https://drawdown.org/.
Further reading
FPNSW (n.d.), Factsheets on Sexual and Reproductive Health. www.fpnsw.org.au/ factsheets/individuals. Galati, A.J. (2015), Onward to 2030: sexual and reproductive health and rights in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals. Guttmacher Policy Review, 18(4). https://www .guttmacher.org/gpr/2015/10/onward-2030 -sexual-and-reproductive-health-and-rights -context-sustainable-development.
IPPF (2015), Sexual and reproductive health and rights – the key to gender equality and women’s empowerment. Vision 2020 report. https:// www.ippf.org/sites/default/files/2020_gender _equality_report_web.pdf. Open Society Foundations (2019), What is the Global Gag Rule? https://www.opensocietyf oundations.org/explainers/what-global-gag -rule. Starrs, A.M., Ezeh, A.C., Barker, G. et al. (2018), Accelerate progress – sexual and reproductive health and rights for all: report of the Guttmacher–Lancet Commission. The Lancet, 391, 2642–92. Stenberg, K., Axelson, H., Sheehan P. et al. (2014), Advancing social and economic development by investing in women’s and children’s health: a new Global Investment Framework. The Lancet, 383, 1333–54. United Nations Population Fund (1994), Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population Development. United Nations Population Fund.
Nate Henderson
Slow City The Slow City movement – organized in the international network of Cittaslow towns – encompasses a growing number of small- and medium-sized towns across the world that aim to resist the cultural and economic homogenization of globalization. Cittaslow towns promote innovative urban development projects that build on existing local strengths. Instead of imitating trends developed elsewhere (e.g. in global cities or large metropolitan areas), Cittaslow towns demonstrate how smaller urban places can resist the conforming pressures of fast urban development by implementing more slow and consequently more sustainable development strategies. The Cittaslow network originated in the late 1990s when the founder of the Slow Food movement, Carlo Petrini, called for the creation of a network of cities that would support the central ideas of his movement. Shortly after this call, the mayor of Greve in Chianti – a small town in Tuscany – took up the idea and suggested the organization of a network of small towns. This network was called ‘Cittaslow – rete internazionale della città del buon vivere’ – and it was founded by the mayors of Greve in Chianti, Bra, Orvieto, and Positano. Some of these towns are quite well known for tourism while others have a strong connection to Slow Food. At their founding meeting in Orvieto, the four mayors committed themselves to a series of principles that included working towards calmer and less polluted physical environments, conserving local aesthetic traditions, and fostering local crafts, produce, and cuisine. They also pledged to use technology to create healthier environments, to make citizens aware of the value of more leisurely rhythms to life, and to share their experience in seeking administrative solutions for better living. The goal of Cittaslow is to foster the development of places that enjoy a robust vitality based on good food, healthy environments, sustainable economies, and traditional rhythms of community life. More than 20 years after the initiation of Cittaslow, more than 270 towns worldwide have become members of the network. There are more than 80 Slow Cities in Italy, but other countries like Germany, Austria, United Kingdom, Turkey, United States, Taiwan,
South Korea and even China are now home to a growing number of Cittaslow towns. To qualify for membership, towns have to be no larger than 50,000 residents and they have to fulfil at least 50 per cent of a list of 70 pre-defined criteria. The criteria address seven core areas that include energy and environmental policies, infrastructure, urban quality, agriculture/tourism/crafts, hospitability/awareness/education, social cohesion, and partnerships. The towns are organized in national associations and are part of the overarching transnational network, which allows for the exchange of ideas and best practices. From time to time, Cittaslow member towns drop out or are not re-certified. Besides the certified towns, there is also a category of Supporters of Cittaslow and Friends of Cittaslow, which allows institutions, firms, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), or towns that cannot be part of the movement due to formal reasons to become part of the network. Each Slow City implements the goals of the movement in different ways. Chiavenna, a Slow City in the Italian Alps, for example, is known for its efforts to preserve almost extinct food products such as the Violino, a cured goat ham which gains its distinct flavor from ageing in the geographically distinct caves of the region. The Italian town Orvieto is a pioneer in alternative transportation, and as the founder of the Hydrogen City Charter plays an important role in promoting regenerative energies. Hersbruck – the first German Cittaslow town – and Waldkirch in Germany have innovative programmes that connect local farmers with restaurants and they have prominent farmers markets. In China, the town of Yaxi joined the Cittaslow network in 2010. It is a collection of small villages and is located about 90 minutes south of Nanjing in Jiangsu Province. Yaxi utilizes its natural resources and aims to attract Chinese tourists. As a result, former out-migrants have returned and are now finding economic opportunities in the emerging tourism industry. Sebastopol, a small town located close to San Francisco in the United States, aims to support sustainable agriculture and slow tourism as they do not want to be another Wine Country destination. In addition, they are challenged by issues such as affordable housing and quality urban development. Slow Cities are dedicated to community economic development efforts that focus on
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the unique attributes of a place such as small businesses, locally owned restaurants, farmers markets, and socially responsible enterprises. Membership in the movement is often initiated and driven by the mayor, city council members, and the local business sector. Over time, strong networks have formed that not only include those who initiated the Slow City certification, but also citizens, non-profit groups, and civic organizations. Slow Cities could too easily be misinterpreted as regressive, isolationist, or backward communities. This is far from being true. Slow Cities want to be at the forefront of cutting-edge urban planning ideas, technology, and innovation. They are not against locating a fast food restaurant or implementing a new type of mobility technology, but rather hope that through their efforts the citizens will become educated consumers who are aware of the local choices and option for getting fresh, healthy, and tasty meals or for utilizing greener modes of transportation. Slow Cities want to be convivial and eventful places where local traditions are celebrated and mixed with cosmopolitan influences. While there are increasing calls to reconsider growth as the ultimate goal for local development and to also embrace more post-growth or growth-independent ways of developing community economies, Slow Cities are the vanguards of such movements that put criticism of neoliberal market logics at the centre. In sum, the Slow City movement forms a transnational network of small- and medium-sized towns that implement
place-based sustainable development strategies. The movement can be considered as an innovative approach to developing smaller urban places and counterpoint to the homogenizing effects of globalization. Slow Cities can provide distinctive settings that facilitate an ethos of communality, the celebration of local identity, the prosperity of locally owned businesses, and the sustainability of the environment. The success of the Slow City movement in achieving these goals has gained the attention of the leadership of large cities, prompting the establishment of a Cittaslow Metropolis working group and the formal recognition, in 2021, of Izmir, Turkey, as the first Cittaslow Metropol pilot city. Heike Mayer and Paul L. Knox
Further reading
Knox, P., & Mayer, H. (2013). Small town sustainability: economic, social, and environmental innovation. Basel: Birkhäuser. Mayer, H., & Knox, P. (2010). Small town sustainability: prospects in the second modernity. European Planning Studies, 18(10), 1545–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2010 .504336. Pink, S. (2008). Sense and sustainability: the case of the Slow City movement. Local Environment, 13(2), 95–106. https://doi.org/10 .1080/13549830701581895. Sept, A. (2021). ‘Slowing down’ in small and medium-sized towns: Cittaslow in Germany and Italy from a social innovation perspective. Regional Studies, Regional Science, 8(1), 259–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/21681376 .2021.1919190.
Heike Mayer and Paul L. Knox
Social enterprise Introduction: the rise of social enterprise
A social enterprise is a for-purpose business venture as opposed to a for-profit one. Sometimes referred to as a ‘business with a social mission’, a social enterprise normally invests financial net-gains into achieving social goals such as employment or training for disadvantaged people, poverty reduction, environmental clean-up and delivering community services, rather than enriching its owners. Social enterprises are accountable to the community that they serve; they vary in size and in scale and are classified as part of the social economy, where civic organizations earn revenues by trading as opposed to relying exclusively on grants and fundraising. Trading for a social purpose is nothing new; the Red Cross began trading in order to supplement revenues during the First World War. However, since the 1980s, the not-for-profit sector in many countries has taken a stronger commercial turn. Policymakers in the rich world initially became appreciative of social enterprise’s potential for regional development and competitive public services (Amin, 2009). Social enterprise later gained a profile in international development, where it has been incorporated into the broader language of ‘business at the base of the economic pyramid’ by the World Bank and United Nations agencies (Castresana, 2013).
Conceptual foundations: from hybridity, to schools of thought and typologies
Conceptually, social enterprises are viewed to be ‘hybrid organisations’. They combine not-for-profit sector values with private sector methods, to serve either the general public interest or the interest of mutual groups (Ridley-Duff & Bull, 2019, pp. 83–6). Social enterprises therefore manage conflicting logics; the benchmark for success in this regard is their management of a ‘double bottom line’ constituted by social and financial goals, in a way that ensures maximising profits does not take precedence over responding to an identified social need (Doherty et al., 2014). Social enterprises are also considered to be hybrid
organizations because they combine multiple resources including donations and in-kind assistance from companies and volunteers and sometimes user or membership fees with commercial revenues (Doherty et al., 2014) The sustainable performance of social enterprises is thus deemed to be determined by their capacity to continually produce ‘social value’ – defined as benefits arising to society from mobilizing under-utilized resources in new ways, that would not already arise by other means without the social enterprise (Di Domenico et al., 2010; Ryan & Lyne, 2008) – in tandem with economic value. Despite what social enterprises have in common, their diverse missions and strategies make generalization problematic. In early texts it was proposed that social enterprises settle at some point along a spectrum between being wholly motivated by market principles and wholly motivated by philanthropy and volunteering as a means for goal achievement, by finding a productive balance in methods and pricing that satisfies stakeholders (Dees, 1998; Nicholls, 2006). A further axis from Kim Alter (2007) elaborated on the centrality of the social mission; that is, whether commercial activities are ‘mission-centric’ (directly targeted at an identified need), ‘mission-related’ (for instance when a social enterprise leverages its assets to subsidize or provide for free a specific service for excluded groups) or ‘mission-unrelated’ (a commercial venture with no objective other than gaining revenue to sustain a separate social intervention). Both of the above axes were important to thinking that framed the ‘enterprising non-profit’ school, which came originally from US business schools; this sees social enterprise as a strategy for resilience that diversifies non-profit organization resources while providing greater independence from grant agencies that have their own agendas (Dees, 1998). However, while the above axes are helpful for understanding strategies, they also underline why social enterprises cannot be pinned down to any particular organizational format. One unresolved and hotly contested issue is the means by which social enterprises are instigated and governed. Two differing schools of thought in this regard are the ‘social innovation school’, on the one hand,
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Situated practice of social economies
Strong Social Economy
Weak Social Economy
Strong market mechanisms
Parallel sector (to the public and private
Market orientation to reduce the role of government
and strong welfare state
sector) with a distinctive ethos (Scandinavia)
in service provision (UK, South Korea)
Strong markets mechanisms
Remedy for certain inequalities by promoting
Cheap substitute for more expensive social goods
and weak welfare state
new socially inclusive markets (USA)
and services (Eastern Europe)
Weak market mechanisms
Post-capitalist possibility, viable economic
Social economy blends with informal activity and
and weak welfare state
alternatives (Brazil, Philippines)
reliance on NGOs. Overall impact on poverty is weak (African nations, some Asian nations)
Source: Adapted from Amin (2009, pp. 13–17).
and the European Social Enterprise Network (EMES), on the other hand: ● The social innovation school, that draws from the US management and leadership tradition and has garnered support from well-resourced social entrepreneurship foundations, prioritises the role of individuals (labelled ‘social entrepreneurs’) who are adept in multiple spheres. This school advocates accountable governance that gives these individuals the freedom to innovate and respond quickly to market opportunities. ● EMES scholarship draws on the European cooperative tradition, advocating for the initiation of social enterprises by groups of citizens and for collective decision-making that ideally incorporates not just members but also external stakeholders. This serves numerous purposes including securing the social mission, mobilising public good will towards the enterprise and helping to strengthen economic democracy within society (Defourny & Nyssens, 2010). These differences have never been reconciled. Rather, on the basis of international comparative research, the particularities of business models, social missions and governance structures have become viewed as interconnected dimensions that give rise to particular social enterprise typologies. As Defourny and Nyssens note: [T]he kind of social mission is likely to shape the type of business model and governance structure; conversely, the chosen economic model is likely to influence the way in which the social mission is pursued and/or evolves, and the primacy of the latter may be better ensured by some forms of governance. (Defourny & Nyssens, 2017, p. 2494)
Social enterprise on the whole is accordingly likened to a zoo with different ‘species of zoo animals’, each of which can contain sub-species (Young & Lecy, 2014). Literature in highly ranked journals has consequentially matured beyond definitional debates according to Doherty et al. (2014), who iterate that institutional and organizational processes and the balance struck between dedicating resources to different kinds of activities including human resource development, networking, marketing, stakeholder engagement and lobbying, are of much greater interest for understanding social enterprise along with the positive and negative effects of its hybridity.
Context and practice
Given that the best one can do is speak of different types of social enterprise, then for the purpose of focused research and policymaking it is most productive to pay attention to the specific contexts in which social enterprises emerge. Janelle Kerlin (2013) makes a noteworthy case for defining social enterprise according to context by drawing on the theory of historic institutionalism and proposing that causal pathways are a result of the interaction between cultural dynamics, types of government and stages of economic development, all of which impact on models of civil society and the consequential scope for innovation with new institutions such as social enterprises. Similarly, Ash Amin (2009) represents the social economy as a contextual response to the relative strength of three drivers: welfare states, markets and the social economy itself, which is manifest by the vibrancy of trading member associations and cooperatives alongside non-profit enterprises (Table 1).
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The context most immediately pertinent to international development practitioners lies along the bottom row of the above formulation – that is, countries that have weak market mechanisms and weak welfare state services. In such circumstances, where the civic tradition of the social economy is quite strong, interventions might be aimed at local economic development in a way that mitigates the exclusionary aspects of market capitalism. In Brazil for instance, a mapping of the social economy signified some 20,000 solidarity economy enterprises, 60 per cent of which are associations, where there is a tradition of targeting social problems like youth inclusion, gang violence and, more recently, environmental concerns (Gaiger et al., 2015). In the 2000s, the left-wing Workers Party government worked with universities, where a cultural concern with inequality is impacted by the social pedagogy of Paolo Friere, to instigate solidarity economy incubators and foster start-up social enterprises with close relationships to beneficiaries and other local businesses. This has served to orientate commercial networks towards a plural economy focused on solidarity, equity and meeting social needs that the free market capitalist economy had been neglecting (Lechat, 2009). Where the social economy is not so strong, Amin’s (2009) projection of situated practice suggests social enterprises are more likely to operate in informal economy markets, often helped by NGOs that might instigate ventures of their own to achieve objectives by commercial means while also striving to diversify their revenues. Kerlin (2013) views this as a context where social enterprise arises from traditional social relationships and customary help, commonly taking the form of anti-poverty measures helped by international aid. The depiction typifies the emergence of social enterprise in Cambodia in South East Asia, for instance, where the commercial non-profit turn (Khieng & Dahles, 2015), the institutional embeddedness of different models (Khieng & Lyne, 2019) and the rural trajectory of social enterprise (Lyne et al., 2018) are closely studied. Cambodia is an instructive case for international development because of its high concentration of NGOs, resulting from vast investments by the international community into post-conflict reconstruction efforts throughout the 1990s. Over the past decade, NGOs’ declining access Isaac Lyne
to aid in Cambodia has been accompanied by a strong turn to commercial strategies. Consequently, ‘trading non-profit’ organizations that seek to monetize services where possible, resembling the US ‘enterprising non-profit’ mentality, have become the most common phenomenon. Moreover, the most successful trading not-for-profit organizations in Cambodia have attracted financial and technical support from foundations like Skoll, Ashoka, Swchab and Rockerfeller, which has helped to embed a normative focus on entrepreneurial leaders rather than participatory governance (Khieng & Lyne, 2019, pp. 25–6).
New trajectories, sustainable development and controversies
As social enterprise has matured in Cambodia, more advanced and ambitious social business franchise models have emerged. One NGO has instigated network of franchised family planning service centres to assist female empowerment and poverty reduction in rural areas (Lyne et al., 2018). Another NGO has instigated a network of around 250 franchised water kiosks delivering treated drinking water in refillable 20 litre bottles in more than 2,500 Cambodian villages nationwide. This NGO identifies with the conception of ‘social business’ popularized by Grameen microfinance pioneer Mohammed Yunus in Bangladesh. Yunus’s concept describes a social enterprise typology focused on providing “goods or services to (very) poor customers who should be seen as a new market segment (often called the “bottom of the pyramid”) in developing countries” (Defourny & Nyssens, 2017, p. 2484). Social business commonly involves non-profit/for-profit partnerships; numerous for-profit corporations are providing technical, logistical and business support to this NGO based in Cambodia, while its water kiosk constructions are bankrolled in each instance by international development agencies including multilateral and bilateral agencies and international NGOs. The situated practice of social enterprise elaborated by Ash Amin (2009) is useful not just for understanding the context of social enterprise, but also for thinking about change trajectories and future scenarios. Social business will continue to be generously supported: it attracts international development
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agencies as a way of targeting development, because it is capable of reaching a considerable scale; and it attracts supportive international corporations that have an interest in framing sustainable development through a market-driven lens (Castresana, 2013). It also attracts policymakers in low-income countries as a way to achieve sustainable development without public budgets; in Bangladesh, social business delivers social welfare on a bigger scale than government agencies (Nicholls, 2013). Over time, it is foreseeable that social business will impact on situated practice of social enterprise by strengthening markets for important goods and services. However, it is also unlikely that this will strengthen the social economy very much; social business is commensurate with the social innovation model where the entrepreneurial aspect is prioritized over the democratic one. In this context (following Table 1), a transition from informal sector enterprise with NGO support seems most likely to arrive at a context where social enterprise provides cheap substitutes for more expensive services or infrastructures, such as potable piped water supplies in the case of rural Cambodia. In Cambodia, social enterprise is appraised positively as a means by which local NGOs enhance resilience, while making themselves more accountable to their beneficiaries who can exercise consumer choices instead of having their focus determined by the grant-making priorities of international development agencies (Khieng & Dahles, 2015). At the same time, numerous initiatives that began as promising ones during the Cambodian NGO boom have since been hollowed out by commercialization; microfinance has been heavily criticized in this regard for turning NGOs into entrepreneurial (often predatory) service providers that hire business people and institute economistic values as the primary basis of civic action (Norman, 2014). This resonates with wider critique of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship for the way it positions social change as a post-ideological or post-political concern that can be addressed by using the latest technical management tools (Dey & Steyaert, 2010) while rendering civil society as a governable terrain constituted by homogeneous service-provider organizations, irrespective of these organizations’ unique
origins and reasonings (Carmel & Harlock, 2008).
Conclusion
Social enterprises can be organic hybrids, whereby not-for-profit organizations transition from exclusive reliance on grants and/or donations by embarking on a trading model, or alternatively whereby for-profit companies gradually incorporate not-for-profit goals and values. Social enterprises can also come into being as enacted hybrids; that is, where an organization is set up as a for-purpose trading venture from the outset (Doherty et al., 2014). It is foreseeable that in many lower-income countries, and especially ones where legacies of conflict or traumas have weakened organization within the social economy, there will be a transition to commercial avenues among civil society organizations or NGOs that will be driven by resource dependency to some degree as their opportunities for grants diminish. This is not to say that resource dependency always explains why NGOs instigate social enterprises; the belief in combining market orientation, entrepreneurship and strategic organizational development as a means for radical social change can be perfectly sincere. However, trade-offs in strategies can be tricky to negotiate over time. It is also likely, that social business models – this is, enacted hybrid organizations using a bottom of the pyramid model and similar principles for growth to those used by microfinance finance institutions – will become the main priority for development actors including the United Nations agencies and the World Bank, as far as social enterprise is concerned. Isaac Lyne
References
Alter, K. (2007). Social Enterprise Typology. Virtue Venures LLC. Amin, A. (2009). Locating the social economy. In A. Amin (ed.), The Social Economy: International Perspectives on Economic Solidarity (pp. 3–21). Zed Books. Carmel, E., & Harlock, J. (2008). Instituting the ‘third sector’ as a governable terrain: partnership, procurement and performance in the UK. Policy & Politics, 36(2), 155–71. Castresana, J.C.P.dM. (2013). Social enterprise in the development agenda: opening a new road map or just a new vehicle to travel the same route? Social Enterprise Journal, 9(3), 247–68.
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552 Elgar encyclopedia of development Dees, J.G. (1998). Enterprising nonprofits. Harvard Business Review, 76(1), 54–67. Defourny, J., & Nyssens, M. (2010). Conceptions of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship in Europe and the United States: convergences and divergences. Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 1(1), 32–53. Defourny, J., & Nyssens, M. (2017). Fundamentals for an international typology of social enterprise models. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 28(6), 2469–97. Dey, P., & Steyaert, C. (2010). The politics of narrating social entrepreneurship. Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, 4(1), 85–108. Di Domenico, M., Haugh, H., & Tracey, P. (2010). Social bricolage: theorizing social value creation in social enterprises. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 34(4), 681–703. Doherty, B., Haugh, H., & Lyon, F. (2014). Social enterprises as hybrid organizations: a review and research agenda. International Journal of Management Reviews, 16(4), 417–36. Gaiger, L.I., Ferrarini, A., & Veronese, M. (2015). Social enterprise in Brazil: an overview of solidarity economy enterprises, ICSEM Working Papers,10. The International Comparative Social Enterprise Models (ICSEM) Project. https://www.iap-socent.be/sites/default/files/ Brazil%20-%20Gaiger%20et%20al.pdf. Kerlin, J.A. (2013). Defining social enterprise across different contexts: a conceptual framework based on institutional factors. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 42(1), 84–108. Khieng, S., & Dahles, H. (2015). Commercialization in the non-profit sector: the emergence of social enterprise in Cambodia. Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, 6(2), 218–43.
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Khieng, S., & Lyne, I. (2019). Social enterprise in Cambodia: typology and institutionalisation. In E. Bidet & J. Defourny (eds), Social Enterprise in Asia: Theory, Models and Practice (pp. 17–25). Routledge. Lechat, N. (2009). Organizing for the social economy in South Brazil. In A. Amin (ed.), The Social Economy: International Perspectives on Economic Solidarity (pp. 159–75). Zed Books. Lyne, I., Ngin, C., & Santoyo-Rio, E. (2018). Understanding social enterprise, social entrepreneurship and the social economy in rural Cambodia. Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, 12(3), 278–98. Nicholls, A. (2006). Introduction. In A. Nicholls (ed.), Social Entrepreneurship: New Models of Sustainable Social Change (pp. 1–36). Oxford University Press. Nicholls, A. (2013). The social entrepreneurship– social policy nexus in developing countries. In R. Surender & R. Walker (eds), Social Policy in a Developing World (pp. 183–214), Edward Elgar Publishing. Norman, D.J. (2014). From shouting to counting: civil society and good governance reform in Cambodia. The Pacific Review, 27(2), 241–64. Ridley-Duff, R., & Bull, M. (2019). Understanding Social Enterprise: Theory and Practice. SAGE Publications. Ryan, P.W., & Lyne, I. (2008). Social enterprise and the measurement of social value: methodological issues with the calculation and application of the social return on investment. Education, Knowledge & Economy, 2(3), 223–37. Young, D.R., & Lecy, J.D. (2014). Defining the universe of social enterprise: competing metaphors. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 25(5), 1307–32.
Social protection Introduction
Social protection is a policy area that has become part and parcel of development policy since the early 2000s. Also known as social security or welfare in high-income countries, such policies have gained considerable traction in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In the second half of the twentieth century, these were largely limited to pension schemes for government employees or social safety nets that provided transfers to people in extreme poverty. At present, almost all countries around the world implement multiple forms of social protection, albeit that many only cover small proportions of their population.
Historic shifts and trends
Social protection policies were introduced across the global South after the Second World War. This primarily consisted of transposing welfare models from Western countries and focused on providing social security for public servants and employees in the formal sector, leaving large swathes of the population without any support. In the 1980s and 1990s, as far-reaching negative social effects of structural adjustment became visible, it became apparent that some form of social protection was vital to support the poorest and most vulnerable. Social safety net programmes were introduced in many countries in the early 1990s, mostly offering short-term support to a very narrow group of beneficiaries. Promoted by the World Bank, it served as a minimalist and pragmatic approach to social protection. Towards the end of the 1990s and into the 2000s, social protection widened its scope. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and their focus on eradication of poverty provided impetus to the expansion of social protection in LMICs. Different agencies and scholars promoted different approaches. The World Bank (2003) framed its social protection on the Social Risk Management framework, suggesting that measures primarily serve to counteract, minimize, or mitigate risk to loss of income. Devereux and Sabates-Wheeler (2004) proposed that social protection should not only aim to address the symptoms of poverty but
also tackle its underlying social and structural inequalities, and therefore be more transformative. The International Labour Organization (ILO) proposed a rights-based approach (as noted below). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have firmly cemented social protection as a key policy to tackle poverty. Target 1.3 asks countries to ‘implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all’ by 2030.
Definition, objectives and approaches
There is no single definition of social protection. One that is commonly used and offers a broad understanding is as follows: ‘Social protection describes all public and private initiatives that provide income or consumption transfers to the poor, protect the vulnerable against livelihood risks, and enhance the social status and rights of the marginalised; with the overall objective of reducing the economic and social vulnerability of poor, vulnerable and marginalised groups’ (Devereux & Sabates-Wheeler, 2004, p. 9). Objectives of social protection policies are wide-ranging and include poverty reduction, investment in human capital, economic strengthening and women’s empowerment, among others. Put differently, policies aim to prevent people from falling into poverty, protect them against the hardship of poverty or promote them out of poverty. When combined into a system of social protection, policies should offer protection across the life cycle and respond to vulnerabilities and needs that occur at different stages in people’s lives. For example, income support for caregivers could ensure that children’s basic needs are met while unemployment insurance provides a buffer when those of working age lose their job. Policies, and the legislative frameworks that underpin them, often also seek to challenge structural inequalities. This includes making sure that all schemes are accessible to all regardless of physical impairment or other disability, ensuring equal pay for men and women or anti-discrimination legislation. Rights-based approaches to social protection emphasize the universal right – as stipulated in Article 25 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – to an adequate standard of living and income security in case such
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standard of living is jeopardized. In 2012, the ILO put forward Recommendation 202 on the Social Protection Floor, offering an approach towards operationalizing the rights-based approach. It calls on each country to establish a system of social protection that offers basic income security and essential healthcare across the life cycle so that all members of society enjoy at least a minimum essential level of social protection throughout their lives (UNRISD, 2016).
Types of interventions
The overall policy area of social protection can be broadly categorized in three types of intervention. First, social assistance aims to protect people who live in poverty from the harsh consequences of living in poverty. Interventions in this category typically provide a basic level of support that allows for basic needs to be met. Popular types of support include cash transfers (either unconditional or conditional upon some type of behavioural requirements), public works programmes and school feeding schemes. These interventions are also referred to as non-contributory social protection as no payment into the scheme is required in order to obtain support. Second, social insurance aims to prevent people from falling into poverty when they experience a shock that either stops them from earning an income or that costs a lot of money. Such shocks can be idiosyncratic and occur at an individual or family level, such as illness, or they can be covariate and affect a larger community, such as a drought or flood. Social insurance schemes are also referred to as contributory interventions because one has to pay into the scheme in order to benefit. Examples include health insurance and unemployment insurance. Third, labour market interventions actively seek to promote people out of poverty. Programmes try to support people’s ability to earn a living on their own so that they no longer need support. Labour market interventions focus on getting people into work, either formal or informal. There are many different forms of intervention, and they can range from skills training to public works programmes. Social protection can be implemented by different actors, including governments, communities and non-governmental organizations Keetie Roelen
(NGOs). The majority of efforts to support social protection in LMICs are focused on public or government-provided interventions (also referred to as ‘formal social protection’). NGOs play a large role in testing new interventions, implementing social protection schemes – especially for hard-to-reach and marginalized groups – supporting access to formal social protection schemes and holding governments to account. In addition, forms of ‘informal social protection’ have long played a vital role in providing support and offering a safety net within and across communities and households. Formal social protection can strengthen these informal types of support by improving the economic resources to participate in such support. At the same time, it might also ‘crowd out’ such support and create tensions because of targeting assistance to sub-sections of the population.
Policy issues
A long-standing debate in social protection is whether interventions should be targeted or universal (Devereux, 2016). Targeting refers to the process of selecting those deemed most deserving of support, and is often considered the most equitable and effective way to allocate scarce public resources. By contrast, universal schemes are open to everyone in society and are therefore deemed to be fairer and less divisive or stigmatizing. Policies – particularly in social assistance – may also adopt a hybrid approach: for example, child benefits or old age pensions are distributed to everyone below or above a certain age threshold, regardless of their income or living conditions. A second policy concern is how to integrate individual schemes into integrated social protection systems. Despite many LMICs implementing a myriad of interventions, social protection systems tend to be fragmented and disconnected, leaving many people to fall through the cracks. Given the rapid expansion of social protection since the early 2000s, efforts to build systems have included the development of national social protection strategies, creating institutional structures, capacity building and generating financial resources. The effects of climate change and other shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic have also emphasized the need for social pro-
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tection systems and their individual schemes to be adaptive, meaning that support can be extended as and when needs arise. Another component of systems building relates to building linkages between social protection and humanitarian assistance, making sure that short-term humanitarian support ties in with longer-term interventions. Finally, an understanding of the politics of social protection and is vital for its expansion and sustainability. Social protection is often approached from a technocratic perspective, yet its design and implementation of social protection is highly politicized. In each country, contestations and negotiations between actors such as political elites, bureaucrats, voters and international actors shape the social protection system and its individual interventions (Hickey et al., 2018). This holds across democracies and regimes with more authoritarian rule, with social pro-
tection playing different roles in state–society relationships depending on context. Keetie Roelen
References
Devereux, S. (2016). Is Targeting Ethical? Global Social Policy, 16(2), 166–81. Devereux, S., & Sabates-Wheeler, R. (2004). Transformative Social Protection. IDS Working Paper, 232. Institute of Development Studies. Hickey, S., Lavers, T., Nino-Zarazua, M., & Seekings, J. (2018). The Negotiated Politics of Social Protection in Sub-Saharan Africa. WIDER Working Paper, 34/2018. UNU-WIDER. UNRISD (2016). The Human Rights-Based Approach to Social Protection. Issue Brief 02. UNRISD. World Bank (2003). Social Risk Management: The World Bank’s Approach to Social Protection in a Globalising World. Social Protection Department, World Bank.
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Socialist ecofeminism Ecofeminism is a theory that transcends differences of gender/sexuality, class, age, ethnicity, and speciesism. Socialist ecofeminists have long considered issues of unpaid and community work, women’s and nature’s work as foundational to economic growth. They introduce a historically grounded socio-economic element to the woman/ ecology analysis, attending to environmental issues which particularly affect all economically disadvantaged women but particularly women from Third World countries, women of colour, and the working poor.
What is socialist ecofeminism?
Socialist ecofeminism and ecosocialism joined forces in denouncing the dynamics of the capitalist mode of production. Marxist ecosocialists have concentrated on capitalism’s destructive activities in the sphere of production. They argue that capitalist civilization is a heat engine, and its economy is an entropic flow of energy (oil, gas, carbon, etc.) and materials (timber, aluminium, copper, etc.). Elmar Altvater (1994) found major sources of contradiction in the functioning of capitalism, identifying natural processes of time and space, as an ‘ecological modality’. He claimed that capitalism attempts to codify and control time and space with the aim of speeding up capital accumulation, defined as ‘economic modality’. He argued that the two different modalities of space and time conflict upon a territorial-social reality, as biological time and reproduction are slower than economic time or commodity production. As capitalism is a system that only understands value in terms of money capital, the perpetual drive toward short-time, or ‘t’ (economic time) accumulation, is in direct conflict with the ecological limits of ‘T’ (historical time) that allow and provide for life on this planet. By examining the principle of entropy in the use of energy in production and consumption where no transformation of energy or matter is perfectly efficient, Altvater concluded that recycling is thermodynamically impossible, because energy and raw material are used only once. The economy looks for new energy and raw materials permanently, thereby creating social and ecosystem disturbance.
Socialist ecofeminists have adapted the Marxian framework to explore the dynamic between production and reproduction. They focus on the sphere of reproduction and women’s responsibility for it and locate the origins of oppression in the interconnected systems of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. There are many strands of the ecofeminist movement, but most agree that the source of women’s domination is domestic labour resulting from a capitalist patriarchal economy dominated by men. Carolyn Merchant (1983) argues that the rise of modern science and technology was premised on a violent attack and rape of Mother Earth – an attack mirrored in state-authorized burning of women midwives and healers as witches. She establishes two contradictions in the working of development. First, it arises from the assault by capitalist economic forces of production on local ecological conditions. Second, there is the assault of production on biological and social reproduction. She advocates a ‘radical ecology’ where social movements such as bioregional movements, grassroots struggle, and mainstream environmental campaigning replace social class as political agents. She concludes that ecofeminism will emphasize both production and reproduction. Marilyn Waring (1999) argues that the international economic system based on the US system of national accounts using the gross domestic product index (GDP) constructs reality in a way that excludes the great bulk of women’s work, peasant and indigenous labour, and nature. Official economic measures only count production for the market and give no value to nature, women’s work of reproduction, or other productive work largely in the South that is not commodified. Mary Mellor (1992) argues that ecofeminism’s materialism stresses the immanence – embodiedness and embeddedness of human existence – in particular natural environments. As embodied beings, humanity cannot avoid the biological cycle of birth, maturation, and death. In the process, humanity acts on nature with material consequences for the ecosystem. Silvia Federici (2009) describes enclosure as both a historical and contemporary phenomenon. It involves fencing off the commons through the elimination of people’s customary rights. Enclosure, initiated
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in England circa 1500, continues through the establishment of national parks. With the enclosure of common land, the social aspects of a community and its autonomy were curtailed and even eliminated. Federici argues that enclosure of the commons and the witch hunts in Europe produced a new sexual division of labour in which women’s position as providers in society was redefined in relation to men, as wives, daughters, mothers, and widows, all of whom hid their status of workers, while giving men free access to women’s bodies, their labour, and the bodies and labour of their children. With the advent of capitalism, women’s reproductive labour was placed at the service of an international system of accumulation; women’s wombs became public property, producing labour power for free. Maria Mies (1986) is another scholar who connects the subordination of women, the degradation of nature, and capitalist economics. She explains that housewifization is a capitalist patriarchal ideology that serves to define some human beings and nature as having no value. Housewifization thereby condemned women to responsibility for the sphere of reproduction. Mies sees housewifization as one aspect of a system of exploitation that embraced the low-paid or unpaid labour of women, destruction of the natural environment, and the colonization of the resources and knowledge of indigenous people around the world. At the centre of her analysis is the knowledge that capitalist patriarchy creates an intersecting domination against all ‘unwaged’ labour. The result is seen in the expropriation of unpaid and poorly paid labour of women and often LGBTQ people and the expropriation of labour, knowledge, and subsistence economies of peasants and Indigenous people on lands labelled ‘unoccupied’ or ‘unused’. Those who appropriate living nature in order to ‘make it productive’ care little about the destruction. Feminized or ‘resourced’ bodies are routinely appropriated, exploited, raped, extracted, and destroyed in capitalist expansion. Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen and Maria Mies (1999) uncover the functioning of capitalism in ‘the iceberg model’ (Figure 1): ● first, the expropriation of unpaid and poorly paid labour of women is through rape, harassment, and sexual assaults;
● second, the expropriation of labour, knowledge, and subsistence economies – of peasants and Indigenous people is through genocide. Their land [is] labelled ‘unoccupied’ or ‘unused’, and thereby easily appropriated by those who can make it ‘productive’; ● third, the expropriation of nature is through destruction. Bennholdt-Thomsen and Mies argue that Western capitalist consumerism should be replaced by a renewal of basic subsistence production. Ariel Salleh (2004) explores the dynamic between production and reproduction using an embodied materialist lens, and argues that it links nature, women, labour, and capital in a deeper contradiction than that existing between capital and wages. She re-examines the concept of labour and calls it ‘relations of re-production’. Here, work that is invisible to the forces of production – namely ‘meta-industrial labour’ – reproduces working bodies (women’s work); sustains metabolic relations with nature (peasant work); creates lay knowledges of ecology (Indigenous people); and regenerates biological infrastructure (nature’s self-activity). However, women remain simply taken for granted as a ‘natural resource’ and the bodies of colonized people are resourced for their sexuality, their slave labour, their DNA, and so on. In outline, the claims of an embodied materialist analysis are: ● Meta-industrial labour reproduces necessary biological infrastructure for all economic systems; ● It functions both inside and outside of capitalism; ● It is ecologically benign provisioning, able to sustain metabolic relations with nature; ● The economy does not leave future generations with an ecological debt; ● Hands-on reproductive labour creates lay knowledges that are cultural, economic, and ecological; ● All who work in meta-industrial provisioning have a common material stake in challenging capitalist development; ● This labour class may well be the most appropriate ‘agents of history’ – the critical mass – at this time. Ana Isla
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Source: Bennholdt-Thomsen and Mies (1999).
Figure 1
The iceberg model
The materialist ecofeminisms of Merchant, Waring, Mellor, Federici, Mies, Bennholdt-Thomsen, and Salleh, directly challenge the sustainability of contemporary societies as well as their economic re-structuring by so-called sustainable development.
Ecofeminist critics of ‘green’ politics
Economists from the World Bank have proposed that ecosystemic processes must be embedded in the price system, that is, Nature requires a fully monetized world in order to be protected. Within Sustainable Development (SD), they developed a key concept: Natural Capital, which refers to the goods and services provided by the planet’s stock of water, land, air, and renewable and non-renewable resources such as plant and animal species, forest, and minerals. From an ecofeminist perspective, in green capitalism the enclosure of the commons, ‘housewifization’, and expropriation of peasants and Indigenous people continues when monetary value is assigned to the commons forcing them to acquire new roles as service providers in new industries, while the destruction of nature also occurs. An economy constructed excluding much of the materiality of human and non-human lives destroys ecosystems. Isla (2015) analAna Isla
yses debt: financial debt, embodied debt to reproductive labour, and ecological debt. It describes the role of some environmental NGOs as brokers between the indebted countries’ resources with large corporations involved in economic restructuring and globalization. NGOs have been establishing enclosures (National Parks) and ‘giving’ monetary values to the ‘Global Commons’ of the indebted periphery, such as biodiversity for biotechnology and intellectual property rights, forest for carbon credits, and scenery for ecotourism, and to export these values in stock exchanges. Profit-based economies do not take responsibility for human and non-human life cycles. In Latin America, ‘greening’ disputes the message that SD can in any way create social and gender equality, reduce poverty, confront ecological destruction, and combat climate change. Instead, it shows that SD is the highest stage of extractivism (Isla, 2021) which can be understood as a new phase of capital accumulation of global capital. ‘Greening’ denotes the massive expropriation of bodies and territories, depredation and contamination of the soil, and dispossession of the workers through the monetization of nature that requires the devaluing of all other forms of social existence, transforming skills into deficiencies, commons into resources, knowledge into ignorance, autonomy into dependency, and men and women into com-
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modified labour-power whose needs require the mediation of the markets. Therefore, viewed through the lens of ecofeminism, these aspects of ‘greening’ come together to wage war on women, subsistence producers, and nature by formulating a new kind of domination based on poverty and unsustainability. The ‘greening’ paradigm first exacerbates poverty and second intensifies unsustainability: first, bodies are embedded into the territories that people inhabit. We understand the body as a political territory to defend. Extractive projects deepen the power relations of gender, causing greater inequalities towards women and childhood, and alters the cycles that reproduce life, which implies greater control and violence towards women’s bodies. For instance, Latin American ecofeminists revealed that
who saw their children with various health ailments, declared themselves in rebellion and in open opposition to the robbery and predation committed by transnational mining companies. They began to organize ‘Encuentros (Gatherings) Against Mining’, gather information and act together in the defence of their territories and their human rights by challenging their states and justice system that do not work for the common good or for the right to life (in Ecuador in 2007). As a result, violence is directed at these women and they are harassed, stigmatized, disappeared, and murdered. Anti-systemic movements are prevalent in the region, including the anti-femicide movement. In Argentina, due to the lack of judicial response to femicide (2015) women created a movement called ‘Ni una Menos’ [‘No one (woman) less’] which means that When there is conflict in the territories, we another woman does not die – that cannot be feel pain that materializes directly in the body tolerated. It paved the way for ‘Un Violador and specifically in the women’s bodies. We en tu camino’ (‘A rapist on your path’) by the think of the body as our first territory and we Chilean group Las Tesis (2019), which began recognize the territory in our bodies: when as a street act, during the commemoration the places we inhabit are violated, our bodies of a new International Day Against Gender are affected, when our bodies are affected, the places we inhabit are violated. (Colectivo Violence and the social outbreak in Chile. The message of the lyrics says that ‘patriMiradas Criticas 2017) archy is a judge who criticizes us for being and our punishment is the violence that Second, economic growth in the last born already see’. It claims that ‘the repressive commons exacerbates poverty. It is aligned you is a male rapist’ before concluding that with military dictatorships, the way the state rapist is you’. The movement ‘Ni una powers protect its corporation by bribing or ‘the and the lines of ‘A rapist on your running over governments, and/or the opera- Menos’ have crossed borders and in some cases tion of its notorious School of the Americas, way’ been modified according to the context also known as School of Assassins, which have each country or city where it has been has created the violence that runs through the of continent (SOA Watch: see https://soaw.org/ replicated. In Mexico, 3,752 women were killed in home). Militarization is controlling, objec- 2020 (Amnesty International, 2021). Mexican tifying, appropriating, violating, and some- women denounce femicide in ‘Song Without times killing those who resist dispossession. Fear’ (2020). Militarism is combined with violence, forced Ecofeminists argue that defining nature disappearance, femicides, and rapes. stocks by money value and incorporating In Latin America, the mark of extractivinto the market, any kind of develism, as SD, on women’s bodies is expressed them fails to acknowledge the sustainin the number of women assassinated or dis- opment systems of unpaid social labour and the appeared. For instance, the latest report from ing the Gender Equality Observatory of the UN natural world (Mies, Salleh, Mellor, Isla). Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reveals that in The political economy of 2019 at least 4,640 femicides took place in the ecofeminism region, noting that it is in the state where the Taking into consideration the second conhigh levels of impunity, repression, and rape tradiction, developed by James O’Connor by state agents occur. As mining expanded, (1994), which refers to the structural condiby 2005, Indigenous, black, and rural women, tions within which the production process Ana Isla
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Source: Isla (2015).
Figure 2
The fundamental contradiction
exists: reproduction and the natural environment, ecofeminists develop the fundamental contradiction in capitalism. It combines socialist approaches with feminist and ecological approaches. Furthermore, the ecofeminist model where women (gender/sexuality), peasants, and Indigenous communities are the organizers and coordinator of social conflicts must be the leaders of the new revolutions. These active sectors cannot be imprisoned in an economic model that violates their own lives. They resist becoming proletarians, fight against the status of salaried workers, and intend to overcome and not reproduce the current system (Figure 2). Consequently, ecofeminists and ecosocialists are committed not only to resist the worst consequences of this system and its spread but to work towards totally different equal, cooperative, life-sustaining, communal forms of social and economic organization, and minimize human impact on the natural world.
Conclusion
Socialist ecofeminists have created concepts to challenge our current world: concepts of commons in opposition to privatization such as national parks (Federici, 2009); housewifization understood as low or unpaid labour (Mies, 1986); embeddedness and provisioning abolish the separation of the two spheres of production and reproduction (Mellor, 1992); those embodied meta-industrial Ana Isla
workers are the leaders of the new revolution (Salleh, 2004); they will revitalize subsistence economies (Bennholdt-Thomsen & Mies, 1999); and be the contestants of ‘greening’ against commodification to the planet’s stock of renewable and non-renewable resources through (Isla, 2021). All of them seek to achieve a balance between human needs, the needs of other species, and the needs of the environment. Arguments sustaining ecosocialism must be ecofeminist. Ana Isla
References
Altvater, E. (1994). Ecological and economic modalities of time and space. In M. O’Connor (ed.), Is Capitalism Sustainable? Political Economy and the Politics of Ecology (pp. 76–89). Guilford Press. Amnesty International. (2021). Amnesty International Report 2020/21: The state of the world’s human rights. https://www.amnesty .org/en/documents/pol10/3202/2021/en/ Bennholdt-Thomsen, V., & Mies, M. (1999). The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalized Economy. Zed Books. Colectivo Miradas Críticas del Territorio desde el Feminismo (2017). Mapeando el Cuerpo-Territorio. Guía Metodológica para Mujeres que Defienden su Territorios. Ecofeminism, Publicaciones y material multimedia, https://www.accionecologica .org/mapeando-el-cuerpo-territorio-guia -metodologica-para-mujeres-que-defienden-sus -territorios/.
Socialist ecofeminism 561 Federici, S. (2009). Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Automedia. Isla, A. (2015). The “Greening” of Costa Rica: Women, Peasants, Indigenous People and the Remaking of Nature. University of Toronto Press. Isla, A. (2021). “Greening”, the highest stage of extractivism in Latin America. In L. Brownhill, S. Engel-Dimauro, T. Giacomini, A. Isla, M. Lowy, & T. Turner (eds), Handbook of Ecosocialism (chapter 6). Routledge. Mellor, M. (1992). Eco-Feminism and eco-socialism: dilemmas of essentialism and materialism. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 3(2), 43–62.
Merchant, C. (1983). The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. Harper and Row. Mies, M. (1986). Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour. Zed Books. O’Connor, M. (ed.) (1994). Is Capitalism Sustainable? Political Economy and the Politics of Ecology. Guilford Press. Salleh, A. (2004). Global alternatives and the meta-industrial class. In R. Albritton, J. Bell, S. Bell, & R. Westra (eds), New Socialisms: Futures Beyond Globalization (pp. 201–11). Routledge. Waring, M. (1999). Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth. University of Toronto Press.
Ana Isla
South–South cooperation South–South cooperation (SSC), or South– South development cooperation (SSDC), has since the 2000s enjoyed a resurgent interest due to a significant increase in South–South trade and the formation of such initiatives as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), the India–Brazil–South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA-TCP), the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), and the India–Africa Forum Summit (IAFS). Between 1995 and 2017, South–South merchandise trade grew from US$0.6 trillion to US$5 trillion, and in 2017 one quarter of total global trade occurred among South countries (UNCTAD 2019). Yet, SSC is a multidimensional set of relations and processes across the political, economic, cultural, social, environmental, military, legal and humanitarian domains. Besides trade, this includes knowledge and resources exchanges in agriculture, education, energy, finance, food, health, industry and business, information and communication, transport and infrastructure, and science and technology. The United Nations Office for South–South Cooperation (UNOSSC 2021) defines SSC as …
for instance, many South actors have a long history of SSC involvement. Simultaneous membership in OECD-DAC and such South formations as the Group of 77 (G-77), however, is considered incompatible. This North/South dichotomization has been challenged by triangular (or trilateral) cooperation, where a DAC member or multilateral organization acts as mediator in SSC, providing resources and/or expertise for best practice or policy transfer (funding, training, management, technology). This entry reviews SSC as a contested concept and social practice. A periodization of SSC post-1945, derived from historical turning points, provides an analytical framework specifically for identifying conceptual shifts in the global context. On this basis, major controversies are explored.
Historical phases
… a manifestation of solidarity among peoples and countries of the South that contributes to their national well-being, their national and collective self-reliance … [that] must be determined by the countries of the South, guided by the principles of respect for national sovereignty, national ownership and independence, equality, non-conditionality, non-interference in domestic affairs and mutual benefit.
The emergence of SSC is generally attributed to the 1955 Asian–African Conference convened in Bandung, Indonesia, in which representatives from 29 newly independent nations participated. The Bandung Conference spirit, however, evolved from the centuries of nationalist liberation wars in conjunction with local and transnational anti-colonial, anti-racist and anti-imperialist struggles – Pan-Asian and Pan-African as much as women’s, workers’, anti-apartheid and other anti-fascist movements, including the Communist Internationals. Embracing notions of friendship, solidarity and brotherhood/sisterhood, at Bandung these norms and subaltern struggles attained diplomatic expression while overcoming their compartmentalization (Phạm and Shilliam 2016).
The absence of direct political interference and conditionality and related notions of ‘horizontality’, ‘partnership’ and ‘win-win’, sharply contrast the more paternalistic, hierarchical donor–recipient relations of conventional North–South official development assistance (ODA) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC). Accordingly, SSC actors refer to themselves predominantly as ‘South partners’. Other labels include ‘(re)emerging’, ‘new’, ‘non-traditional’ and ‘non-DAC donors’. These are not unproblematic as,
Concertation (1945–81) In the bipolar Cold War context, Third Worldist SSC was associated with political, economic and cultural decolonization struggles. This included the foundation of the League of Arab States (also ‘Arab League’) in 1945; the 1947 Asian Relations Conference, convened in India prior to formal independence; and the 1954 China–India Panchsheel Agreement, whose Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence were incorporated into the Bandung agenda: mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty; mutual non-aggression; mutual
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non-interference; equality and mutual benefit; and peaceful coexistence. These, alongside the principles of collective self-reliance and self-determination, were institutionalized via the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), formed in Baghdad in 1960; the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), created in Belgrade in 1961 (formally the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries, with 120 members in 2021); and the G-77, launched at the first United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva in 1964 and constituted as a permanent group via the 1967 Charter of Algiers (134 members in 2021). Non-alignment never meant neutrality or impartiality, but becoming independent co-actors in a democratization of the world order. Likewise, national and collective self-reliance never pursued absolute delinking and autarky from the North, but structural transformation through selective replacement of exploitative dependency-perpetuating relations with more egalitarian South–South relations promoting complementarity and interdependences. State-led inter-governmental concertation conjoined with mass popular organization, notably the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization (AAPSO) formed in Cairo in 1958, extended as the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAAL) at the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana. Efforts of economic decolonization culminated in the 1974 UN Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO), reaffirmed that same year by the UN Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States. Underpinned by global Keynesianism and dependency theory, the NIEO demanded fairer terms of trade, reparations for colonial atrocities, a reformed international monetary system, and the right to regulating and nationalizing transnational corporations (TNCs). During the 1970s, technology exchange moved centre stage, leading to the establishment of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Special Unit for Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (TCDC) in 1974, and the 1978 Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA) for Promoting and Implementing TCDC. As a complement to TCDC, the UNCTAD Unit on Economic Cooperation among Developing Countries (ECDC) was
created in 1985, following the 1981 Caracas G-77 High Level Conference on ECDC. The order-transforming aspirations remained unfulfilled. First, despite successes, such as the China-financed Tanzania–Zambia railway completed in 1975, objective difficulties in the practical implementation of SSC initiatives (ineffective institutions, scarce resources) often joined with governments’ lack of commitment (Kragelund 2019). Second, many of the Western order’s foundational organizing principles were affirmed, especially territorial nation-state sovereignty, the human rights regime, and modernist development (Phillips 2016). Nation-statism in conjunction with modernization ideology, for example, engendered internal colonialism over minoritized nationalities, driving disunity. Third, political, economic, cultural and social diversity limited consensus, often in conjunction with structural contradictions. For instance, while OPEC demonstrated that collective action can effectuate control over a commodity’s price, the strategic failure to build a South-wide counter-structure undermined solidarity as petroleum exporters’ interests started to diverge from those of oil-importing developing countries. Fourth, order-(re)building was constrained by the North-dominated neo-colonial governance structure into which the post-colonial South integrated: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the UN, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) – all established between 1944 and 1947 when most developing countries did not even exist as sovereign states. Containment (1981–95) The capitalist North, despite internal issue-specific discordances, never abandoned its colonialist aspirations. Hostile and condescending reactions to Bandung included the mobilization of deeply entrenched colonialist stereotypes, tactical delaying and blocking of initiatives and overt and covert warfare. Intra-South frictions and differences were actively accentuated, using political, economic and informational and communicational power. It was the neoliberal counter-offensive, however, that aborted the twenty-year effort of UNCTAD-mediated South–North diplomatic dialogue at the Thomas Muhr
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1981 Cancún International Meeting for Cooperation and Development. For the Reagan- and Thatcher-led USA and UK governments, the South’s demands were non-negotiable. A combination of factors and forces corroded developmental state action while exacerbating South disunity: global economic recession and a significant deterioration of the terms of trade, which increased competition in global commodity markets and for foreign direct investment; the debt crisis and ‘Washington Consensus’ structural adjustment policies (SAPs), accompanied by neoliberal elite formation; the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), hence of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) as an alternative development system; the North-driven strengthening of the World Bank and IMF over the UN system as global development leaders; the reconfiguration of UNCTAD, eventually accommodating the post-Cold War good governance conditionalities (free market, liberal democracy, rule of law, anti-corruption, effective government promotion); and the GATT Uruguay Round negotiations (1986–94), where developing countries failed to act in concert (Toye 2014). Endorsement of ‘self-reliance’ by the OECD and World Bank implied its reconceptualization as neoliberal entrepreneurial self-sufficiency (microcredit and microenterprise schemes), for eventual withdrawal of ODA as every country is considered to be responsible for its own development. By 1995, when GATT was integrated in the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Third Worldist vision of SSC had been marginalized to the annual G-77 and tri-annual NAM meetings. Co-option vs confrontation (1995–present) The mainstreaming of SSC since 1995 already started with the 1978 BAPA. Widely celebrated as a milestone in SSC promotion, the BAPA reduced SSC to technical cooperation, entailing a shift from a critical structuralist-transformative to an instrumentalist problem-solving approach. Frequently associated with ‘depoliticization’, however, recasting SSC in managerial-technical terms as an order-stabilizing practice is as political as SSC as a system-changing process. While the BAPA (Recommendations 35, 36, 38) Thomas Muhr
laid the foundation for triangular cooperation, the 1995 UN report ‘New Directions for Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries’ explicitly started promoting triangular cooperation among governments and the private business and NGO sectors, while endorsing developing countries’ integration into the new neoliberal global order. This agenda has been codified, first, in the OECD-orchestrated High Level Fora on Aid Effectiveness in Rome, Paris, Accra and Busan in 2003, 2005, 2008 and 2011, respectively, culminating in the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation; and, secondly, in the UN system, including the two High-level Conferences on SSC in Nairobi in 2009 and Buenos Aires in 2019 (also dubbed ‘BAPA+40’), the 2015 Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, and the 2030 Agenda for Development. Proponents of triangular cooperation insist on its resource-leveraging and transparency-increasing, thus cost-effectiveness and efficiency-enhancing, potential through coordination between ODA and SSC. It may also boost SSC’s visibility, recognition and acceptance, as reflected in the establishment of the UNCTAD Unit for Economic Integration and Cooperation among Developing Countries (ECIDC) in 2009, and the re-launching of UNDP’s TCDC Unit as UNOSSC in 2012. However, despite the UN’s continued discursive adherence to the Third Worldist framing, the now dominant compound ‘South–South and triangular cooperation’ implies the subordinate co-option of SSC into the global development governance regime. The concomitant appropriation of ‘partnership’, ‘win-win’ and ‘mutual benefit’ by ODA discourses, underscores this. Conceptual co-option, however, does not mean complete structural assimilation of South actors. Notably, the G-77+China convened two South Summits, in Havana in 2000 and in Doha in 2005. Often overlooked, this occurred in a context in which the Third Worldist vision of SSC had been revitalized through the establishment of the Geneva-based South Centre in 1995, as the first intergovernmental organization exclusively of the South. This think tank originates in the work of the South Commission, which was an independent group of South
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intellectual and political leaders formed with NAM support in 1987. Their 1990 report ‘The Challenge to the South’ can be read as a blueprint for the Cuba–Venezuela-initiated ALBA-TCP/Petrocaribe, formalized in 2004 and 2005, respectively, as the currently most pronounced institutionalizations of this resuscitated Bandung spirit. Simultaneously, the tri-annual FOCAC was launched in 2000, the IBSA in 2003, the BRIC(S) from 2006 onward (formalized as BRICS in 2010), and three IAFS have been convened since 2008.
Major controversies
The Anglophone SSC literature is biased towards China–Africa relations and the BRICS, which mirrors the neo-imperialist geopolitical interests involved in knowledge production. Also, much published material lacks empirical substantiation. In its extreme, Chinese, Saudi Arabian and Venezuelan SSC has been polemicized as ‘toxic aid’ by ‘rogue donors’ (see Kragelund 2019; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Daley 2019). Contentions, however, also arise from theoretical and methodological issues, some of which this section examines. First, in the absence of a universally accepted definition of SSC, ambiguities start with two complementary conceptualizations of ‘the global South’. In nation state-centric or methodologically nationalist terms, ‘the global South’ is a group of developing countries, a geographic north– south binary as depicted on the well-known front cover of the 1980 ‘Brandt Report’. ‘Global South’, however, is also associated with intra-country inequalities. Within such a socio-geographic understanding, the global (or globalized) South is co-constituted relationally with the globalized North within and across countries. A global South identity is then produced through inter- and transnational solidarity-building in resistance to common historical experiences of structural oppression, subalternization, exploitation and peripherization (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Daley 2019). Examples of such global(ized) SSC include the Venezuelan government’s solidarity cooperation with dispossessed households and communities in the USA and UK (Muhr 2013). These ontological considerations, second, underlie the unresolved problem of measurement, where definitional inconsistencies
combine with unsystematic data collection and technical limitations. While traditional cost–benefit analysis may use such variables as international trade and finance volumes and flows, methodological challenges include capturing the multifarious modalities, mechanisms and practices of SSC: (a) the multitude of inter- and transnational actors involved – state (e.g. ministries and enterprises at national and subnational levels); private (e.g. multinational corporations, business associations, small-scale traders); and societal (e.g. migrants); (b) in-kind exchanges, which are very common in SSC and difficult to account for in exact quantum and value; and (c) synergies or multiplier effects generated from the multiple, co-constitutive dimensions of SSC. For instance, how may diplomatic solidarity, collective identity-building through cultural and sports events and emancipation of the South, be quantified? Conversely, decolonialists question why SSC should be subjected to modernist-positivist measurement altogether, and not aspire to transcend the mediation through capital. Third, who benefits is the probably most polarizing issue. Does SSC reproduce neo-imperialist exploitation and dependency, as often claimed by reference to resource extractivism by Chinese and Brazilian companies on the African continent? Has SSC become synonymous to further roll-out of growth-oriented global neoliberalization, as now most of SSC activities seem to be performed by private actors? Is SSC merely problem-solving best practice transfer or South solidarity for structural transformation – or both simultaneously (see Gray and Gills 2016; Mawdsley 2020)? Again, economic reductionism and methodological limitations often conceal the complexities of who is involved in what activity, where (geographically and sector-wise), and to whose benefit(s). On the one hand, direct and indirect impacts assessment would require disaggregating such issues as labour conditions, added value accrual and appropriation, technology and skills transfer, environmental impact and tax payment. On the other hand, competing interests and contradictory outcomes would have to be accounted for. While, for instance, resource extractivism may reproduce exploitation, simultaneous counter-dependency effects can be generated in the form of enlarged policy space through increased negotiation power and Thomas Muhr
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independence from ODA due to the availability of alternative sources (Kragelund 2019). Moreover, even though the principle of solidarity normatively contradicts exploitative practices, SSC was never anti-capitalist, and solidarity and commercial and political interests are not per se mutually exclusive (Muhr, in Gray and Gills 2016). Overall, a consensus is emerging that generalizations should be avoided. Finally, Western-centric epistemologies rarely recognize the neo-colonial/imperial nature of the modern world order and non-Western thought and agency. Decolonial critique has particularly targeted the dominant strands of conventional IR theory – (neo)realism, liberal internationalism and the English School (Phạm and Shilliam 2016; Shilliam 2011). Accordingly, much misunderstanding originates in fitting SSC into familiar, pre-established problematiques, tropes and templates. Typically, the (neo) colonial projection of order couples with the (methodologically nationalist) idea of nation states as rationally and strategically behaving self-interested units/subjects locked into permanent struggle for survival and domination in the international society (‘power politics’). Framings of this kind portray SSC as a tool in the pursuit of a presumed ‘national interest’, and the SSC principles as mere rhetoric to mask realpolitik intentions. A cardinal example of resulting misrepresentation is the myth of a Brazil–Venezuela rivalry, popularized in the 2000s/2010s, while in fact a comprehensive bilateral SSC agenda had been established between 2003 and 2016. The frequent transposition of Joseph Nye’s ‘soft power’ (co-optive rather than coercive power) from USA foreign policy discourse to SSC reinforces the imagery of international winner–loser relations, as power is depicted as a unidirectional mechanism (rather than relational–dialectical), in which the affected is inherently objectified and win-win relations are ruled out. Beyond conceptual inadequacy, modernist IR theory simply omits such emotions and sentiments as solidarity and friendship.
Conclusion
Contemporary SSC is a variegated and contested set of ideas and social practices whose cumulative and often contradictory effects Thomas Muhr
defy generalization, and it may be appropriate to think in the plural of South–South cooperations. While SSC may partially have reconfigured the historical hierarchies of international development (Mawdsley 2020), this occurs through the institutions of global development governance where frequently the BRICS – individually or collectively – strategically ally with the G-77. Nonetheless, the South’s demand for reform of the international financial architecture has, except for voting power adjustment in the World Bank, been ignored (Kragelund 2019). The mainstreaming of SSC notwithstanding, this equally produces a spatiality through which the Bandung spirit also materializes (Muhr, in Gray and Gills 2016). Commonly underrated or ignored, the ALBA-TCP/ Petrocaribe had, for instance, by the early 2010s become by far the largest provider of concessionary finance in absolute terms to partner countries (see Muhr 2013). The (neo‑) imperialist reaction to such relative successes in structural transformation – hybrid warfare that combines disinformation campaigns with economic, financial and military coercive measures (embargoes, confiscations, paramilitary terrorism, coups d’état) – evokes the historical question of how far decolonization is actually permitted to go. After all, virtually all South actors that only in the slightest challenge the hegemonic order, including Cuba, China, Iran, Russia and Venezuela, are subject to such aggression. This, however, appears to generate its own counter-movement, arguably reconciling South–South solidarity with distinct commercial interests. Thomas Muhr
References
Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. and Daley, P. (eds) (2019). Routledge Handbook of South-South Relations. Routledge, London. Gray, K. and Gills, B.K. (eds) (2016). ‘Rising Powers and South-South Cooperation’. Third World Quarterly, 37(4) (Special Issue). Kragelund, P. (2019). South-South Development. Routledge, Abingdon. Mawdsley, E. (2020). ‘Queering Development?’ Antipode, 52(1): 227–45. Muhr, T. (2013). Counter-Globalization and Socialism in the 21st Century. Routledge, London. Phạm, Q.N. and Shilliam, R. (eds) (2016). Meanings of Bandung. Rowman & Littlefield, London.
South–South cooperation 567 Phillips, A. (ed.) (2016). ‘Beyond Bandung’. Australian Journal of International Affairs, 70(4) (Special Issue). Shilliam, R. (ed.) (2011). International Relations and Non-Western Thought. Routledge, London. Toye, John (2014). ‘UNCTAD at 50’. UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) Geneva. https://unctad.org/ system/files/official-document/osg2014d1_en .pdf (accessed 22/04/21).
UNCTAD (2019, June). Energizing South-South trade. Policy Brief No. 74. https://unctad.org/ system/files/official-document/presspb2019d3 _en.pdf (accessed 22/04/21). UNOSSC (United Nations Office for South– South Cooperation) (2021). About South-South and Triangular Cooperation. https://www .unsouthsouth.org/about/about-sstc/ (accessed 02/01/21).
Thomas Muhr
Stages of growth In this entry we lay out a broad outline of Rostow’s stages of growth theory. In his seminal work1, Rostow identified five different stages of economic growth – the traditional society, the preconditions for take-off, the take-off, the drive to maturity, and the age of high mass consumption. Interest in Rostow’s stages’ theory arose in the 1960s and persists even now as researchers remain intrigued by his ideas (Costa et al. 2016a, 2016b; McCartney 2018; Solivetti 2005) and their application to contemporary issues, for example the environment and China– Pakistan economic corridor (Kesgingoz and Serkan 2016; McCartney 2018). The stages of growth theory incorporates a broader spectrum of issues ranging from economic, social, political and international relations, such as the US–Russia (former USSR) Cold War. In this entry we restrict ourselves to economic aspects of stages theory only.
Growth stages
Rostow’s initial theory was first propounded in his book The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, published in 1960. He explains: ‘[t]his book presents an economic historian’s way of generalizing the sweep of modern history. The form of this generalization is a set of stages-of-growth.’ Rostow (1991) acknowledged: I cannot emphasize too strongly at the outset, that the stages of growth are an arbitrary and limited way of looking at the sequence of modern history: and they are, in no absolute sense, a correct way. (p. 1)
The book attracted considerable controversy among researchers, and Rostow in the third edition of his book (1991) went on to address some of the concerns raised by the critics. The stages of growth theory applies not only to economic transformation, but also to the many social, political and cultural changes societies around the world undergo (Bauer and Wilson 1962). As Rostow stated in the third edition of the book: The concept of sequential stages of economic growth was initially presented not only as one
component of a dynamic disaggregated general theory of production but also as a way of looking at the contemporary world that might illuminate a number of quite specific question of wide interest and concern in the late 1950s. (Rostow 1991 pp. ix–x)
The five stages of economic growth are given below. 1. Traditional society A traditional society, according to Rostow, is a dynamic concept in which marginal changes in innovation could take place, yet there are limits on the output per person which could be achieved. In this society, Rostow observed, In terms of history then, with the phrase ‘traditional society’ we are grouping the whole pre-Newtonian world: the dynasties in China; the civilization of the Middle East and the Mediterranean; the world of medieval Europe. (Rostow 1991 p. 5)
2. Preconditions for take-off The second stage prepares a society for take-off, addressing particular economic and societal conditions to facilitate the third stage: take-off. Rostow argues that the difference between a traditional and a modern society is merely a question of whether its investment rate is low relative to population increase – let us say under 5 per cent of national income; or whether it has risen up to 10 per cent or over. Pointing out the need for broader societal changes, Rostow observes: In short, the rise in the rate of investment – which the economist conjures up to summarize the transition – requires a radical shift in the society’s effective attitude toward fundamental and applied science; toward the initiation of change in productive technique; toward the taking of risk; and toward the conditions and methods of work. (Rostow 1991 p. 20)
The role of agriculture in pre-take-off stage is very important to feed the growing population and to meet the needs of urban population and also generate foreign exchange for importing capital goods necessary for further development. In order for take-off for the industrial sector to occur, increased productivity in the agricultural sector is required. In other words, as Rostow explained, ‘Agriculture must
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supply expanded food, expanded markets, and an expanded supply of loanable funds to the modern sector.’ The role of government is also important in the pre-take-off period in building up necessary infrastructure or social overhead capital. Among non-economic changes, a fall in birth rate and strong political leadership committed to modernization of the country are also required. 3. Take-off stage The third and the most important stage in the path to modernization and development of a country is the take-off stage. Thus, as Rostow stated, The take-off is the interval when the old blocks and resistances to steady growth are finally overcome. The forces making for economic progress, which yielded limited bursts and enclaves of modern activity, expand and come to dominate the society. Growth becomes its normal condition.
The three essential requirements for the take-off stage to occur are: (1) rise in the rate of productive investment from say, 5 per cent or less to over 10 per cent of national income (or net national product (NNP); (2) the development of one or more substantial manufacturing sectors, with a high rate of growth; (3) the existence or quick emergence of a political, social and institutional framework’. Some examples of take-off in different countries according to Rostow are Great Britain (1783–1802); France (1830–60); Germany (1850–73); Russia (1890–1914) and Canada (1896–1914). Take-off, as defined by Rostow (1956), is
leads to rise of new industries, expansion of modern sectors, increased efficiency of financial institutions, new techniques in agriculture and industry and emergence of private sector. On the importance of banking institutions and their contribution to development, Rostow (1956, p. 39) noted that ‘Virtually without exception, the take-off periods have been marked by the extension of banking institutions which expanded the supply of working capital; and in most cases also by an expansion in the range of long-range financing done by a central, formally organised, capital market.’ Increased investment (from 5 per cent to over 10 per cent) during take-off stage will lead to increased per capita income. However, this will depend on the pattern of income distribution and population growth: During the take-off new industries expand rapidly, yielding profits a large portion of which are reinvested in a new plant; and these new industries, in turn stimulate, through their rapidly expanding requirement for factory workers, the services to support them, and other manufactured goods, a further expansion in urban areas and in other modern industrial plants. The whole process of expansion in the modern sector yields an increase of income in the hands of those who not only save at high rates but place their savings at the disposal of those engaged in modern sector activities. The new class of entrepreneurs expands; and it directs the enlarging flows of investment in the private sector. The economy exploits hitherto unused natural resources and methods of production. (Rostow 1991 p. 8)
4. Drive to maturity The drive to maturity stage, according to Rostow (1956), is
… the interval during which the rate of investment increases in such a way that real output per capita rises and this initial increase carries with it radical changes in production techniques and the disposition of income flows which perpetuate the new scale of investment and perpetuate thereby the rising trend in per capita output. (p. 25)
in which an economy demonstrates the capacity to move beyond the original industries which powered its take-off and to absorb and apply efficiently over a wide range of its resources – if not the whole range – the most advanced fruits of (then) modern technology. (p. 10)
The beginning of take-off, as Rostow points out, could be through various ‘stimulus’ factors such as significant political changes, technological innovations or external factors such as access to international markets or ‘fall in terms of trade’ leading to import substitution. Take-off as a result of stimulus
The definition of this stage is, however, vague and unclear, and varies from country to country (Green and Russo 2017). Rostow defined it as ‘the period when a society has effectively applied the range of (then) modern technology to the bulk of its resources’. In this stage, the industrial sector diversifies, Rashmi Arora
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moving from coal, iron and heavy engineering to steel, ships and chemical industries, which gain prominence at this stage. But, as Rostow acknowledged, this will be determined by availability of resource endowments, nature of take-off and existing government policies. Railways have been the most important technological development leading to diversification into different industries. As Rostow (1991 p. 62) wrote, ‘it was in the technical experience of building and operating the railways that a good part of the foundations were laid for the march of the Western world into maturity’. The drive to maturity stage can, however, significantly vary from country to country (thus rigid grouping of countries is complex): for instance, France at the time of the First World War with a backward agricultural sector, yet advanced capital exports, lagging regions of Canada and Japan with its labour-intensive agricultural sector. Overall, along the path of these stages, the workforce composition changes from 75 per cent engaged in agriculture at pre-take-off to 40 per cent by end of take-off and further to 20 per cent by maturity stage. In terms of skill sets, the move is from less-skilled manual jobs to more educated skilled and semi-skilled workers. As Rostow (1991 p. 71) pointed out, ‘These people are not fresh in from the countryside. They are the increasingly literate and knowledgeable children of the city and the world of technology.’ 5. The age of mass consumption The last stage in the journey to economic growth, according to Rostow, is the age of mass consumption. Three major characteristics of this stage are increased allocation of resources for military and foreign policy; emergence of a welfare state, or what Rostow (1991 p. 73) refers to as ‘the use of the powers of the State, including the power to redistribute income through progressive taxation, to achieve human and social objectives (including increased leisure) which the free-market process, in its less adulterated form, did not achieve’; and increased consumption beyond basic life necessities, or what Rostow ( 1991 p. 74) describes as ‘not only to better food, shelter, and clothing but into the range of mass consumption of durable consumers’ goods and services, which the mature economies of the twentieth century can provide’. Rashmi Arora
Critics of Rostow’s theory
Rostow’s stages’ theory was immensely popular in 1960s and 1970s, and attracted a large number of researchers. Acknowledging the popularity of Rostow’s theory, Bauer and Wilson (1962) observed: In part its attraction derives from factors extraneous to its central theme and approach. The appeal owes much to Professor Rostow’s forecasts and proposals for policy, since in many ways they tell people what they want to hear as, for instance, his proposals for massive foreign aid, or, even more important perhaps, the suggestion that there are readily discernible and not too complex methods for resolving some of the most intractable problems of the age, including the resolution of world conflict.
The theory has been applied at various levels. For instance, Parr (2001) applied Rostow’s stages’ theory at the regional, multi-regional and inter-regional levels. Arora (2009) applied Rostow’s stages of economic growth in the context of Indian states and examined the readiness of Indian states for globalization. In more recent studies, McCartney (2018) applied the stages theory to the China–Pakistan economic corridor under the Belt and Road initiative. Bauer and Wilson (1962) noted that although Rostow’s theory is quite appealing, especially in the historical context, the theory in itself is rather vague. Several terms such as the ‘productive investment’ conditions required are not clear and the choice of a rise to 10 per cent in investment seems arbitrary (Bauer and Wilson 1962). Criticisms range from being too simplistic, the inclusion of a large number of variables, an arbitrary take-off stage and neglect of non-economic factors (Bauer and Wilson 1962; Solivetti 2005). Azariadis and Drazen (1990) argued that Rostow’s theory did not adequately explain the factors that led to countries moving from one stage to other. Among other criticisms of theory are the rationale for categorizing countries into different stages; for instance, the take-off stage for India was set as 1952 when more than 70 per cent of its population was still in the rural sector; neglect of within-country differences; failure to clarify the dual nature (channel of leading sectors and savings-investment channel) of take-off; timing of different stages; identification of different leading sectors; and the static
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nature of take-off without taking into account technological progress and human capital development (see Arora 2009; Cairncross 1961; Fishlow 1965; Hoselitz 1960; Itagaki 1963; Kuznets 1963, 1971; Parr 2001).
Conclusion
Despite several criticisms of Rostow’s stages of growth theory, it continues to generate interest among the researchers several decades after initial publication. As Solivetti (2005) observed, ‘His heritage has exerted an influence on later studies of social change and development. After his works, it has been more difficult to overlook the noneconomic aspects of development.’ Supple (1984) too pointed out that, despite criticisms, ‘Rostow’s precise commitment to the study of economic growth in the way that he first made peculiarly his own blazed a trail which other economic historians have failed to follow with equal assurance and purposefulness.’ Supple (1984) further observed: It was one of Rostow’s great contributions to link such a viewpoint (that economic growth can be seen as a potentially universal process) to the specifics of economic history, to suggest a range of critical variables, to proffer a set of relationships between them which seemed to explain what actually happened as the phases of material advance majestically unfolded themselves.
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References
Arora, R.U. (2009). ‘Globalisation and Stages of Development: An Exploratory Analysis’, Review of Urban & Regional Development Studies (RURDS), Journal of Applied Regional Science Conference, 21(2/3), 124–42. Azariadis, C. and Drazen, A. (1990). ‘Threshold Externalities in Economic Development’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 105(2), 501–26. Bauer, P.T. and Wilson, C. (1962). ‘The Stages of Growth’, Economica, 29(114), 190–200. Cairncross, A.K. (1961). ‘The Stages of Economic Growth’, The Economic History Review, 13(3), 450–58.
Costa, D., Kehoe, T.J. and Raveendranathan, G. (2016a). ‘The Stages of Economic Growth Revisited: Part 1: A General Framework and Taking Off into Growth’, Economic Policy Paper 16–5, March. Costa, D., Kehoe, T.J. and Raveendranathan, G. (2016b). ‘The Stages of Economic Growth Revisited: Part 2: Catching Up to and Joining the Economic Leader, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis’, Economic Policy Paper 16–6, April. Fishlow, A. (1965). ‘Empty Economic Stages’, Economic Journal, 75, 111–25. Green, A. and Russo, J. (2017). Institutions and the Stages of Growth (24 January). Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=2905055 and http:// dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2905055. Hoselitz, B.F. (1960). ‘Theories of Stages of Economic Growth’, in B.F.Hoselitz (ed.), Theories of Economic Growth, Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Itagaki, Y. (1963). ‘Criticism of Rostow’s Stage Approach: The Concepts of Stage, System and Type’, The Developing Economies, 1(1), 1–17. Kesgingoz, H. and Serkan, D. (2016). ‘Investigation of Tr82 Region According to the Growth Stages of Rostow’, Asian Journal of Economic Modelling, 4(4), 180–89. Kuznets, S. (1963). ‘Notes on the Take-Off’, in W.W. Rostow (ed.), The Economics of Take-Off into Sustained Growth, London: Macmillan. Kuznets, S. (1971). ‘Notes on Stages of Economic Growth as a System Determinant’, in S. Eckstein (ed.), Comparison of Economic Systems, Oxford: Oxford University Press. McCartney, M. (2018). ‘The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC): Considering Contemporary Pakistan through Old-Fashioned Economics and Historical Case Studies’, The Lahore Journal of Economics, 23(2), 19–48. Parr, J.B. (2001). ‘On the Regional Dimensions of Rostow’s Theory of Growth’, Review of Urban & Regional Development Studies, 13(1), 2–19. Rostow, W.W. (1956) ‘The Take-Off into Self-Sustained Growth’, The Economic Journal, 66(261), 25–48. Rostow, W.W. (1960). The Stages of Economic Growth, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rostow, W.W. (1991). The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, 3rd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Solivetti, L.M. (2005). ‘W.W. Rostow and His Contribution to Development Studies: A Note’, Journal of Development Studies, 41(4), 719–24, https://doi.org/10.1080/00220380500092903. Supple, B. (1984). ‘Revisiting Rostow’, The Economic History Review, 37(1), 107–14.
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State fragility State fragility refers to a situation where a state has deficiencies in one or more of the core functions of the state, such as legitimacy, capacity, and authority. A significant proportion of the population does not regard the state as the legitimate institution for the exercise of power. The state lacks the capacity or will to deliver public services and lacks monopoly over the use of force. This situation exposes societies to the risk of meltdown or collapse, endangering the lives of citizens and leaving them unable to sustain ordinary life. When this happens, famine, violent disorder, and economic distress displace millions of people, with consequent impacts on surrounding regions. Fragile states can also threaten global security by providing safe havens for terrorist groups and drug and human traffickers, and increase the threat of disease pandemics and mass migrations. Since the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, failed and fragile states have emerged as a major area of concern for the great powers, international institutions, and scholars. After the tragic attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, the national security discourse in the United States shifted focus. The US National Security Strategy of 2002 declared, ‘America is now threatened less by conquering states than by failing ones’ (Bush, 2002). Similarly, the president of the World Bank described fragile states as ‘the toughest development challenge of our era’ (Zoellick, 2008). The major concerns were that failed states harboured terrorists, provided safe havens for piracy and trafficking, and potentially triggered mass migrations of distressed populations. The call to ‘bring the state back in’ resonated in the late twentieth century (Evans et al., 1985), became stronger post-2001 as policymakers globally became concerned about the impact of fragile states. In particular, the 11 September 2001 attacks put the issue of then-failed states at the centre of international attention (Einsiedel, 2005). Governments and major international institutions prepared new strategies in response to the lack of progress in reducing state fragility. Scholars and researchers criticised international policy and intervention. Although academic discussion and policy interest peaked in the late 2000s, and development assistance and intervention-
ism have rewound across the board, many nations still struggle with state fragility and its consequences. The term ‘fragile state’ has increasingly replaced the term ‘failed state’ as research has developed a more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon. The Failed State Index, for instance, was renamed the Fragile State Index in 2019. The US Congress also now uses the term fragile state. However, there are different approaches to defining state fragility. The World Bank emphasizes an institutional approach, defining fragile states as those that suffer from weak policies, institutions, and governance (World Bank, 2006). Others also emphasize legitimacy. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) categorizes fragile states into vulnerable or crisis states. The former are those states that are ‘unable or unwilling to adequately assure the provision of security and basic services to significant portions of their populations and where the government’s legitimacy is in question’ (Warren, 2006, p. x). The latter ‘are those where the central government does not exert effective control over its territory or is unable or unwilling to assure the provision of vital services to significant parts of its territory’ (ibid.). In addition, the government lacks legitimacy, and violent conflict is a great risk (ibid.). However, the precedence of the institutional approach in defining state fragility has been criticized as failing to account for (local) perceptions of the legitimacy of the state-building process (Lemay-Hébert, 2009). Scholars such as Migdal (1988), Brinkerhoff (2007) and Ikpe (2007) emphasize state– society relations in understanding state resilience and weaknesses. In addition, scholars who advocate hybrid models of intervention to promote stability and development have criticized the state-centred (or broadly institutional) approach in defining or addressing state fragility. Boege et al. (2009) argue that it may be misleading to regard the fragility of states as an obstacle to the maintenance of peace and sustainable development. They emphasize alternative non-state-centric approaches to governance, the control of violence, peacebuilding, and development. Hybridity, in this context, refers to situations in which liberal and illiberal norms, institutions, and actors coexist. This concept views the state as only one of several institutional actors ‘claiming to provide security, frameworks for
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conflict regulation and other forms of welfare provision’ (Kent et al., 2018: 2). However, discussions of hybridity have often focused on the relationship between ‘international’ and ‘local’ versus ‘illiberal’; ‘modern’ versus ‘traditional’; and ‘state’ versus ‘non-state’. Such binaries tend to homogenize categories, oversimplify contexts and, above all, show the limits of hybridity as a concept (ibid.). Fragile states vary. Some are currently in a state of collapse. Others have decisively escaped the risk of collapse but remain fragile as the risk of further failure remains high. In addition, no county is ‘entirely’ fragile or ‘entirely’ resilient. Within a single country, pockets of fragility and resilience may coexist. When assessing state fragility, it is crucial to assess the circumstances both vertically and horizontally; fragility may exist vertically within institutions or horizontally across internal regions (Javed and Nabi, 2022; Bizhan, 2022). This situation can be referred to as heterogeneous fragility and requires deeper examination than the simplified approach that only assesses state fragility at the macro level (Javed and Nabi, 2022). The international response to state fragility, however, has continued to evolve. After its pioneering 2002 report, Low-Income Countries Under Stress, the World Bank devoted its 2011 Development Report to Conflict, Security and Development. That report argued that a combination of internal and external stresses, coupled with weak institutions, increases the risk of violence. Given this challenge, the report suggested that it was important to strengthen legitimate institutions and governance. Countries need first to restore confidence in institutions and transform those institutions to provide citizens with security, justice, and employment (World Bank, 2011). In 2010, the OECD argued that donors should take a ‘Do No Harm’ approach to avoid undermining the process of state-building and contribute positively to state-building in situations of fragility (OECD, 2009). The report states that donors can unintentionally harm when the resources they deliver, or the policy reforms they advocate, exacerbate violent conflict. The state is weakened as a site of decision-making or policy formation when donors directly deploy public resources. By not understanding the history and power dynamics within a country, donor intervention can also weaken the incentives for power-
ful elites to buy into state-building processes. The report suggests that donor intervention needs to focus on the endogenous political processes that drive state-building, the legitimacy of the state in society, the relations between state and society, the expectations society has of the state, and the capacities of the state to perform its basic functions. In 2015, the OECD warned that fragility poses critical challenges to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Peace (OECD, 2015). In 2015, then-prime minister David Cameron committed to spending half of all UK aid on fragile states (The Guardian, 2015). The United States has further adopted measures to address state fragility. In 2019, the US Congress passed the Global Fragility Act, aiming to stabilize conflict-affected areas, prevent violence globally, and establish funds to support such efforts. The Act required the US State Department to devise a plan for the initiative, including its organizational structure and goals, and nominated the USAID to lead in development, humanitarian, and non-security policies. The State Department was also tasked to select priority countries and regions that were particularly at risk. Aid to fragile and conflict-affected countries has increased over time, showing a continuing upward trend since 2000 as the total net official development assistance increased from US$5 billion in 2000 to US$52 billion in 2018 (OECD, 2018:11; World Bank, 2020). However, despite the increasing attention to and allocation of aid for reducing state fragility, key indicators suggest that progress is stagnating. Unlike the fight to reduce global poverty, attempts at reducing state fragility have generally not been successful. Displacement and refugee flows (a proxy measure of enduring conflict and failing economies), corruption, and poverty rates are at record levels in fragile states. Currently, half of the world’s poor live in fragile and conflict-affected countries. According to the World Bank, ‘[by] 2030 [these countries] will be home to up to 2/3 of the world’s extreme poor’ (IDA, n.d.). Both low- and middle-income countries, such as Afghanistan and Lebanon, respectively (Bizhan, 2017), are affected by fragility risks, some far away from where the problems start’. As of 2021, 39 countries are fragile, ranging from high- to medium-intensity conNematullah Bizhan
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flict to high institutional and social fragility (World Bank, n.d.). Policymakers and scholars have profound disagreements about the different pathways for reducing state fragility. These highlight ongoing tensions between realism and idealism, between local and international priorities, between working with governments and bypassing governments, and between the choices of focus on state-building versus nation-building. Moreover, mismatches between the underlying nature of societies and the state structures that govern them remain another area of ongoing tension. Thus, attempts at reducing state fragility are daunting tasks which need to go beyond a narrow state-centric approach. In addition to state-building, it is imperative to prioritize nation-building and economic development. At times, these attempts may work against each other, requiring a nuanced understanding of the context and conditions, and establishing a necessary balance between them. Nematullah Bizhan
References
Bizhan, N. (2017). Aid Paradoxes in Afghanistan: Building and Undermining the State. Abingdon: Routledge. Bizhan, N. (2022). ‘Building Legitimacy and State Capacity in Afghanistan’. In N. Bizhan (ed.), State Fragility: Case Studies and Comparisons. London and New York: Routledge, 24–63. Boege, V., Brown, M.A. and Clements, K.P. (2009). ‘Hybrid Political Orders, Not Fragile States’. Peace Review 21(1): 13–21. Brinkerhoff , D.W. (ed.) (2007). Governance in Post-Conflict Societies: Rebuilding Fragile States. London and New York: Routledge. Bush, G.W. (2002). The National Security Strategy of the United States of America. Washington, DC: Executive Office of the President. Einsiedel, S.V. (2005). ‘Policy Responses to State Failure’. In S. Chesterman, M. Ignatieff and R. Thakur (eds), Making States Work: State Failure and the Crisis of Governance. New York, NY: United Nations University Press, 13–35. Evans, P.B., Rueschemeyer, D. and Skocpol, T. (eds) (1985). Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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IDA (n.d.). ‘Conflict and Fragility: What We Know’. Accessed 26 October 2020 at https:// ida.worldbank.org/theme/conflict-and-fragility. Ikpe, E. (2007). ‘Challenging the Discourse on Fragile States’. Conflict, Security & Development 7(1): 85–124. Javed, U. and Nabi, I. (2022). ‘Heterogeneous Fragility in Pakistan’. In N. Bizhan (ed.), State Fragility: Case Studies and Comparisons. London and New York: Routledge, 141–86. Kent, L., Bose, S., Wallis, J., Dinnen, S. and Forsyth, M. (2018). ‘Introduction’. In J. Wallis et al. (eds), Hybridity on the Ground in Peacebuilding and Development: Critical Conversations. Canberra: ANU Press, 1–17. Lemay-Hébert, N. (2009). ‘Statebuilding without Nation-building? Legitimacy, State Failure and the Limits of the Institutionalist Approach’. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 3(1): 21–45. Migdal, J.S. (1988). Strong Societies and Weak States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. OECD (2009). Do No Harm: International Support for State Building. Paris: OECD. OECD (2015). State of Fragility 2015: Meeting Post-2015 Ambitions. Paris: OECD. OECD (2018). States of Fragility 2018: Highlights. Paris: OECD. The Guardian (2015, 17 November). ‘Cameron Earmarks Half UK Aid Budget to Spend on Fragile States’. Available at https:// www .theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/17/ cameron-earmarks-half-uk-aid-budget-to -spend-on-fragile-states. Warren, W. (2006, 22 February). ‘USAID’s Approach to Fragile States Programming in Africa’. Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid. Available at https:// www .usaid .gov/sites/default/files/022206_african_fragile _states.pdf. World Bank (2006). Engaging with Fragile States. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank (2011). World Development Report: Conflict, Security and Development. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank (2020). World Development Indicators. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank (n.d.). ‘FY22 List of Fragile and Conflict-affected Situations’. Accessed thedocs 9 December 2021 at https:// .worldbank.org/en/doc/bb52765f381569 24d682486726f422d4–0090082021/original/ FCSList-FY22.pdf. Zoellick, R.B. (2008). ‘Fragile States: Securing Development’. Survival 50(6): 67–84.
Subjective well-being Everyone aspires to live well and their subjective level of satisfaction about how well they are doing in life determines their well-being. Subjective well-being, which is not measured by wealth, income or material possessions, but rather by people’s feelings, thoughts and sentiments about things that matter to them in life, can be closely linked to development. There is, therefore, a growing interest among policymakers as to how best to use various measures of subjective well-being to evaluate policy and monitor progress. This entry begins by defining subjective well-being, and then proceeds to discuss subjective well-being as an alternative way to measure economic progress and development.
Defining subjective well-being
Subjective well-being is an individual’s general evaluation of life satisfaction and of moods, both positive and negative. This evaluation usually involves reactions to life events and gratification from important areas of life, such as work, friendships and marriage (Diener, 1984). In traditional welfare theory, well-being is considered to be a function of two variables – leisure and goods. Well-being is maximized by an individual’s trade-off between leisure and work, and by balancing a preference for various goods, which would determine the degree of work and leisure. Welfare economists tend to make three assumptions within this framework: (1) leisure is associated with pleasure, while work is associated with pain; (2) consumption levels are a major determinant of well-being as they determine the optimal trade-off between work and leisure; and (3) nothing else matters (Headey, 1993). Over time this framework has been extended to incorporate a broader range of factors that affect the maximization of well-being beyond consumption narrowly defined, including one’s health and the quality of one’s relationships at work and at home.
Can subjective well-being be a good development indicator?
Traditionally, a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) has been used to measure economic development and, by extension,
quality of life. While indicators based on GDP have proven useful, they do not always provide an accurate picture of development and a nation’s quality of life. Underpinning the notion that subjective well-being is an important development indicator is the argument that traditional indicators of development that focus on income and income poverty do not place value on other factors that are valued by people. Notably, GDP does not take into account several aspects of life that contribute to people’s well-being beyond income. For instance, health, social connections and time spent on hobbies or exercise are important aspects of life that people consider valuable. Thus, even if GDP per capita in a country is high, individual quality of life can be low if people value these other things but are faring relatively poorly on them. GDP also does not account for the effect of economic growth on the environment and how this affects people’s well-being. For example, maximizing economic growth has long been associated with fossil fuel consumption, which is the major cause of climate change that adversely impacts on people’s well-being. GDP-related measures and other objective indicators of development are, thus, not able to fully capture how people perceive their own lives, and what makes them satisfied. Measures of subjective well-being can serve as proxies for utility because, among other things, they tend to capture the degree of happiness and satisfaction that individuals experience. Given that each individual values life differently, what it means for one to feel satisfied with their life will vary across people. Within an individual’s choice set, some may place more value on material wealth than other factors, and, thus, for an individual that places more weight on material possessions, an increase in average income is likely to represent higher subjective well-being for them. This may not be the case for an individual that places more value on family, relationships, personal security or leisure. There are several psychometrically validated scales of subjective well-being. With the help of such scales, which capture unique aspects of an individual’s life, health and relationships, it is possible to get an indication of how people evaluate their life in comparison with other people, which is contextualized to their circumstances, past experiences and future expectations.
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Measuring development using information on how people assess their own satisfaction is likely to provide a better assessment of progress. Indeed, relying on GDP as a measure of development can be misleading if, in the pursuit of income, people work longer hours and this adversely affects their health or environmental quality is sacrificed. By measuring the level of satisfaction subjectively, we are able to capture each individual’s progress with regard to what matter to them most in life. While countries such as the Kingdom of Bhutan have used subjective well-being (happiness) as their main approach to measure economic progress since the 1970s, the idea of subjective well-being as an alternative indicator of development gained momentum in 2011 when the United Nations General Assembly acknowledged the shortcomings of GDP in capturing well-being and suggested the need for a new standard, based on the principles of subjective well-being and happiness. The resultant publication of the World Happiness Report by the United Nations is evidence of the growing global acceptance of the importance of subjective well-being in measuring development.
Limitations on subjective well-being as a development indicator
The benefit of subjective well-being as a development indicator is that it does not just focus on income. This said, studies that carefully address the endogeneity of income have shown that income has a causal effect on subjective well-being (Powdthavee, 2010). As such, indicators of subjective well-being, such as happiness, do tend to be highly correlated with traditional measures of development and economic progress, such as income. At the aggregate level, evidence from the 2017 World Happiness Report demonstrates that the countries with the highest average happiness also have the highest incomes. At the same time, the countries with the lowest average happiness also have some of the lowest per capita income in the world (Helliwell et al., 2017). Measuring subjective well-being accurately is often not easy; it can involve making assumptions and, because it entails surveying people, it can be costly. Thus, while subjective well-being measures Sefa Awaworyi Churchill and Russell Smyth
are more accurate measures of development, often GDP per capita can serve as a reasonably good cost-effective proxy for subjective well-being at the aggregate level.
Conclusion
Overall, the use of subjective well-being as an alternative indicator of development reflects the importance of taking into account people’s aspirations and their own evaluations of what matters to them in the development process. While the use of objective data has its merits, it does not fully capture the well-being of people as clearly stipulated in the 2011 United Nations General Assembly resolution that ‘… the gross domestic product indicator by nature was not designed to and does not adequately reflect the happiness and well-being of people in a country’ (United Nations, 2011). Indeed, that the United Nations has encouraged member states to pursue additional measures that reflect subjective well-being in measuring progress in development lends support to the importance of subjective well-being indicators as alternative ways of measuring development. Having said that, these indicators are not without their shortcomings, which highlights the need for holistic measures that incorporate both objective and subjective data in measuring development. Sefa Awaworyi Churchill and Russell Smyth
References
Diener, E. (1984). Subjective well-being. Psychological Bulletin, 95(3), 542–75. https:// doi.org/10.1037/0033–2909.95.3.542. Headey, B. (1993). An economic model of subjective well-being: integrating economic and psychological theories. Social Indicators Research, 28(2), 97–116. https://doi.org/10 .1007/bf01079653. Helliwell, J.F., Layard, R., & Sachs, J. (2017). World Happiness Report 2017. New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Powdthavee, N. (2010). How much does money really matter? Estimating the causal effects of income on happiness. Empirical Economics, 39(1), 77–92. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s00181–009–0295–5. United Nations (2011). Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 19 July 2011 (A/ RES/65/309): 109th Plenary Meeting Agenda Item 13. New York: United Nations.
Sustainable development What is sustainable development?
Sustainable development is a twentieth-century term describing a concept that has evolved over centuries. Living in harmony with the natural environment is central to Taoism, which goes back to at least the fourth century bce. The concept has also been a minority theme of Christianity from St Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century to Pope Francis in the twenty-first century (Francis 2015). The best-known definition of sustainable development is ‘development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED 1987). While offering the important perspective of intergenerational equity, this definition raises several questions: does development necessarily entail economic growth? What are genuine needs as opposed to desires? What about intragenerational (social) equity? Would an ecocentric concept be preferable to an anthropocentric one? Nowadays there are hundreds of different definitions that emphasize different aspects of the concept of sustainable development. The term ‘sustainable development’ is sometimes conflated with ‘sustainability’, although a more precise approach is to regard sustainability as the goal of a process called ‘sustainable development’. Sustainability is the distant mountain we wish to climb and sustainable development is a pathway to the mountain and its summit. Many authors consider that sustainable development, like sustainability, has three components, ecological or environmental, social (equity or justice) and economic. Most Green political parties do not have economic sustainability among their basic goals, but rather choose participatory democracy, peace/nonviolence, environmental protection and social justice as their pillars. A few authors, recognizing the continuing destruction of indigenous cultures, add cultural sustainability. Definitions by neoliberal economists and many business people allow trade-offs between ‘natural capital’ (the natural environment) and human capital: for example, they consider that a forest can be sacrificed
to build a mine; a species can be sacrificed for a housing development. They generally give nominal equal weight to the three main aspects (Figure 1), for example triple bottom line in business. Scientists and ecological economists describe this approach as ‘weak’ sustainable development, because continuing trade-offs will lead to the eventual destruction of the environment that sustains all life on Earth, including human society. Ecologists and other scientists recognize that we humans are totally dependent upon the natural environment for the air that we breathe, fresh water, soil, food and nutrients, and a stable climate with a range of temperatures suitable for human societies. We depend on the natural biogeochemical cycles (e.g. carbon, oxygen, water, phosphorus and nitrogen cycles) to survive and thrive (Washington 2013). Scientists and ecological economists generally choose ‘strong’ definitions of sustainable development that give priority to environmental protection. An example is: ‘Sustainable development comprises types of economic and social development that protect and enhance (or restore) the natural environmental and social justice’ (Diesendorf 2000). ‘Development’, as used in ‘strong’ definitions, covers social and economic improvements in a broad sense – it may or may not involve economic growth. ‘Strong’ sustainable development assigns priorities to the three basic aspects by illustrating them as three concentric circles, the outer being ecological, the middle one being social and the innermost one being economic (Figure 2). This conception illustrates the understanding that human society is contained within the environment, that the economy is just one part of society, and there does not have to be a trade-off between the environment and the economy. For the high-income countries, which have been using up the vast majority of natural resources and producing most of the environmental damage, Daly (1977, p. 17) argues that development should consist of qualitative improvement in human well-being and unfolding of human potential, instead of continuing economic growth. Some approaches to sustainable development set out principles and goals, such as intergenerational and intragenerational (social) equity, the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem integrity, the Precautionary Principle, community participation in decision-making and the
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Figure 1
Components of sustainability
Figure 2
Strong sustainable development priorities
improvement of individual and community well-being (Diesendorf 1997). The Precautionary Principle states that, ‘where there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation.’ The approach via principles and goals was a characteristic of the Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) process instituted by the Australian Government in 1990. The process had nine Working Groups, each for a specific industry sector, that comprised representatives of industry, state and federal governments, environmental non-government organizations, trade unions and science (Hamilton & Throsby 1998). Over a period of 13 months, the Working Groups reached agreement on Mark Diesendorf
around 500 recommendations, but the federal and state governments failed to implement many of them. The lack of precision in the definitions of sustainable development and the use of the concept by vested interests to justify continuing environmental damaging activities have led to critiques of the concept (e.g. Beder 1993). Other authors see sustainable development as an important contestable concept that, by its very nature, cannot be defined in a precise manner, like justice and freedom. The meaning of such concepts emerges from continuing discussion and debate. For low-income countries, the same sustainable development concepts, principles and goals apply, but there are differences in priorities and emphasis. Per capita economic growth may be necessary for development
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in some countries, but considering the vast disparities in wealth and income that often exist, social equity is equally if not more important. Corruption is endemic in many low-income countries, allowing vested interests to influence government policies, but these practices also exist, albeit in more covert forms, in high-income countries such as the USA (Leonhardt & Philbrick 2018) and Australia (Lucas 2018). High rates of population growth have large adverse environmental and social impacts in low-income countries, but the solutions – education of women, access to contraceptives and improved social security – face religious and political barriers. Strong debate exists between conventional (neoliberal economics) and alternative sustainable development strategies (Sandbrook 2000). Critics of the former approach argue that investment by large corporations (e.g. mining, forestry, agribusiness, fisheries) often causes immense environmental destruction and extracts wealth as well as physical resources from low-income countries. They propose an alternative sustainable development strategy that focuses on meeting basic needs, decentralization and appropriate technology. Intermediate technologies (Schumacher 1974) are accessible and empowering to low-income earners, as witnessed by the rapid spread of small solar electric systems for lighting, radio and charging mobile phones. Microcredit has been valuable in helping people to rise out of poverty (Bornstein 1996). Before discussing future sustainable development strategies, a concise historical sketch is given of the evolution of the concept in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
The rise of the sustainable development movement
In the twentieth century, growing awareness of global and regional environmental damage, together with the failure of neoliberal economics to protect the environment and eliminate poverty, stimulated approaches to sustainable development from different perspectives. The concept of the Conserver Society appeared in Canada in 1973 and spread to several other countries. This concept included ‘doing more with less’ and ‘living within the limits to growth’. Meanwhile, the transdisciplinary field of ecological economics, including its key
concept, the steady-state economy, was created under the leadership of Herman Daly (1977). Different schools of thought developed in ecological economics: in North America the emphasis is on environmental protection (Costanza et al. 1997); in Europe on social justice (Langhelle 2000); and in South America on ‘barefoot economics’ (Max-Neef 1992). The first Green political parties were the United Tasmania Group in Australia and the Values Party in New Zealand, both created in 1972. Nowadays there are dozens of Green parties in countries and states/provinces around the world. The term ‘sustainable development’ was defined and popularized by the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, otherwise known as the Brundtland Report (WCED 1987), and became a major theme of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit) held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Key outcomes were the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity and an action plan, Agenda 21. However, subsequent implementation by governments has been slow and piecemeal. In an analysis of global environmental threats, a paper by 29 eminent scientists identified nine planetary boundaries within which humanity could possibly operate safely and estimated that humanity has already transgressed three planetary boundaries – climate change, rate of biodiversity loss, and changes to the global nitrogen cycle – and is very close to crossing a fourth, changes to the phosphorus cycle (Rockström et al. 2009). An update published in 2022 found that six out of nine boundaries had been crossed (Wang-Erlandsson et al. 2022). In 2015, 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit (UN n.d. a) as part of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN n.d. b).
Degrowth and sustainable prosperity in high-income economies
In the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, ‘green growth’ scenarios have been proposed, for example, the Green New Deal in the USA (Ocasio-Cortez & Markey Mark Diesendorf
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2019) and the Green Deal in the European Union (Simon 2019). But these scenarios do not address the problem that SDG Goal 8, to promote ‘sustained, inclusive and sustainable [i.e. ‘green’] economic growth’, may be a contradiction in terms, especially in high-income economies with high consumption rates and in rapidly growing economies that aspire to similar levels of per capita GDP as the high-income economies. Green growth entails decoupling between GDP and environmental impact, which is very rare in practice and, even when it does appear, is limited geographically and temporally (Parrique et al. 2019; Haberl et al. 2020). Therefore, SDG Goal 8 could make SDG Goal 12, ‘to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns’, impossible to achieve. As an example of the problematics of green growth, consider the current challenge of phasing out greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector by technological means alone (i.e. by transitioning to renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies). According to data from the International Energy Agency, the total quantity of renewable energy (excluding biofuels and wastes) used for global electricity generation, transport and heating increased by an average of 14 megatonnes of oil equivalent per year (Mtoe/ yr) over 2010–18 – almost all came from the rapid growth of renewable electricity. But, total primary energy supply (TPES), which comprises the energy used to provide transport and heat as well as electricity, increased by an average of 180 Mtoe/yr and almost all transport and heat were fossil fuelled. As a result, the fraction of TPES produced from fossil fuels was approximately the same in 2018 (81 per cent) as in 2000 (80 per cent). If TPES continues to grow from 2021 onwards at the same approximately linear rate as in 2010–18, then a simple calculation shows that renewable energy would have to increase its linear growth rate by a factor of 13 in order to substitute for all fossil fuels by 2050. Alternatively, if renewable energy could be grown exponentially, it would have to double every 5.8 years to catch up with growing TPES by 2050. Other energy technologies, such as nuclear or coal with carbon capture and storage, are expensive and take much longer to build than wind and solar, so they wouldn’t help, even if they became Mark Diesendorf
affordable. Clearly, global growth in energy consumption must end so that technological change can remove energy emissions in time to avoid catastrophic climate change. Energy efficiency can reduce the growth rate of consumption, but is unlikely to be able to stop and reverse it. Therefore, consumption of ‘goods’ and services must be reduced substantially in high-income countries so that the low-income countries can develop. The empirical observations of strong correlations between economic growth and energy growth, and between economic growth or affluence and environmental impact (Wiedmann et al. 2020), has motivated the strand of the sustainable development movement that proposes degrowth to a steady-state economy (D’Alessandro et al. 2020), that is, an economy with a level of throughput that’s compatible with ecological sustainability. Degrowth can be defined in biophysical terms as ‘equitable downscaling of throughput (i.e. use of energy, materials and land-use) and stabilization of population numbers, while increasing social equity and wellbeing’. This definition rejects the notion that planned degrowth to a steady-state economy necessarily implies a lifestyle of deprivation and unhappiness; instead it envisages a society with ‘sustainable prosperity’ (Dietz & O’Neill 2013; D’Alisa et al. 2014; Jackson 2017; Victor 2019; D’Alessandro et al. 2020; Hickel 2020).
Conclusion
In the twenty-first century, the need for carefully planned sustainable development has become acute. Climate change and biodiversity loss have exceeded planetary boundaries and threaten irreversible global change. Extreme weather events are escalating. The land, atmosphere, oceans and freshwaters are polluted. Poverty and social injustice are still with us. A small but growing body of academics and activists is building the case that degrowth to a steady-state economy is an essential part of achieving a sustainable society in high-income countries; that ‘the rich must live more simply so that the poor can simply live’ (Trainer 1985). But the neoliberal economic system and its political power are formidable barriers to change (Klein 2014). Mark Diesendorf
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References
Beder S (1993). The Nature of Sustainable Development. Scribe. Bornstein D (1996). The Price of a Dream. University Press Ltd and Simon & Schuster. Costanza R, Cumberland J, Daly H, Goodland R & Norgaard R (1997). An Introduction to Ecological Economics. CRC Press. D’Alessandro S, Cieplinski A, Distefano T, Dittmer K (2020). Feasible alternatives to green growth. Nature Sustainability 3, 329–35. https:// doi.org/10.1038/s41893–020–0484-y. D’Alisa G, Demaria F & Kallis G (eds) (2014). Degrowth: A vocabulary for a new era. Routledge. Daly HE (1977). Steady-State Economics: The economics of biophysical equilibrium and moral growth. WH Freeman and Company. Diesendorf M (1997). Principles of ecologically sustainable development. In: Diesendorf M & Hamilton H (eds), Human Ecology Human Economy: Ideas for an ecologically sustainable future. Allen & Unwin, pp. 64–97. Diesendorf M (2000). Sustainability and sustainable development. In: Dunphy D, Benveniste J, Griffiths A & Sutton P (eds), Sustainability: The corporate challenge of the 21st century. Allen & Unwin. Dietz R, O’Neill D (2013). Enough is Enough. Berrett-Koehler. Francis (2015). Laudato Si’. An Encyclical Letter on Ecology and Climate. St Pauls Publications. Haberl H, Wiedenhofer D, Virag, D et al. (2020). A systematic review of the evidence on decoupling of GDP, resource use and GHG emissions, part II: synthesizing the insights. Environmental Research Letters 15, 065003. https://doi.org/10 .1088/1748–9326/ab842a. Hamilton C, Throsby D (eds) (1998). The ESD Process: Evaluating a policy experiment. Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. Hickel J (2020). Less is More: How degrowth will save the world. Penguin Random House. Jackson T (2017). Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a finite planet. 2nd edn, Routledge. Klein N (2014). This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the climate. Allen Lane. Langhelle O (2000). Sustainable development and social justice: expanding the Rawlsian framework of social justice. Environmental Values 9, 295–323. Leonhardt D, Philbrick IP (2018). Trump’s corruption: the definitive list. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/28/opinion/ trump-administration-corruption-conflicts.html (accessed 24 July 2021).
Lucas A (2018). Revolving Doors: how the fossil fuel lobby has governments ensnared. Michael West Media. https://www.michaelwest.com.au/ revolving-doors-how-the-fossil-fuel-lobby-has -governments-ensnared/(accessed 24 July 2021). Max-Neef M (1992). From the Outside Looking In: Experiences in barefoot economics. Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation and Zed Books. Ocasio-Cortez A, Markey E (2019). Resolution recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a green New Deal. 116 Congress, US House of Representatives. https://ocasio-cortez .house.gov/sites/ocasio-cortez.house.gov/files/ Resolution%20on%20a%20Green%20New %20Deal.pdf (accessed 21 July 2021). Parrique T, Barth J, Briens F et al. (2019). Decoupling debunked: Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability. European Environmental Bureau. https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/ (accessed 21 July 2021). Rockström J, Steffen W, Noone K et al. (2009). A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461, 472–5. Sandbrook R (2000). Globalization and the limits of neoliberal development doctrine. Third World Quarterly 21(6), 1071–80. Schumacher EF (1974). Small is Beautiful: A study of economics as if people mattered. Abacus. Simon F (2019). EU Commission unveils ‘European Green deal’: the key points. Euractiv, 12 December. https:// www .euractiv .com/section/energy-environment/news/eu -commission-unveils-european-green-deal-the -key-points/(accessed 21 July 2021). Trainer FE (1985) Abandon Affluence! Zed Books. UN (n.d. a). The 17 Goals. United Nations Department of Economic & Social Affairs, Sustainable Development. https://sdgs.un.org/ goals (accessed 21 July 2021). UN (n.d. b). 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. United Nations Department of Economic & Social Affairs, Sustainable Development. https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda (accessed 21 July 2021). Victor PA (2019). Managing Without Growth: Slower by design, not disaster. 2nd edn, Edward Elgar Publishing. Wang-Erlandsson L, Tobian A, van der Ent RJ et al. (2022). A planetary boundary for green water. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 3, 380–392. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-022 -00287-8. Washington H (2013). Human Dependence on Nature. Earthscan from Routledge. WCED [World Commission on Environment & Development] (1987). Our Common Future. Oxford University Press. Wiedmann T, Lenzen M, Keyßer LT, Steinberger J (2020). Scientists’ warning on affluence. Nature Communications 11, 3107. https://doi .org/10.1038/s41467–020–16941-y.
Mark Diesendorf
Sustainable livelihoods Sustainable livelihoods is an established and continually evolving concept that aims to improve understanding of the factors that constrain or enhance livelihood opportunities of the poor, particularly in rural areas of the global South. Drawing on seminal work by Chambers (1989, 1995), Chambers and Conway (1992), and Scoones (1998), a livelihood is defined as the ‘capabilities, assets and activities required for a means of living. It is deemed sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks and maintain or enhance its capabilities, and assets, and activities both now and in the future, while not undermining the natural resource base’ (Serrat, 2017: 21). The approach emerged in line with growing emphasis on poverty reduction and sustainability occurring in development thinking during the 1990s, whereby global development agencies, national governments and community development organizations sought to better connect socioeconomic and environmental concerns with a stronger focus on people and participation. This entry will first discuss sustainable livelihoods as an important perspective that centres the lived experiences of the poor in development theory and practice, thus helping to identify key issues associated with integrating micro and macro development issues. The Department for International Development (DfID)’s Sustainable Livelihoods Framework is then presented as the most widely recognized, comprehensive and tangible entry point for the analysis of sustainable livelihoods. Despite its wide uptake, sustainable livelihoods also involves tensions that prompt the need for deeper consideration of structure, power and agency in both theory and practice.
History of the concept
Concerns with livelihoods emerged during the late 1980s as poverty reduction efforts increasingly emphasized people’s interpretations of their own lives as central components in understanding development trajectories. Looking beyond monetary aspects of poverty, and influenced strongly by Sen’s (1981) capabilities and entitlements approach, sustainable livelihoods aligned with growing interest
in how peoples’ capacities and/or assets can be used to protect them from vulnerability, as well as how these intersect with social aspects such as power, agency and people’s own experiences. At the same time, global interest in environmental sustainability was on the rise: the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development used the term in relation to resource ownership, basic needs and rural livelihood security; the 1992 Conference on Environment and Development (the ‘Earth Summit’) used the term to link environmental issues with socioeconomic concerns and policy making (Brocklesby and Fisher, 2003). By the late 1990s, sustainable livelihoods had become a key concept for addressing questions about how global sustainable development might be embedded or enacted at a local level and has been important for countering structural accounts with rich analyses of individual experiences. Theoretically, sustainable livelihoods represents a shift away from overtly technical and technocratic approaches to rural development which were mostly concerned with improving the efficiency and productivity of agricultural practices in developing countries. Instead it sought to understand ‘how different people in different places live’ and why they make the choices that they do. This aligns with approaches that more broadly seek to ‘understand poverty from the perspective of the poor’ and emphasizes the importance of well-being beyond financial analyses of sectors where people earn their living (Levine, 2014; Scoones, 2009). As Chambers (1989: 1) explains, ‘the first priority is not the environment or production, but livelihoods, stressing both short-term satisfaction of basic needs and long-term security’. With the priorities of the poor as the starting point, sustainable livelihoods has evolved into a hybrid concept reflecting multidisciplinary efforts to bring analyses of poverty, environmental sustainability, governance, local knowledge, culture, power and participation together to explain how people in diverse contexts combine different activities in order to cope, adapt, improve, diversify and transform the strategies and outcomes that affect their lives (Scoones, 2009). Methodologically, sustainable livelihoods is an actor-oriented perspective that sees people as agents capable of making their own choices and determining their own live-
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lihood strategies. Drawing on appreciative enquiry’s emphasis on the assets people actually have (in contrast to what they lack, such as income), people’s agency (and thus, livelihoods) is also seen as being shaped by political economy structures of power, politics and culture. Livelihoods has thus provided researchers with new ways of theorizing relationships between the micro level of peoples’ livelihoods (assets, strategies and outcomes) and the macro level of policies, institutions and processes that contribute to poverty reduction and sustainability more generally. In fair trade research, for example, sustainable livelihoods provides an entry point for understanding farmers’ subjective feelings of well-being and empowerment. It also connects the political economy of food chains – the actors, regulations and commodities – with the well-being of actors located at the local level (Bacon et al., 2008). As an operational tool for planning and managing poverty alleviation, sustainable livelihoods approaches indicate a shift in development practice from needs-based, resource-centred solutions to ones that aim to build people’s capacity to initiate and sustain positive change (Brocklesby and Fisher, 2003). Methods are people-centric, responsive and participatory, multilevel, dynamic and often conducted in partnership with public and private actors (Serrat, 2017). As such, it has been concretely developed in numerous operational tools. The most well-known of these is DfID’s Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (DfID, 1999), described next.
Sustainable Livelihoods Framework
The Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF) was developed by the Sustainable Rural Livelihoods team at the Institute for Development Studies, the University of Sussex. While numerous variations on the framework exist (see, for example, Scoones, 1998), the DfID version (Figure 1) has been most successful in consolidating the ideas emerging from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in the 1990s. It differs from more general livelihood approaches in that it specifies the relationship between a number of livelihood outcomes (vulnerability, income, well-being, food security and sustainable resource use) and the human capital assets, capabilities and activities required for
people to achieve a means of living. It is the most well-funded, well-marketed, and most formally and widely implemented within the field of development studies. The SLF consists of a number of key components. Firstly, it opens up spaces for individual conceptions of what constitutes sustainability, by framing this in terms of the vulnerability experienced in diverse contexts. People move in an out of poverty in response to external events largely beyond their control: these include shocks such as conflict, illnesses, floods, storms, droughts, pests and diseases; seasonalities such as price fluctuations and employment opportunities; and critical trends in demography, environments, economies, governance and technology. Vulnerability is further defined by whether people have the means or ability to cope with such disturbances. Next, it draws on the identification and measurement of ‘assets’: ● Human capital: health, nutrition, education, knowledge, skills and capacities to work or adapt; ● Social capital: networks, connections, relations of trust, formal and informal support groups, shared values and behaviours, rules and mechanisms for participating in decision-making that allow people to act; ● Natural capital: land, water, forests, wild animals, food and fibre, biodiversity and ecosystem services, upon which livelihoods depend; ● Physical capital: infrastructure (e.g. transport, housing, energy, communications), technology; ● Financial capital: savings, credit, debt, remittances, pensions and wages (DfID, 1999). These capital assets shape people’s capacity to engage in particular livelihood strategies in the pursuit of particular livelihood outcomes. People must combine the capitals that they have access to and control over; these assets can be personal, tangible or intangible (Scoones, 1998). They must also make trade-offs between outcomes depending on what assets are available to them; they might choose to substitute some assets for others. For example, financial capital is the least available asset in contexts of poverty, thus highlighting the importance of the other Kiah Smith
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Source: DfID (1999).
Figure 1
Sustainable Livelihoods Framework
four capitals when financial capital is absent (Serrat, 2017). People also have differential access to assets, drawing attention to issues of power and politics (as well as wealth, gender, age, class, location, etc.). These complexities are brought into the framework further by considering the role that structures and processes play in shaping people’s livelihood strategies, and thus outcomes. These are the private sector structures (such as regulations, organizations, policies or markets) that combine with local culture, laws and institutional processes to determine peoples’ access (to capital, to livelihood strategies, to influence), the terms of exchange (between different types of capital), and returns to livelihood strategies. According to DfID (1999: 2.4), ‘their importance cannot be overemphasised: they operate at all levels, from the household to the international arena, and in all spheres, from the most private to the most public’, and directly impact people’s well-being and inclusion. Thus, livelihood strategies are linked with outcomes, which are defined in this framework as reduced vulnerability and increased income, well-being, food security and environmental sustainability. These outcomes combine familiar concepts of poverty lines and employment with wider framings of well-being and sustainability.
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Although complicated, the framework is widely agreed to provide an important lens through which to analyse how livelihoods shape and are shaped by both individual contexts and agency, as well as by structures and processes outside of individuals’ control. It also provides good methods based on a holistic, actor-oriented approach (Scoones, 2009). This reflects a belief that ‘policy will be improved through creating space for the poor themselves to make their voices heard rather than though the heroic attempts of analysts to aggregate the food security and livelihoods experiences of diverse groups of the population’ (Thomson, 2001: 27). Today it has expanded beyond its original application in the rural agricultural sector and is used to assess a wide range of poverty-related macro development issues (e.g. conflict, trade policy, food security) as well as micro-level community issues (e.g. education, healthcare, gender relations). For example, by considering the broader regulatory and cultural contexts within which livelihoods evolve, the framework can be used to consider material needs, quality of life and ending discrimination on the basis of gender or ethnicity as components in achieving social, environmental, local and global sustainability, similar to some feminist perspectives.
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Limitations
While sustainable livelihoods has been useful in providing a cross-sectional and multi-scalar approach to understanding poverty – thus helping to make the link between micro livelihoods and macro policy settings visible – there are a number of concerns. Scoones (2009: 8–9) summarizes these into four main failings: ● Lack of engagement with processes of economic globalization, such as shifts in markets and politics; ● Lack of attention to power and politics, and failure to link livelihoods to governance; ● Failure to deal with long-term change in environmental conditions (e.g. climate change), as focus remains on immediate shocks and stresses and the local knowledge needed to overcome these; ● Failure to engage with debates about long-term shifts in rural economies and agrarian change in general. A wide literature suggests that sustainable livelihoods as a theoretical framework can be improved with a more thorough integration of theories of power and sovereignty, drawing particularly on development sociology and gender studies (de Haan and Zoomers, 2005). Gender has been identified as a key limitation in this regard. For example, while the approach indicates possible connections between the local contexts, capitals, structural processes, strategies and livelihood outcomes, the exact ways in which the environmental or social context may be related to gendered strategies for achieving livelihood outcomes are not evident. This is because the framework is not explicitly a feminist one, so it fails to include the power relations enabling or restricting the choice of livelihood strategies (i.e. agency) that we might want to investigate if we are interested in gender (or environmental sustainability or social justice). Likewise, having originated with development organizations in the global North, the discourse of livelihoods rarely defines what this might mean for people in the global South. With greater attention to the knowledge, scale, politics and dynamics involved in the construction and reproduction of power relations that shape and constrain livelihoods, sustainable livelihoods approaches could better connect local-level
power dynamics with broader structures such as patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism. Methodologically, sustainable livelihoods approaches are often reduced to a focus on different kinds of capital and activities, downplaying the more structural ‘transforming structures, processes, institutions and organizations’ components’ (de Haan and Zoomers, 2005). There tends to be little understanding of the economic and political processes, contextual factors, and social relations that make these various kinds of capital what they are and that shape the ways in which they can be used (Bolwig et al., 2008). Unfortunately, the voices of Southern people themselves are often missing. This has kept livelihoods discussions in the realm of economists, resulting in analyses which are more interested in income-related poverty rather than wider social and institutional dimensions of well-being, food security and environmental sustainability.
Ways forward
Sustainable livelihoods approaches will remain valuable to the extent that they can keep a strong focus on all of the dimensions of livelihoods that are most important to the people concerned. First, the aim of livelihood analyses should not simply be to measure economic success or assess outcomes. Instead they should consider people’s own definitions of success in meeting their own objectives. This requires a commitment to methods that are meaningfully participatory and empowering for the people involved, using metrics that are locally embedded and contextually relevant, preferably defined by people at the grassroots level. This requires focusing on power ‘from below’ as well as ‘from above’ (Pimbert et al., 2001). It would also be enhanced by stronger attention to change in livelihoods over time (Levine, 2014). Second, sustainable livelihoods research should not be seen as simply a monitoring or evaluation tool, but rather as a way to improve livelihoods by redressing structural inequalities. This requires understanding poverty in relational terms – whereby inequalities in power and resources strongly influence the trajectories of both the ‘better-off’ and the poor. Analysing the causes and experiences of poverty and unsustainability therefore ‘requires attention to the livelihoods of people Kiah Smith
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who are not poor as well as to those of people who are poor’ (Levine, 2014). This is especially relevant to intersectional analyses of wealth inequality and environmental change, where over-consumption of resources by the rich is often downplayed as a driving force of climate change, with disproportionate impact on the poor. Kiah Smith
References
Bacon, C., Mendez, V.E., Gliessman, S., Goodman, D. & Fox, J. (eds) (2008). Confronting the coffee crisis: Fair trade, sustainable lvelihoods and ecosystems in Mexico and Central America. Cambridge and London: MIT Press. Bolwig, S., Ponte, S., du Toit, A., Riisgaard, L. & Halberg, N. (2008). Integrating poverty, gender and environmental concerns into value chain analysis. DIIS Working Paper No. 2008/16. Copenhagen, Denmark: Danish Institute for Development Studies (DIIS). Brocklesby, M. & Fisher, E. (2003). Community development in sustainable livelihoods approaches: An introduction. Community Development Journal, 38(3): 185–98. Chambers, R. (1989). Editorial introduction: Vulnerability, coping, and policy. IDS Bulletin, 20(2): 1–7. Chambers, R. (1995). Poverty and livelihoods: Whose reality counts? Environment and Urbanization, 7(1): 173–204. Chambers, R. & Conway, G. (1992). Sustainable rural livelihoods: Practical concepts for the 21st century. Institute of Development Studies Discussion Paper 296. Brighton, Sussex: Institute of Development Studies.
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de Haan, L. & Zoomers, A. (2005). Exploring the frontier of livelihoods research. Development and Change, 36(1): 27–47. DfID [Department for International Development] (1999). Sustainable Livelihoods Guidance Sheets. Accessed 6 June 2010 at http://www .eldis.org/vfile/upload/1/document/0901/ section2.pdf. Levine, S. (2014). How to study livelihoods: Bringing a sustainable livelihoods framework to life. Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC) Working Paper 22. London: Overseas Development Institute. Accessed 10 September 2021 at https://assets.publishing.service.gov .uk/media/57a089ef40f0b64974000324/SLRC -WP22.pdf. Pimbert, M., Thompson, J., Vorley, W., Fox, T., Kanji, N. & Tacoli, C. (2001). Global restructuring, agri-food systems and livelihoods. London: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Scoones, I. (1998). Sustainable rural livelihoods: A framework for analysis. IDS Working Paper No. 72. Brighton, Sussex: Institute of Development Studies. Scoones, I. (2009). Livelihoods perspectives and rural development. Journal of Peasant Studies, 36(1): 171–96. Sen, A. (1981). Poverty and famines: An essay on entitlement and deprivation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Serrat, O. (2017). The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach. Asian Development Bank. Accessed 10 September 2021 at https:// link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007 %2F978–981–10–0983–9_5.pdf. Thomson, A. (2001). Food security and sustainable livelihoods: The policy challenge. Development, 44(4): 24–8.
Sylvia Chant Sylvia Chant was a central figure in shaping the field of gender and international development in the United Kingdom and globally. She was also one of the first development geographers to work on women’s issues in the global South. Chant’s work was infused with a feminist commitment to transformation or what she herself called ‘a more transformational geography of gender in the 21st century’ (Chant, 2020: 782). While Sylvia Chant pioneered conceptual, empirical and policy-engaged research on the gendered nature of access to housing, rural–urban migration, masculinities and urbanization, she was best known for her trailblazing work on the feminization of poverty and its relationship with female household headship. Indeed, in a satisfying closing of the loop, this work had its roots in Chant’s doctoral research in a low-income, peri-urban settlement in Querétaro, Mexico, on women’s access to housing (Chant, 1985; Chant and Ward, 1987) yet was also the focus of the final project that she worked on before her untimely death aged 60 in 2019 (Bradshaw, Chant and Linneker, 2017, 2019). Born in Dundee in Scotland, Sylvia Chant spent most of her life in London and working in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the London School of Economics combined with frequent trips abroad for conducting field work in Mexico, Costa Rica, the Philippines, and the Gambia and engaged in visiting professorships at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and the Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla in Spain as well as the University of Fribourg and the University of Bern in Switzerland and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. After completing her BA at the University of Cambridge and her PhD with Peter Ward and postdoctoral work with Caroline Moser at University College London, she worked at the University of Liverpool where she shared a position between Geography and the Institute of Latin American Studies for over a year before moving to the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1988 where she was also affiliated with the Department of Gender Studies. Sylvia Chant’s life-long insistence on making women conceptually and empirically visible within research on international devel-
opment processes and policymaking was based on meticulous and careful fieldwork that revealed the lives of women residing in poor urban communities, particularly those heading their own households. In the early years of her career, Chant herself recalled the dearth of writing on women’s issues until she came across Manuel Castells’ Cities, Class and Power (1978) who noted how ‘The subordinate role of women … enables the minimal maintenance of its (the city’s) housing, transport and public facilities (cited in Chant, 2020: 780). Throughout her career, she was determined to ensure that the world’s largest minority would have a much more central place in thinking about women and gender in the global South. Her initial step towards this was the publication of Women in the Third World (1989) (with Lynne Brydon) which was the first to incorporate a rural–urban perspective. This book was the foundation for Chant’s many subsequent publications and placed her at the forefront of feminist research on international development. Indeed, in 1995, she guest edited a special edition of Third World Planning Review (now International Development Planning Review) on ‘Gender and development in the 1990s’ where she argued for the need to acknowledge the complexity of women’s lives vis-à-vis men where challenging power relations rather than developing technocratic solutions were key. More than two decades later, Chant developed this further in the same journal to suggest that while visibilizing women was fundamental to addressing gender inequalities, women and girls must not be exploited under the guise of empowerment, especially within neoliberal policymaking and economic growth processes (Chant, 2016). Yet, as noted above, it was Sylvia Chant’s work on challenging how male-headed households have persisted as a norm and ideal that is one of her major legacies. She notes how ‘This has not only clouded the realities of family and household diversity over time and space but also obstructed the generation of data necessary to illuminate this diversity’ (Chant, 2020: 780). Part and parcel of this questioning was her decades-long championing of the importance of delinking the notion of the ‘feminization of poverty’ from the incidence of female household headship. As long ago as 1985, Chant argued for the need to deconstruct the underlying reasons why
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women became household heads and that they invariably have some choice and volition in the process, contrary to what is normally suggested. She further developed these debates in Women-headed Households: Diversity and Dynamics in the Developing World (1997) and Gender, Generation and Poverty: Exploring the ‘Feminisation of Poverty’ in Africa, Asia and Latin America (2007). Not surprisingly these books cemented her reputation as the world’s leading scholar on poverty and women-headed households. Chant (2006, 2008) also developed an alternate concept to the ‘feminization of poverty’ in the form of the ‘feminization of responsibility and/or obligation’. This aimed to show how women are increasingly burdened with reproductive duties that fall disproportionately on their shoulders within and beyond households as they cope with poverty. Chant also developed internationally important work on measuring the feminization of poverty. In one of her final papers with colleagues Sarah Bradshaw and Brian Linneker (2019), she spoke of ‘de-feminization and re-feminization of poverty in Latin America’ in relation to the use of inaccurate quantitative data that often over-represented male household headship and the extent of poverty (see also Bradshaw, Chant and Linneker, 2017). Importantly, she also pointed out the importance of challenging heteronormative and binary assumptions embedded within these debates. Chant’s work on poverty was both individual and collaborative directly as outlined above, and indirectly through edited collections such as the International Handbook of Gender and Poverty (2010) with over 100 chapters from 125 authors which explored the need to challenge erroneous stereotypes about poor women’s lives in a huge range of different contexts. Although Sylvia Chant’s work revolved around the feminization of poverty, she used the household as an analytical fulcrum for other research that revealed the everyday and structural gendered power relations experienced by women and men in countries of the global South. This included pioneering work on rural–urban migration (Chant, 1998), as well as her influential work on men and masculinities (Chant and Gutmann, 2002). The latter in particular also spoke to Chant’s concern with ensuring that there were concrete solutions to reducing and preventing Cathy McIlwaine
gender inequalities which entailed working with men as part of Gender in Development (GAD) discourses and policymaking. Indeed, Sylvia Chant worked at the research–policy interface throughout her career in her efforts to influence policy. Her research on men and masculinities arose from work with the World Bank, and she also acted as an advisor or consultant for a wide range of international organizations including UNFPA, the ILO, UNICEF, ECLAC and UNDP, among many others. Importantly, she served as an expert advisory group member on the UN Women State of the World’s Women 2018: Families in a Changing World: Public Action for Women’s Rights and co-authored UN-Habitat’s State of Women in Cities 2012/3 which later influenced her final book project Cities, Slums and Gender in the Global South (Chant and McIlwaine, 2016). Chant was especially passionate about eliminating female genital mutilation and cutting (FGMC) in the Gambia where she conducted much research. She worked with the Gambian human rights organization, GAMCOTRAP, whose campaigning led to a landmark ruling outlawing it in November 2015. Sylvia Chant was a global authority on gender, poverty and development evidence. Her research on female-headed households and the feminization of poverty is standard bearing in the field of international development. It stands out as being conceptually nuanced yet always drawing on the lived experiences of women from poor communities in the global South. It is fitting to conclude with some of her own final thoughts on what she noted was the ‘discernible “en-gendering” of geography in the Global South’ (Chant, 2020: 782). Although she was optimistic in this sense, she also warned of an enduring neglect of women and gender in some texts on international development. For this reason alone, it is appropriate that an entry in this Encyclopedia is dedicated to her research and contributions. Cathy McIlwaine
References
Bradshaw, S., Chant, S. and Linneker, B. 2017. Gender and poverty: what we know, don’t know and need to know for Agenda 2030, Gender, Place and Culture, 24(12): 1667–88. Bradshaw, S., Chant, S. and Linneker, B. 2019. Challenges and changes in gendered
Tourism and development 589 poverty: the feminization, de-feminization, and re-feminization of poverty in Latin America, Feminist Economics, 25(1): 119–44. Chant, S. 1985. Single-parent families: choice or constraint?, Development and Change, 16(4): 635–56. Chant, S. 1995. Gender and development in the 1990s, Third World Planning Review, 17(2): 111–16. Chant, S. 1998. Households, gender and rural-urban migration: reflections on linkages and considerations for policy, Environment and Urbanization, 10(1): 5–22. Chant, S. 2006. Re-thinking the ‘feminization of poverty’ in relation to aggregate gender indices, Journal of Human Development, 7(2): 201–20. Chant, S. 2008. The ‘feminisation of poverty’ and the ‘feminisation’ of anti-poverty programmes: room for revision?, The Journal of Development Studies, 44(2): 165–97.
Chant, S. 2016. Women, girls and world poverty: empowerment, equality or essentialism?, International Development Planning Review, 38(1): 1–24. Chant, S. 2020. Geography and gender, hindsight and foresight: a feminist development geographer’s reflections on: ‘How the Other Half Lives: The Geographical Study of Women’, Area, 52(4): 778–85. Chant S. and Gutmann, M.C. 2002. ‘Men-streaming’ gender? Questions for gender and development policy in the twenty-first century, Progress in Development Studies, 2(4): 269–82. Chant, S. and McIlwaine, C. 2016. Cities, slums and gender in the global South: towards a feminised urban future, Routledge, London. Chant, S. and Ward, P. 1987. Family structure and low-income housing policy, Third World Planning Review, 9(1): 5–20.
Cathy McIlwaine
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Tourism and development Introduction
While tourism is often simply thought of as people travelling to desirable destinations catered to by airlines, hotels and host communities, tourism as a subject area is much more – having profound economic, social and environmental consequences for development. The importance of these consequences of tourism has been receiving more attention in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tourism has long been relied upon by destinations as a way to promote development by both developing and developed nations. Many governments, tourism businesses, communities and individuals rely heavily on tourism for their livelihoods and downturns can be devastating. Initially the focus of tourism for development was primarily directed to the positive economic contributions of tourism; later expanding to incorporate broader developmental goals. Tourism was adopted for its ability to generate income, employment, foreign exchange, taxes, GDP, wealth redistribution, regional development and revitalisation, infrastructure projects and backward economic linkages. In 1980, the World Tourism Organization (WTO) released the Manila Declaration asserting the importance of tourism for both national economies and international trade, making it a significant factor for world development (WTO, 1980 in UNWTO, 2019). Furthermore, the Declaration stated, ‘tourism can contribute to the establishment of a new international economic order that will help to eliminate the widening economic gap between developed and developing countries and ensure the steady acceleration of economic and social development and progress, and in particular of the developing countries’ (WTO, 1980 in UNWTO, 2019). In time, tourism researchers and organizations began to address some
of the negative consequences of utilizing tourism as an agent of development as well as recognizing tourism could contribute to a more extensive range of development goals such as community development, female empowerment, environmental protection and sustainable development. An analysis of the 2017 United Nations WTO’s Chengdu Declaration on ‘Tourism and the Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs) clearly highlights the expansion of the role of tourism as a development tool: … tourism is a vital instrument for the achievement of the 17 SDGs and beyond as it can stimulate inclusive economic growth, create jobs, attract investment, fight poverty, enhance the livelihood of local communities, promote the empowerment of women and youth, protect cultural heritage, preserve terrestrial and marine ecosystems and biodiversity; support the fight against climate change, and ultimately contribute to the necessary transition of societies towards greater sustainability. (UNWTO, 2017 in UNWTO, 2019)
While tourism has the potential to contribute to a wider range of development objectives, not all development associated with tourism has been beneficial. For some, the presence of tourism has diminished their way of life. The industry has been criticized for exploitation, profit repatriation, economic leakage, low wages, displacement, loss of culture, prostitution, crime, overdevelopment, pollution, environmental degradation and contributing to climate change. Wall and Mathieson (2006) argued the need to consider the consequences of tourism rather than focusing on the impacts as destinations, communities, businesses and individuals respond to opportunities in tourism. Balancing all of the potential development outcomes of tourism is at the centre of the tourism development dilemma (Telfer & Sharpley, 2016).
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In order to explore the changing relationship between tourism and development, this entry will first highlight the importance of tourism by revealing the significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The entry will then trace the changing nature of development paradigms as they relate to tourism since the end of the Second World War, reflecting the expanding scope of tourism in the development process from the 1980 Manila Declaration to the 2017 Chengdu Declaration. The entry will conclude with some of the future challenges for tourism in the development process.
The importance of tourism and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
According to the UNWTO (2021a) in 2019, there were 1.5 billion international tourist arrivals, which represented the tenth straight year of sustained growth. The industry generated US$1.7 trillion in export revenues and the tourism sector was growing faster than the world economy (UNWTO, 2021a). Prior to COVID-19, travel and tourism (incorporating direct, indirect and induced impacts) accounted for one in four of all new jobs in the world, comprised 10.6 per cent of all jobs (334 million) and represented 10.4 per cent of global GDP (US$9.2 trillion) (WTTC, 2021). In addition to formal employment (e.g., working for a major hotel or airline), informal tourism employment positions such as tour guides or beach sellers are often not recorded in official statistics and these positions often support a wide network of family members. Tourism had become an essential development tool across the globe in many destinations (e.g., urban, rural, heritage, marine, park, wilderness) for governments, NGOs, multinational tourism companies, individual entrepreneurs and even remote rural villages. The global COVID-19 pandemic, however, has clearly demonstrated the importance of the tourism industry through its absence. Along with the global health catastrophe, the tourism industry has been one of the hardest hit sectors. With borders closed, planes grounded, cruise ships sitting idle in ports and businesses shut, tourism business and destinations have faced historic losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic. International tourist arrivals declined by approximately one billion or 74 per cent between January and December of 2020, placing between 100 million and 120 million direct tourism
jobs at risk (UNWTO, 2021a, 2021b). In the first quarter of 2021, international arrivals declined by 84 per cent (UNWTO, 2021b). The previous comparable shock to international tourism was the 2009 global economic crisis, resulting in only a 4 per cent drop in international tourism (UNWTO, 2021a). It has been the developing countries that have been hardest hit during the pandemic, with the largest reductions in tourist arrivals during 2020 estimated at between 60 per cent and 80 per cent (UNWTO, 2021b). The most impacted regions include North-East Asia, South-East Asia, Oceania, North Africa and South Asia, with the least impacted regions being North America, Western Europe and the Caribbean (UNWTO, 2021b). For some island destinations, travel and tourism makes a significant contribution to total GDP. St Lucia, for example, saw the total contribution of travel and tourism to GDP drop from 68.1 per cent (of total economy) in 2019 to 28.7 per cent in 2020 while The Maldives went from 52.6 per cent to 29.4 per cent in the same time period (WTTC, 2021). International tourism and closely linked sectors lost an estimated $2.4 trillion in 2020 as a result of the direct and indirect impacts of the decline in international tourist arrivals (UNWTO, 2021b). The steep reductions in international tourism due to the pandemic could result in a loss of over $4 trillion to global GDP for the years 2020 and 2021 (UNWTO, 2021b). These figures focus on international tourist arrivals and do not include the losses incurred with a decline in domestic tourism. As the globe continues to struggle with the pandemic, some destinations have begun to reopen as cases fall and vaccine rates rise while other destinations are seeing new lockdowns due to the global inequity of vaccine supply and distribution. While much of the above data is economic in nature, the loss associated with the pandemic has had profound social implications impacting the role tourism can play in broader development objectives. Often missing in these figures is the impact of the loss of a job, or closure of a business and what that means for local families, villages and communities who rely on tourism. The recognition of some of the broader implications of tourism in the development process will be highlighted below in a discussion of the evolution of development paradigms. David J. Telfer
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Links between development theory and tourism
The nature and scope of development, how it is measured and its relationship to tourism has become increasingly complex since the end of the Second World War (Telfer, 2015, 2019). Schafer, Haslam and Beaudet (2021) note there is a vast diversity of standards of living between, among and within developing and developed countries, making it a challenge to define and measure development. Measuring the extent to which tourism can contribute to development in different contexts is therefore also a challenge. Development theory can be explored in terms of development ideology (the ends) and development strategy (the means) (i.e., tourism development strategy) (Hettne, 1995), and how development is measured is often guided by the dominant paradigm of the time (Telfer, 2019). Notions of development initially focused on growth as measured by GDP but have evolved and expanded to include inequality and poverty, leading to broader measurements of development such as the Human Development Index and more recently, a human rights-based approach to development (Schafer et al., 2021). The environment and sustainable development have risen to the forefront, especially in the light of climate change, and have been key in the UN Millennium Development Goals (2000–2015) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) (2015–30). As the nature of development expanded beyond primarily economic measures to incorporate social and environmental dimensions, tourism too embraced these changes. Telfer (2015) examined the relationship between development paradigms and tourism as they have evolved over time since the end of the Second World War; they are explored below. The evolving relationship will be examined under the following development paradigms: modernization, dependency, economic neoliberalism, alternative development, impasse and post-development, human development and global development. It is important to recognize that tourism can continue to be analyzed under all development paradigms as one paradigm does not necessarily replace the preceding paradigm. Under modernization, tourism was viewed as a way to generate income and employment, and attract foreign development capital, often associated with large-scale mass tourism David J. Telfer
resorts as developed in places such as the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. Many governments actively pursued tourism development. As time went on, concern was raised by researchers in the dependency camp who argued that the tourism industry was another form of colonization, and it was controlled by multinational corporations in the developed world. The power structures and foreign ownership within the tourism industry reinforced external control of the industry and placed developing nations in a very dependent and underdeveloped position. Tourism corporations in developed nations not only supplied the capital to create hotels in developing destinations, but they also facilitated the movement of tourists through ownership of airlines and travel companies. Tourism researchers also began to highlight cultural dependency and the exploitation of individuals, communities, destinations and environments as a result of tourism. In the 1980s, trade liberalization and pressure to open borders to foreign investments under the economic neoliberalism development paradigm further enhanced globalization and the scope of the tourism industry. Open Skies policies and cruise ships flying flags of convenience were indicative of the freer movement of tourists and tourism capital. Dissatisfaction with existing development models gave rise to the alternative development paradigm embracing a variety of perspectives including basic needs, grassroots development, gender and sustainable development. With the release of Our Common Future in 1987, and subsequent international environmental conferences, sustainability became a central focus in the relationship between tourism and development. The movement towards sustainable tourism development was evident in calls for sustainable tourism planning and sustainable tourism practices in the industry including corporate social responsibility, environmental audits and sustainable tourism certification schemes. Certain types of tourism such as ecotourism, or community-based tourism, were promoted as being more sustainable than others. Responsible tourism was advocated and there was a shift to making all forms of tourism more sustainable. However, within the tourism literature, sustainable tourism development has also been hotly contested over implementation, claims of greenwashing and questioning whether
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tourists would really alter their behaviours (Wheeller, 2004; Sharpley, 2009). Turning to the post-development camp, its dissatisfaction with the concept of ‘development’ itself and existing development models has also been raised in tourism research. There were calls for tourism to be driven from within destinations, in favour of supporting local knowledge and systems. The 1990s saw the arrival of human development, with a focus on concepts such as freedom, human rights, ethics and poverty reduction accompanied by the Human Development Index. Within tourism, this was embraced through pro-poor tourism which has a focus on poverty reduction. This is not a specific type of tourism but rather an approach that could be applied to many types of tourism (e.g., hire local, utilize local supplies). The UNWTO, for example, developed the ST-EP program, Sustainable Tourism – Eliminating Poverty, in 2002. There was also a rise in volunteer tourism and an increasing recognition of the roles of NGOs, micro-credits, tourism ethics, civil society and social capital in tourism at this time. Additional focus was redirected to the empowerment of Indigenous communities to develop their own tourism products. Responsible tourism first promoted under alternative development as being more appropriate than mass tourism re-emerged with a new focus that all tourism stakeholders need to take responsibility for their actions (Sharpley & Harrison, 2019). Finally, with criticisms of globalization, the 2008–09 Global Financial Crisis, and mounting pressure of global climate change (i.e., Paris Climate Agreement), there were increased calls for action on global development (Hettne, 2009). With the Millennium Development Goals, and more directly the UN SDGs, tourism development began to be included in more global initiatives. The Global Sustainable Tourism Council formed in 2010 and began work on the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria, while the year 2017 was declared the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development by the UNWTO. The UN SDGs based in human rights were being explored in greater depth through an analysis of tourism and human rights (Hashimoto, Härkönen & Nkyi, 2020). Tourism and climate change have become the centre of many official documents from a variety of international agencies such as the UNWTO, the European Travel Commission,
and the World Travel and Tourism Council (Gössling & Scott, 2018). Tourism is also highly vulnerable to climate change yet continues to contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (UNWTO, 2021c). The UNWTO (2021c) noted that COVID-19 led to a 7 per cent reduction in GHG and while a reduction in flights contributed to this, emissions are beginning to rise again as tourism reopens. In 2020, the UNWTO released One Planet Vision for a Responsible Recovery of the Tourism Sector focusing on the recovery from COVID-19 by contributing to the SDGs and the Paris Agreement. Recent challenges such as the rise of protectionism and nationalism have, however, weakened some of the progress related to UN SDG #17 on strengthening global cooperation.
Future challenges for tourism and development
Clearly the immediate challenge for tourism will be recovery from the pandemic. Predicted scenarios estimate it will take 2.5 to 4 years for international tourism arrivals to return to 2019 levels (UNWTO, 2021a). Many businesses have been lost and people have lost their livelihoods. Where possible, governments introduced COVID-19 financial support programmes for individuals and industry bailout packages. As these come to an end, the industry will need to see an increase in arrival numbers, yet these increases may well bring a return of the negative impacts of tourism as witnessed in the pre-COVID era. Despite the pandemic, tourism will continue to play an important development tool for both developing and developed nations. Already some countries are seeing a rapid increase in travel bookings and some airlines have begun ordering new aircraft (Rucinski & Johnson, 2021). The global inequity in the distribution of vaccines will mean a return to pre-pandemic travel levels will vary by country. Changes in traveller behaviour during COVID-19 may alter the future nature of tourism and its impact as a development tool. These changes include the increasing role of domestic tourism and staycations; rise in popularity in nature/rural tourism due to travel restrictions and a desire for open-air experiences; changing demographics of travellers as travel recovery has been stronger for younger segments, with the mature market and retirees most impacted; David J. Telfer
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greater concerns over health and safety and cancellation policies; increase in last-minute booking due to the volatility of travel restrictions; and an increase in the importance of sustainability, authenticity and localhood (UNWTO, 2021a). Debates have also risen over COVID-19 immunization passports. There were many prior challenges facing tourism (see Telfer, 2019 and highlighted below) that will carry forward beyond the pandemic. International visitor arrival numbers had previously created overtourism, challenging fragile ecosystems and historic cities overrun with tourists. The pandemic eliminated much of this and there was evidence that residents were able to take back their historic cities, and natural environments were beginning to recover. The Venice Canal became much clearer, and wildlife returned with the absence of tourists during the pandemic (Brunton, 2020). While tourists are now returning, in a positive step the Italian government has banned large cruise ships from Venice’s historic canals (The Maritime Executive, 2021). Overtourism is also linked to gentrification and the sharing economy. The rise of home-sharing companies such as Airbnb, on the one hand generated new sources of income for many, but it has also displaced locals as homes and apartments are converted into tourist accommodation. Technological developments (e.g., cell phones, social media, online booking and reviews) have played a vital role in enabling individual tourism entrepreneurs, such as those on Airbnb and small companies, access global markets through the Internet bypassing large-scale tours operators and generating new earnings. If tourism is to be a successful agent of development, it is important to consider tourism employment in terms of the levels of pay, job security, future employment prospects, and more broadly, the possibility of tourism contributing to poverty reduction and inclusive growth (Telfer, 2019). Increases in visitor numbers do not always generate increased standards of living, especially if wages are low or there is little job security. Employment in tourism in developing countries has the potential for remuneration in line with other higher paying positions but it is not the same in developed countries (Sharpley & Harrison, 2019). In examining poverty reduction, growth rates and gross national product David J. Telfer
can be examined, but it is also important to understand what is taking place within economies and societies (Sharpley & Harrison, 2019). The greatest challenge which was displaced in the headlines somewhat by the pandemic has been the growth in GHG emissions and climate change. Prior to the pandemic, the rise in the number of low-cost air carriers not only contributed to this but also added to the stresses of overtourism. Low-cost carriers often land in secondary airports with lower landing fees, but this also extends the geographic range of tourist arrivals. Scott et al. (2019) found the highest climate change vulnerability was in countries where tourism represents the largest proportion of GDP. In coastal tourism areas, climate change threatens not only coastal communities and resorts, but also vital marine ecosystems and coral reefs such as the Great Barrier Reef, an important tourism attraction. Scott et al. (2019) also predicts that climate change will pose an increasing barrier for tourism to contribute to the UN SDGs. Government policy, planning and actions will have to be strengthened not only to reduce emissions but also to prepare for the impacts of climate change (Scott et al., 2019). From a focus on economics in the 1980 Manila Declaration to the much broader notion of sustainable development in the 2017 Chengdu Declaration, tourism has been recognized to play a much wider role in the development process for destinations. Yet perhaps too much is asked from tourism, an industry driven by profit with a history of exploitation. There have been tremendous advances in the tourism industry in promoting sustainable development as reflected in the UN SDGs; however, if tourism rebounds from the pandemic and returns to a path of uncontrolled growth, sustainable tourism development policies, plans and initiatives may not be enough to curtail the ever-expanding and cumulative consequences of tourism. David J. Telfer
References
Brunton, J. (2020), ‘“Nature is taking back Venice”: wildlife returns to tourist-free city’. The Guardian, 20 March. Retrieved 10 July 2021 at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ 2020/mar/20/nature-is-taking-back-venice -wildlife-returns-to-tourist-free-city.
Tourism and development 595 Gössling, S. and Scott, D. (2018), ‘The decarbonisation impasse: global tourism leaders’ views on climate change mitigation’. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 26(12), 2071–86. https:// doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2018.1529770. Hashimoto, A., Härkönen, E. and Nkyi, E. (2020), Human Rights Issues in Tourism, London: Taylor and Francis Group. Hettne, B. (1995), Development Theory and the Three Worlds, 2nd edition, Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman. Hettne, B. (2009), Thinking About Development, London: Zed Books. Rucinski, T. and Johnson, E. (2021), ‘United Airlines unveils huge jet order in push for growth’. Reuters, 30 June. Retrieved 10 July 2021 at https://www.reuters.com/business/ aerospace-defense/united-airlines-orders-270 -boeing-airbus-jets-2021–06–29/. Schafer, J., Haslam, P. and Beaudet, P. (2021), ‘What is development? From economic growth to sustainable development goals’, in P. Haslam, J. Schafer and P. Beaudet (eds), Introduction to International Development Approaches, Actors Issues and Practice, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 3–23. Scott, D., Hall, C.M. and Gössling, S. (2019), ‘Global tourism vulnerability to climate change’. Annals of Tourism Research, 77, 49–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2019.05.007. Sharpley, R. (2009), Tourism Development and the Environment: Beyond Sustainability, London: EarthScan. Sharpley, R. and Harrison, D. (2019), ‘Introduction: tourism and development – towards a research agenda’, in R. Sharpley and D. Harrison (eds), A Research Agenda for Tourism and Development, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 1–34. Telfer D.J. (2015), ‘The evolution of development theory and tourism’, in R. Sharpley and D. Telfer (eds), Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues, 2nd edition, Clevedon: Channel View Publications, pp. 31–76. Telfer, D.J. (2019), ‘Tourism and (re)development in the developed world’, in R. Sharpley and D. Harrison (eds), A Research Agenda for Tourism
and Development, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 206–32. Telfer. D.J. and Sharpley, R. (2016), Tourism and Development in the Developing World, 2nd edition, London: Routledge. The Maritime Executive (2021), ‘Italian cabinet approves ban on cruise ships docking in Venice’. Retrieved 14 July 2021 at https:// www.maritime-executive.com/article/italian -cabinet-approves-ban-on-cruise-ships-docking -in-venice. UNWTO (2019, January), Compilation of UNWTO Declarations 1980–2018, Madrid: UNWTO. Retrieved 10 July 2021 at https://www.e-unwto .org/doi/book/10.18111/9789284419326. UNWTO (2020), ‘One planet vision for a responsible recovery of the tourism sector’. Retrieved 10 July 2021 at https://webunwto.s3.eu-west -1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2020–12/ en-brochure-one-planet-vision-responsible -recovery.pdf. UNWTO (2021a), ‘2020: a year in review. COVID-19 and tourism’. Retrieved 10 July 2021 at https://www.unwto.org/covid-19-and -tourism-2020. UNWTO (2021b), ‘Global economy could lose over $4 trillion due to COVID-19 impact on tourism’. 30 June. Retrieved 10 July 2021 at https://www.unwto.org/news/global-economy -could-lose-over-4-trillion-due-to-covid-19 -impact-on-tourism. UNWTO (2021c), ‘Transforming tourism for climate action’. Retrieved 10 July 2021 at https:// www.unwto.org/sustainable-development/ climate-action. Wall, G. and Mathieson, A. (2006), Tourism: Change, Impacts and Opportunities. Harlow: Pearson Prentice Hall. Wheeller, B. (2004), ‘The truth? The hole truth. Everything but the truth. Tourism and knowledge: a septic sceptic’s perspective’. Current Issues in Tourism, 7(6), 467–77. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/1368350050408668198. WTTC (2021), Economic Impact Reports. wttc .org/ Retrieved 10 July 2021 at https:// Research/Economic-Impact.
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Trade and poverty The rapid expansion of international trade has been vital for economic development and the reduction of global poverty. Between 1990 and 2017, global poverty fell from 36 per cent to 9 per cent. At the same time the share of exports of goods and services in global GDP increased from 19 per cent to 29 per cent and developing countries almost doubled their share in global exports from 16 per cent to 30 per cent. It is hard to see how this reduction in poverty could have been achieved without the increasing participation of developing countries in global trade and sustained efforts to lower trade barriers. Nevertheless, more open trade does not necessarily benefit all. The economic literature shows that trade openness is key to poverty reduction but must be part of a wider effort.
The linkages between trade and poverty
Trade may influence the poor through a variety of channels: through its impacts on economic growth, relative prices, macroeconomic stability and on government revenues (Winters, 2002; Winters et al., 2004). But not all the poor are affected equally. The effects will depend on where they live (rural versus urban areas, in fragile and conflicted regions), their individual characteristics (skill, gender), the type of trade policy change (increased import competition or new export opportunities) and where they work (industry, firm, formal/informal sector). Trade can also affect poverty by affecting the way that decisions are made within the household given that a large number of the poor reside in non-poor households.1 For example, trade can contribute to the empowerment of women within the household. Trade can further affect long-term development outcomes if it leads to lower child malnutrition rates, higher school attendance and performance, and so on. Sustained economic growth has been the most powerful tool for poverty alleviation. Opening up to trade can drive growth because it improves the efficiency of resource allocation allowing a country to specialize in producing those goods and services that it can supply more cheaply than other countries and import others, thus exploiting comparative advantages. Trade also increases the size of
markets available to domestic firms, allowing for greater economies of scale. Trade can also enhance economic growth by increasing the pace of innovation and growth of productivity by linking firms and individuals with ideas and technology and by increasing the incentives to innovate. People are poor because they have few endowments (landholdings, capital, labour or human capital) and the rewards received from those endowments are low. Rapid and sustained economic growth increases the opportunities of the poor to increase their initial endowments (save to accumulate capital, get an education to increase human capital) and to earn higher rewards for supplying their resources, typically through the market. While the arguments for trade openness leading to growth and poverty reduction are strong, it is challenging to produce definitive supporting empirical evidence. This is because of the difficulties of disentangling causality if economies that are already growing are better placed to reduce trade barriers and because trade policy reforms are typically often implemented at the same time as other policies that may also stimulate growth. These policies can also be critical in enhancing the contribution of trade to growth, such as clarity over property rights and effective mechanisms for conflict resolution. Public investment in infrastructure, education and health has been a feature in all countries that have sustained rapid growth. Overall, there is little evidence to suggest that those developing countries that have been able to sustain growth have done so without trade. Nevertheless, the pattern of growth across sectors matters for poverty reduction because of where the poor live and work. Trade-driven growth may not automatically benefit the poor if it is concentrated in extractive sectors, for example, which generate little employment for the poor. Opening up to trade changes relative prices in both product and factor markets in ways that can benefit the poor – reducing the price of what the poor consume and increasing the price of what the poor sell. As producers, the poor can gain by selling their goods or services in overseas markets where they can get a higher return than in the domestic market. However, those producing solely for the domestic market may see an increase in competition and lower returns. As producers, the poor are also consumers of intermediate
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inputs, and trade can provide better access to materials and services and to technology that improves their productivity. Trade liberalization can reduce the cost of the consumption bundle of the poor by reducing the price of goods that they consume heavily, such as food and clothing. As income earners, trade can increase wages and employment for the poor employed in export sectors but may reduce wages and employment of those working in import competing sectors. Effective competition along the value chain is often necessary for the poor to benefit from trade opportunities. The benefits of a decline in import prices following trade reform may not be passed on to the poor if there is limited competition at some point along the value chain, such as in transportation and distribution. As a result, firms in this sector may capture the largest benefits of trade reform. Similarly, for exports, if a large number of poor producers face a limited number of global buyers then the full benefits of trade reform may not be realized by the poor. The structure of the value chain and the nature of policy interventions along that chain therefore affect the way that changes in import and export prices are translated into returns to the poor. Trade benefits the poor when it leads to economic diversification and less macroeconomic instability. The poor suffer from macroeconomic volatility because it tends to reduce economic growth. It also exacerbates inequalities since the poor have little or no access to finance to help survive through a period of economic downturn. Trade can reduce the disruption caused by domestic shocks, allowing producers and consumers to shift sourcing and sales to abroad. However, greater trade openness also entails enhanced exposure to external shocks – especially in outward-oriented industries. Trade leads to greater specialization in output, making a country more susceptible to idiosyncratic shocks. Moreover, adverse trade shocks can cause prolonged recessions since they induce a significant decrease in aggregate investment. Greater volatility in poor developing countries arises from their initial specialization in the most volatile production sectors (Koren and Tenreyro 2007). Economic development involves diversifying away from these volatile sectors. Geographical export
diversification will help reduce the impact of country-specific external shocks. Opening up to trade may affect the poor if it leads to a reduction in government revenue which then limits the provision of public goods and government transfer programmes that benefit the poor. This will be of particular concern in low-income countries where the share of trade taxes in government revenues is typically much higher. But while tariff revenues will tend to fall, revenues from consumption taxes, such as VAT, applied to imported goods will rise and mitigate the overall revenue loss. Further, if trade opening leads to stronger economic growth then lower customs revenues will be made up for by greater collection of domestic taxes (holding tax rates constant). Finally, strategies to enhance trade can involve measures, such as simplifying trade procedures that do not negatively affect tariff revenues.
Maximizing the benefits of trade for the poor
While there is abundant evidence that trade can bring significant positive economic benefits for the poor, it is also clear that some poor people have been left behind by globalization and that the benefits of trade are not always distributed equitably. Increasing attention is being brought to bear on the numerous constraints that the poor face that limit their capacity to benefit from trade (World Bank and WTO 2015, 2018). Poor people face risks that can prevent them from implementing strategies to take advantage of trade opportunities, even where these strategies would be beneficial, in terms of higher expected incomes. Failure to identify and address these risks may limit the extent to which more open trade delivers benefits to the poor. For example, the poor may face greater risks, if they move from subsistence and informality to specialize in trade impacted activities, such as from a sudden decline in the global price. The poor often have no access to instruments and government support to mitigate these risks, such as insurance and social security that are widely available in developed economies. As a result, what should be short-term adjustment costs from trade in developing countries can often turn out to have long-term negative outcomes for the poor. Paul Brenton
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It has also become increasingly apparent that the gains from trade may not be evenly spatially distributed and that lack of capital can limit the mobility of the poor to take advantages of new, but distant, opportunities. The benefits of trade reforms may not reach the poor if they are not connected to markets. This can be the case for the rural poor, who tend to be low skilled and less mobile than those living in urban areas. In this way, trade may exacerbate regional inequalities in the absence of mobility assistance for poor families. Poor workers may need (re)training or to move elsewhere to obtain newly generated jobs. Extreme poverty is becoming increasingly concentrated in fragile states, where poor people face extreme hurdles in leveraging trade. Nevertheless, cross-border trade provides an essential mechanism to allow vulnerable populations to access goods and services that are essential for their economic and social recovery. In such environments, trade can contribute to peace and stability by building solidarity between border communities (Brenton and Soprano 2018). Men and women can be impacted differently by trade, in terms of wages, consumption, welfare, the quality of jobs available to them and the risks they face. Trade has been an important mechanism to bring more women into workforce and thereby contributing to reducing poverty and to greater gender equality. Countries that are more open to trade tend to have higher levels of gender equality. Greater gender parity typically leads to a more equitable distribution of resources within households and improved outcomes for women and children. Nevertheless, existing gender biases can limit the ability of women to benefit from trade. For example, there is a well-established gender bias in agriculture whereby a relative lack of access to land, financing, inputs, markets, training and education puts female farmers at a significant productivity disadvantage compared to men before they ever plow a field or sow a seed. Women can also face greater risks. For example, the shutdowns of apparel factories that occurred during the COVID-19 crisis when Western buyers suddenly cancelled contracts disproportionately adversely affected women. Women, more than men, lack access to instruments that can protect from these risks. While trade policy reforms are important, they are often insufficient and further reforms are necessary to ensure that Paul Brenton
women actually benefit from trading opportunities. These include policies to increase women’s access to education, finance, information, and transport infrastructure.
Conclusions
Opening to trade will more likely have a positive impact on the poor when combined with policies that allow the poor to participate fully in the opportunities that are created. The link between trade and poverty is stronger in countries that have deeper financial sectors, better education levels and stronger governance (Le Goff and Singh 2014). Excessive or poor regulation can limit the beneficial effects of trade on growth and poverty reduction (Freund and Bolaky 2008). Trade policy must therefore be integrated into development policy rather than defined and applied in isolation. Additional policy measures may be needed to enhance the impact of trade on the poor. Trade also intersects with other factors that are shaping outcomes for the poor such as climate change. Trade-driven growth to eliminate extreme poverty risks driving increasing emissions. But the poor are the most vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change. Rising temperatures, changing precipitation and increasingly frequent extreme weather events are leading to lower agricultural yields, with impacts greatest in developing countries close to the equator. This has contributed to the reversal in the trend towards declining global food insecurity. As climate change will increase the volatility of food production at the country level, trade will become even more important in reducing price volatility and delivering supplies to food deficient countries (Smith and Glauber 2020). Without this trade expansion, more households in low-income countries will become food insecure and poverty will increase as a result of climate change. While trade contributes to carbon emissions, exacerbating climate change, it can also contribute to the solution – by enhancing both mitigation and adaptation. Trade is a conduit for the dissemination of new low carbon technologies which can provide new routes out of poverty. An increasing body of analysis is demonstrating that low carbon and climate resilient growth can provide growth, poverty reduction and human development outcomes that are superior to the current alternative.
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Coordinating climate change, development and trade policies will allow trade to drive the low carbon transition and achieve poverty reducing and inclusive growth. Paul Brenton
Note 1.
Brown et al. (2017) assert that a high proportion of undernourished children in Africa reside in non-poor households.
References
Brenton, P. and C. Soprano (2018). Small-Scale Cross-Border Trade in Africa: Why It Matters and How It Should Be Supported. ICTSD Bridges Africa. Brown, C., M. Ravallion and D. Van De Walle (2017). Are poor individuals mainly found in poor households? Evidence using nutrition data for Africa. Policy Research Working Paper No. WPS 8001. Washington, DC: World Bank Group. Freund, C. and B. Bolaky (2008). Trade, regulations, and income. Journal of Development Economics, 87(2): 309–21.
Koren, M. and S. Tenreyro (2007). Volatility and development. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122(1): 243–87. Le Goff, M. and R. Singh (2014). Does trade reduce poverty? A view from Africa. Journal of African Trade. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joat .2014.06.001. Smith, V.H. and J.W. Glauber (2020). Trade, policy, and food security. Agricultural Economics, 51(1): 159–71. Winters, A.L. (2002). Trade liberalization and poverty: what are the links? The World Economy, 25(9): 1339–67. Winters, A.L, N. Mcculloch and A. Mckay (2004). Trade liberalization and poverty: the evidence so far. Journal of Economic Literature, 42: 72–115. World Bank and WTO (2015). The Role of Trade in Ending Poverty. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank and WTO (2018). Trade and Poverty Reduction: New Evidence of Impacts in Developing Countries. Washington, DC: World Bank.
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Urban planning Understanding urban planning
Urban planning – frequently synonymized with town, city, spatial, or land use planning – is a conscious effort by government agencies, often in collaboration with other key stakeholders (who may include community residents, the private sector and businesses), to ensure the development of urban areas. It is also broadly described as a systematic process of organizing urban environments to optimize resource utilization and minimize externalities (e.g. damage to the urban ecological system, property devaluation, and disease outbreak) for improved living standards. Urban planning focuses on the spatial form, economic functions, and social impacts of development and as such it relies on legal, political, and aesthetic interests to improve human welfare and environmental quality (Levy, 2016). Traditionally, urban planning in both the global South and North offers avenues to address urban challenges, though at times, also contributes to, or compounds urban challenges (Brooks, 1988). Hence, urban planning outcomes can be positive or negative, depending on how it is activated and employed. As practised today, urban planning has its roots in the ecological disorder and societal challenges of industrial cities of the nineteenth century. Influenced by disciplines such as architecture and civil engineering and later by a myriad of social sciences, urban planning became formalized as a subject of scholarly inquiry at the end of the nineteenth century in Europe (Basiago, 1998). Subsequently, it spread to North America and various European colonies across Africa and Asia. Its initial orientation emphasized a rational and formal approach to solving problems in cities and was thus viewed as a profession providing the technical basis for addressing
urban problems (Pinson, 2004). Inaugurally conceived as such, urban planning became a physical design tool for regulating the use of space and tackling developmental issues (Brooks, 1988). In other words, it emerged as a discipline and profession that emphasizes the ordering of the use of urban spaces to address both ecological and societal challenges of industrial cities. Today, urban planning shapes people and places by accounting for the relationships between people and their environments – and stresses a balance between environmental sustainability and livelihood improvement. Furthermore, the formative process of urban planning as a discipline was characterized by different and sometimes competing theories (e.g. procedural versus substantive planning theories) that have, and continue to shape its disciplinary perspectives and professional practice (Allmendinger, 2002). Indeed, shifting paradigms, emerging technologies, scholarly works, and professional demands over the past two centuries have all contributed to the way urban planning is taught and practiced today. For example, between the late 1960s and early 1970s, urban planning in Australia was ‘characterized by a strong influence of transport engineers, under which all mainland capitals adopted metropolitan plans based on an extensive network of freeways and corridor-like urban expansion’ (Yiftachel, 1988, p. 34). This practice was guided by the advent of computers and the ‘quantitative revolution’ of social sciences at the time. Around the same period, urban planning in the United States was shaped by a strong environmental movement that emphasized the interdependencies between urban areas and environmental resources (Palazzo & Diko, 2016). The latter part of the twentieth century was characterized by the prominence of urban renewal, infrastructure, and inner-city redevelopment. Industrial towns that had experienced decay and blight at the time were re-invigorated
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via the planning and designing of liveable cities. In the twenty-first century, the focus of urban planning has become varied and more complex. Specifically, rapid urbanization in global South cities, urban shrinkage in global North cities, and sustainability and climate change concerns in cities around the world have become germane to urban planning. Unfortunately, some scholars use urban planning vaguely within the dichotomous planned versus organic development relationships. This poses a threat to its fundamental nature as a unique discipline (Pinson, 2004) and profession (Brooks, 1988). As a discipline and profession, urban planning’s central focus is cities, their problems, and the production of knowledge and solutions to understand and address city problems. In this regard, urban planning occurs at different spatial scales such as neighbourhood, city, regional, national and, currently, global. It has international development agenda to address the challenges of cities – including regulating the use of space by determining where and how infrastructure facilities and services such as roads, housing, social amenities, and economic activities ought to function in cities.
Evolution of urban planning: global perspective
Debates on urban planning predate, and were popularized by, Arnold Toynbee (between 1852 and 1883) in the Industrial Revolution era to address social and economic challenges. Over the past two centuries, societal transformations of the capitalist system have resulted in several approaches to urban planning. Ebenezer Howard, Patrick Geddes, and Daniel Burnham are reported to have shaped the discourse of urban planning in the nineteenth century. Geddes, in particular, proposed centralized planning as a more comprehensive and effective way of neutralizing urban disorder. The era (late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century) was characterized by positive socioeconomic transformation and improvements in living conditions. While the volumes of goods increased, intense and adverse environmental and social problems such as environmental pollution and unemployment persisted due to a technocratic urban planning that paid little attention to the political and institutional context of city
challenges. Improved economic activities attracted rural migrants into cities, which later became overcrowded with deteriorating living and settlement conditions. Owing to this, reformation of the built environment evolved in Europe in the early 1900s. For instance, the ‘City Beautiful Movement’ emerged as a planning approach to promote community development with an emphasis on designing neighbourhoods to improve aesthetic appeal. This led to the creation of functional towns with mixed land uses to attain aesthetic goals. In the first half of the twentieth century, urban planning consciously aimed at intensifying legitimacy and rationality to provide solutions for city challenges. Urban planners employed monocentric models underpinned by location theory and space economy principles (see Alonso, 1971; Muth, 1969); sector model (see Hoyt, 1939); and multi-nuclei model (see Harris & Ullman, 1945) to address urban challenges. This period also inspired grand visions like Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City, and Le Corbusier’s Contemporary City, as well as the International Congress for Modern Architecture’s (CIAM) Charter of Athens. Geddes (1915) further developed the concept of ‘region’ where he argued that spatial form and social processes are related. These models shaped the growth and morphology of human settlements. From the mid-twentieth century, urban planning focused on addressing urban sprawl and socioeconomic declines in inner cities. Planning then focused on urban renewal to solve urban decay and land development challenges, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States of America (Jacobs, 1961). The internal structure of Chicago, for instance, was examined to better understand the physical dynamics of the city (see the concentric zone model by Burgess, 1925). Capitalism informed different aspects of urban planning. It led to societal changes in several countries in the global South as capitalist markets pursued resources to meet increasing demand which resulted in competition among the European countries to establish their colonies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. ‘Westernization’ was equated to modernization, which greatly altered local cultural traditions, patterns, and settlements. The most influential in the colonies (political Patrick Brandful Cobbinah
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and traditional leaders, land and property owners, among others) aligned themselves with the interests of the ‘colonial master’. They formed new ‘enclaves’ within cities as emerging aristocrats. The new neighbourhoods had European infrastructure which (in) directly led to segregation between social groups; rich and poor, where those in the old quarters (the poor) continued to be excluded and live in deprivation. This happened in areas such as Rabat (Morocco) and Cairo (Egypt), Cape Town (South Africa) and Accra in the Gold Coast, present-day Ghana. The cities were characterized by a mixture of low-class residential and commercial land uses, which continued over the decades. Urban planning in these colonies was defined by legal frameworks, standards, and building regulations that symbolized the imposition of Western spatial structures on colonial territories (Njoh, 2013). Urban planning practice, however, reached a crisis in the 1960s when cities (particularly in the USA) experienced socio-political tensions, which resulted in a ‘halt’ in economic growth. There was subsequently an energy crisis in the 1970s in the USA and Europe after an oil embargo by the oil-producing Arab countries, which resulted in alternative fuel exploration. Environmental protection thus became one major concern during that period. As a consequence, the global call for urban revitalization and sustainability, coupled with displeasure about gentrification and suburbanization, became widespread, and so redefined urban planning in the fast-paced twenty-first century. Twenty-first-century urban planning is thus far characterized by the concept of ‘postmodernism’. This first became popular in the period between the mid- and late twentieth century. It signified a period of rejecting traditional institutional establishments. Postmodernism challenged modernity in all aspects, in that there was a suggestion for new ways of conceptualizing and understanding issues, a move which signified a ‘radical break’ from modernist thinking. Breaking away from modernism, efforts were made to explain relationships between power and social behaviour during the era. An attempt to understand the social orders and contexts that shape human behaviours, including the structure and nature of cities, was sustained. Concomitantly, there was a massive expansion in the service sector at the expense of Patrick Brandful Cobbinah
production activities in the cities of the global South, which resulted in their expansion to accommodate the diverse interests of various groups (Scott, 2014). The still-growing capitalist system resulted in changes from industrial to post-industrial cities, with the service sector as the new engine of development. Concerning the discourse on urban planning during that era, Fainstein (2000) argues that there was rejection of a total planning process, disregard for standardization, and a view of economic concentrations as the remedy to urban planning challenges. According to Fainstein (2000), three key urban planning ideologies have emerged in the twenty-first century, namely, communicative, just city planning, and new urbanism. First, the ‘communicative’ planning approach places the planner as one to solicit ideas from the group affected by planning. This approach has since become one of the key directions of twenty-first-century urban planning. Second, the ‘just city planning model’ (emanating from political economists and radical democrats) proposes a system of spatial relations underpinned by equity. Political economists here argue for fairness of representation by the marginalized. Radical democrats, too, argue for more extensive participation of the excluded and the underrepresented in urban planning processes to empower them to become more active in decision-making processes. Lastly, ‘new urbanism’ calls for design-oriented approaches to urban neighbourhoods. The orientation here aims at creating inclusive communities through spatial relations to accommodate diverse groups harmoniously. New urbanists argue for urban designs that emphasize mixed land uses, different buildings, and housing as well as mixing the poor with the rich (Fainstein & Campbell, 2012) and so create sustainable neighbourhoods. Although Friedmann (2016) warns that these Western urban planning approaches may not always be applicable to societies in the global South, they have, and continue to influence urban planning in the twenty-first century across global South cities.
Urban planning experiences in the global North
Urban planning in the global North has emerged as an ideal solution to creating settlement patterns that are compatible, hygienic, and meet the needs of the growing
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population. What is more, is that it seeks to address the consequences of a dense cluster of places of work and home in poor environmental conditions coupled with inadequate physical infrastructure in downtown areas (Khodabakhshi, 2013). Lessons from the Industrial Revolution have perhaps fed into a strong backing (fiscal and physical) for strategic planning and management of urban areas. Garau (2009), for instance, notes that the global North shows high commitment to long-term strategic planning, which adopts strategies such as zoning, insurance, and building codes to regulate development. Freire (2006) explains that the success of urban planning in the global North is a result of their good fiscal capacity, vision, and effective management in addition to a massive infrastructural investment that stimulates city growth. However, the increasing occurrence of climate change and disaster events such as earthquakes, droughts, tsunamis, and hurricanes are causing detrimental impacts on urban planning. One example is Hurricane Katrina, which affected New Orleans, resulting in the loss of lives and properties estimated at around US$200 billion (Glantz, 2005).
Urban planning experiences in the global South
The rate of urbanization in most part of the global South is expected to surpass that of the global North, with as much as 90 per cent of the increase occurring in Asia and Africa (United Nations, 2014). Many global South countries have economies with low industrial growth, a high dependency on small-scale agriculture, and a dominant informal sector employing the majority of the urbanites (Bloom et al., 2008). Urban planning in the global South has largely been unsuccessful. Not only have imported solutions from the global North not helped address the challenges of human settlements in the global South, but also the socio-spatial and economic drivers in the latter have largely remained different from those in the global North (Roy, 2005). The focus is hence a drive towards resilient and sustainable cities. Mismanagement of resources, lack of proper legal framework, weak administrative structures of planning agencies, and inadequate participation of stakeholders compound the complexities of urban planning in the
global South (Freire, 2006). Inadequate financial resources have also posed significant challenges for urban planners’ efforts to provide basic social amenities for the unprecedented population growth (Paulais, 2012). City authorities are unable to generate adequate internal revenue to undertake the needed development due to dominance of the informal sector and failure to integrate the latter into formal machinery (Brown et al., 2010). Nevertheless, there is a growing understanding that the informal sector can be tapped to engender change and promote development (Cobbinah & Darkwah, 2017). Yet, the existence of poor coordination between planning and financing agencies and related institutions continue to derail urban planning efforts. Consequently, many urban neighbourhoods – including Kibera (Kenya), Khayelitsha (South Africa), Sodom and Gomorrah (Ghana), Dharavi slum (India) and Orangi Town (Pakistan) – feature proliferating slums and squatter settlements, waste management challenges (Khatib, 2011), inadequate urban infrastructure, and poverty and underemployment. Nonetheless, all is not gloomy for the global South as the waves of urbanization also offer an opportunity to overturn the current urban challenges. Cities in the global South in countries like China, Singapore (and Hong Kong itself) are adopting endogenous development models that enable them to generate competitive domestic markets and attract investment through proactive city planning. Moreover, grassroots-level initiatives, self-organization, and co-production processes between citizens, civil society, and local governments are emerging to address urban challenges of cities in the global South (Fatemi et al., 2020).
Conclusion
Given the emerging complexities of the urban realm in both the global North and South, the future relevance of urban planning lies in its ability to open up to alternative perspectives, the appreciation of context as well as the nuances of everyday urban practices – particularly for countries in the global South. This should be concomitant with urban planning’s bold move to address contemporary challenges of climate change and social justice. Patrick Brandful Cobbinah Patrick Brandful Cobbinah
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References
Allmendinger, P. (2002). Towards a post-positivist typology of planning theory. Planning Theory, 1(1), 77–99. Alonso, W. (1971, December). The economics of urban size. Papers of the Regional Science Association, 26(1), 66–83. Basiago, A.D. (1998). Economic, social, and environmental sustainability in development theory and urban planning practice. Environmentalist, 19(2), 145–61. Bloom, D.E., Canning, D., & Fink, G. (2008). Urbanization and the wealth of nations. Science, 319(5864), 772–5. Brooks, M.P. (1988). Four critical junctures in the history of the urban planning profession: an exercise in hindsight. Journal of the American Planning Association, 54(2), 241–8. Brown, A., Lyons, M., & Dankoco, I. (2010). Street traders and the emerging spaces for urban voice and citizenship in African cities. Urban Studies, 47(3), 666–83. Burgess, E.W. (1925). The growth of the city: an introduction to a research project. In R.E. Park, E.W. Burgess, & R. McKenzie (eds), The City (pp. 47–62). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cobbinah, P.B., & Darkwah, R.M. (2017). Toward a more desirable form of sustainable urban development in Africa. African Geographical Review, 36(3), 262–85. Fainstein, S.S. (2000). New directions in planning theory. Urban Affairs Review, 35, 451–78. Fainstein, S.S., & Campbell, S. (eds) (2012). Readings in Planning Theory. Chichester: Blackwell. 3rd edition. Fatemi, M.N, Kita, M., Okyere, S.A., Shimoda, M., & Matsubara, S. (2020). A study on physical vulnerability and improvement actions of residential buildings to urban flooding in the eastern Dhaka, Bangladesh. Journal of Architecture and Planning (Transactions of AIJ), 85(772), 1229–39. Freire, M. (2006). Urban Planning: Challenges in Developing Countries. Madrid: International Congress on Human Development. Friedmann, J. (2016). Place and place-making in cities: a global perspective. In Readings in Planning Theory, 4th edition. http://doi.org/10 .1002/9781119084679.ch25. Garau, P. (2009). Revisiting urban planning in developed countries. Unpublished regional study prepared for the Global Report on Human Settlements.
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Geddes, P. (1915). Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the Study of Civics. London: Williams. Glantz, M. (2005). Hurricane Katrina rekindles thoughts about fallacies of a so-called ‘natural’ disaster. Editorial. Sustainability: Science, Practice & Policy, 1(2). http://ejournal.nbii.org. Harris, C.D. & Ullman, E.L. (1945). The nature of cities. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 242, 7–17. Hoyt, H. (1939). The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities. Washington, DC: Federal Housing Administration. Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House. Khatib, I.A. (2011). Municipal solid waste management in developing countries: future challenges and possible opportunities. Integrated Waste Management, 2, 35–48. Khodabakhshi, S. (2013). Density & Sustainable Urban Development. Architectural Designer, GBCI. Levy, J.M. (2016). Contemporary Urban Planning. New York & London: Routledge. Muth, R. (1969). Cities and Housing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Njoh, A.J. (2013). Modernist urban planning as a tool of acculturation: implications for sustainable human settlement development in Cameroon. City, Culture and Society, 4(2), 111–20. Palazzo, D., & Diko, S.K. (2016). From the past into the future: the utopian roots of ecological planning in North America. In R. Ingaramo, & A. Voghera (eds), Topics and Methods for Urban and Landscape Design (pp. 213–26). Cham: Springer. Paulais, T. (2012). Financing Africa’s Cities: The Imperative of Local Investment. Washington, DC: World Bank Publications. Pinson, D. (2004). Urban planning: an ‘undisciplined’ discipline? Futures, 36(4), 503–13. Roy, A. (2005). Urban informality: towards an epistemology of planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 71(2), 147–58. Scott, A.J. (2014). Beyond the creative city: cognitive–cultural capitalism and the new urbanism. Regional Studies, 48(4), 565–78. United Nations (2014). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2014 Revision, Highlight. New York: United Nations. Yiftachel, O. (1988). Towards a new typology of urban planning theories. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 16, 23–39.
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Waste management and development Introduction
Poverty reduction and environmental sustainability have been at the top of the international agenda and gained maximum expression in the formulation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Waste management is an area many of the SDGs touch on – in both focused and tangential ways.1 Waste is one of the biggest challenges of the urban world and is at the core of human and sustainable development. The amount of solid waste generated globally is estimated to be between 10 and 20 billion metric tonnes per annum (Cook & Velis, 2020: 13). An estimated 24 per cent of municipal solid waste generated in the world is left uncollected and 27 per cent is mismanaged (7). Waste disposal is also a huge problem with an estimated 41 per cent being disposed of in open dumps (18) without environmental controls or provisions to prevent people working in these sites or living nearby being exposed to this. Mismanaged waste is a huge safety issue, especially for waste workers. Recent attention to ocean and river plastic pollution has contributed to raising awareness of the need for improved waste management in general. Furthermore, 1–2 per cent2 (Bartone, 1998) of the urban population earn their living from collecting and handling municipal waste,3 with little or no recognition from municipalities and industries of their contribution to public health and to the value chain. Good solid waste management is essential for clean urban environments, as a resource for circular economies and for livelihoods. Therefore, if well managed, waste management is one of the key markers of development. To meet the challenges of human
and sustainable development, solid waste management should be approached in its multidimensionality, that is, taking into consideration its physical as well as governance elements (Scheinberg et al., 2010), and its potential to generate livelihoods in urban populations. Solid waste management has a ‘twin challenge’: provision of good and reliable collection and disposal services for all (with attention paid to the rights of those in informal settlements and less affluent areas), and improvement of the living and working conditions of waste reclaimers (Coad, 2006). Integration of these aspects as noted by Coad are vital, ‘both for providing sustainable services and for reducing the hostility and health risks faced by the communities that convert waste into resources’ (2). Development is a contested, contextual, and contingent concept. The notion of human development as a ‘process of enhancing individual and collective quality of life in a manner that satisfies basic needs (as a minimum), is environmentally, socially and economically sustainable, and is empowering in the sense that the people concerned have a substantial degree of control over the process through access to the means of accumulating social power’ (Simon, 1999: 21) provides the framework to discuss solid waste management and development. This entry begins with an overview of historical perspectives on waste management and describes how technocratic approaches gave way to a more holistic understanding. It will examine how grassroots experiences of waste governance are challenging conceptual frameworks and practices and making the case for a deeper understanding of waste management’s ability to meet goals related to public health, the protection of the environment, and poverty reduction, which are all crucial in development.
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Historical perspectives and mainstream paradigms
The waste of pre-industrial societies was comparatively minimal and easily absorbed back into the earth (Rogers, 2005). The management of waste was, in general, the responsibility of communities where waste was a resource. The cities of nineteenth-century Europe and North America were populated with chiffoniers and scavengers as they were called in Paris and in New York City, respectively (Dias, 2014). It was at the start of the twentieth century that solid waste management as we know it today was born (i.e. when solid waste collection and disposal systems were created and then managed by municipalities). This was prompted by the urban reform movement that sprung up when the links between filth and the spread of disease were discovered (Rogers, 2005; Scheinberg, 2011). As the wealthy began to connect street waste with disease, those who worked in the informal collection of waste became increasingly stigmatized. Legislation to address the problem of poor sanitary conditions was gradually introduced. Waste became more rationalized, restrictions to access were introduced, and the poor could no longer work the streets to collect the ‘garbage commons’. From a source of livelihood, waste became a mere technical problem (Dias, 2014). Also, waste in European and American cities became inextricably connected to public health and to class struggles – the urban reforms implemented in the main cities of the nineteenth century linked control of waste (and thus the working poor) to the project of social order (Rogers, 2005). Although some workers may have been absorbed into the companies formed to manage waste (Scheinberg, 2011), a crackdown followed on those whose source of livelihood was waste and the birth of municipal waste systems left no room for the majority of the urban working poor (Rogers, 2005). Thus, while until the mid-nineteenth century public hygiene ‘was dependent on individual initiatives of households or business’ (Scheinberg, 2011: 3), the hygienist movement in Europe and North America made waste removal a public health priority and therefore a municipal responsibility and it became highly formalized. Concerns with improvement of collection and safe disposal Sonia Maria Dias
became prevalent as increasing industrialization brought dramatic changes to the volume and nature of waste. The environmental consequences of waste dumps became more acute and safer disposal methods were developed, notably the sanitary landfill. As Rogers (2005) states, the profession of sanitation engineering emerged and waste became an increasingly technical problem (61).
Conceptual frameworks: from conventional solid waste management to integrated and sustainable management systems to inclusive solid waste concepts
Over the last few decades, waste studies and practice have grown as an interdisciplinary field. There has been a shift from the technocratic approach with its operational-level analysis of the ‘physical system, or hardware, for managing waste, and the policy and legal framework, institutions, knowledge base, and other software that allow a waste manager to do his or her job’ (Scheinberg, 2011: 20), to a more multidisciplinary and reflexive field in sync with contributions from grassroots experiences and engaged scholarships (Dias, 2016; Campos, 2014). A major paradigm shift was observed with the introduction of integrated conceptual frameworks for solid waste planning and operation. Wilson et al. (2013) provide an overview on changes in discourse situating the usage of the term integrated waste management (IWM) during the 1970s and locating its use in the context of technological integration in developed countries (52). By the 2000s, as noted by the authors, the use of the term ‘integrated’ had become standard within the solid-waste expert community. In the 1990s, a more progressive conceptual umbrella – Integrated Sustainable Waste Management (ISWM) – emerged, which became popular with specialists and scholars concerned with the dilemmas of human and sustainable development. This conceptual umbrella problematized the predominantly technical-operational approach by adding other dimensions, particularly the social dimension, to the planning and implementation of solid-waste systems. The inclusion of all those with a stake in solid waste is another key element in this framework: government,
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formal and informal workers, citizens and the private sector (Scheinberg et al., 2010). More recently, documentation of experimentation on pro-poor solid waste models has enabled further theorization on alternative paradigms. This has led to some (still incipient) conceptualizations that stretch further the governance and participatory aspects of the then revolutionary concept of ISWM towards what is becoming known as ‘popular recycling’,4 ‘Participatory Solid Waste Management’ (Gutberlet, 2015) and ‘inclusive recycling’ (Samson, 2020; Dias, 2016; Scheinberg, 2011). This trend partly stems from learnings from the implementation of municipal recycling programmes in integration with waste pickers in cities of the global South and, on the other hand, from the close interactions between waste pickers’ organizations and engaged scholars,5 NGOs and practitioners that has enabled conceptualizations that enlarge the ISWM model’s spectrum of inclusivity. As a result, since the late 2000s, waste studies (and practice) have been increasingly focusing on issues linked to political economy, class and power struggles, circularity, and gender-based vulnerabilities (Medina, 2007; Linzner & Lange, 2013; Dias and Ogando, 2015; Parizeau, 2015). Many authors argue for the need for change in the very conception of what garbage is and the need to go beyond the conservation of resources and public health towards the incorporation of human and sustainable notions of development in which sustainability is coupled with the demands for social justice of populations whose survival depends on the recovery of household waste and recyclables (Dias, 2016; Samson, 2009; Fernandez, 2020). Here the notion of waste as an urban common (Zapata Campos & Zapata, 2013; Cavé, 2020) has been important as it points out that although local authorities have the responsibility to cope with wastes they do not own it. In this line, it has been advocated that waste pickers should be granted access to waste as a common-pool resource. Waste studies and practice have thus become an interdisciplinary field. New fields such as urban metabolism, which looks at how cities can reduce resource consumption, minimize waste and emissions, and improve quality of life, and discard studies, in which waste in its political, social, labour, power
and ideological dimensions are examined, are looking at waste in ways that may be useful in policymaking. In terms of policy, many sanitation and cleaning departments are adding social scientists, geographers and other professionals to their teams, although the degree to which these new perspectives effectively count in policymaking varies. Furthermore, waste pickers across the world, through organizing, have had a chance to influence policies. In Brazil, for instance, they were able to develop a system of ‘solidarity waste collection’ in which waste-picker cooperatives are contracted by municipalities as operators in waste systems (Rutkowski et al., 2015). In Bogota, Colombia, the city government implemented a payment system to recognize workers as service providers, which entailed access to payments via workers’ organizations (Parra, 2020). In Pune, India, workers were granted the status of service providers through a cooperative providing collection of household wastes and recyclables (Chikarmane, 2012). In Argentina, waste pickers organized themselves and achieved status of service providers in recyclable collection. Engaging waste pickers in finding solutions to socio-environmental problems through participatory modes of waste governance has been key in linking solid waste management with livelihood protection.
Key issues and trends
Although there have been significant changes, both in theory and practice, coupling waste and development is still a major challenge, especially in the global South, where collection services are weak with insufficient resources, bad governance, corruption, and insufficient technical capacity. Poor communities bear the brunt of inadequate waste collection services. Also, modernization through indiscriminate adoption of waste-to-energy technologies has been a threat both for the environment and for livelihoods (many policies are designed to eliminate informal workers rather than build from what exists). Open dumps are still the most prevalent form of waste disposal in developing countries, and informal workers abound in these places, working under appalling sanitary conditions. Too often, municipalities make sweeping decisions to close these dumps and adopt waste-to-energy technologies. Also, cities shut down waste Sonia Maria Dias
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sinks without offering alternatives for informal workers whose livelihoods depend on this work. The increasing attention paid to ocean and river plastic pollution has helped raise awareness of the need to invest in improving solid waste management as land-based waste entering the ocean is a major contributor. Waste pickers need to be recognized by policymakers for their potential in improving waste management at the source as a way to prevent plastic pollution. This could be a major opportunity to strengthen the connections between waste management and development.
Conclusions
The emergence of concepts and systems such as circular economies, though much celebrated, might lead to further marginalization of informal waste pickers. From the human development perspective, it is important to interrogate whether there will be room for informal waste workers to reclaim access to waste as an urban common in these systems. What are the necessary conditions to ensure that circularity will be delivered by the working poor? How can we deal with power imbalances within new partnerships established between the working poor and governments and business? These are some of the unanswered questions that may or may not contribute to building synergies between circular economies of waste and development. Unless cities in the developing world extend solid waste management services to all and build on existing systems to do so – that is, recognizing the valuable contributions of informal waste pickers in providing the only waste collection that there is in many places and with no cost for cities – and unless cities include informal workers and residents of informal settlements in planning processes, they will fail to improve solid waste management standards and achieve the environmental and poverty-reduction goals established in the SDGs. Sonia Maria Dias
Notes 1.
Waste management is present in several of the new SDGs, especially goals 1 (‘No Poverty’), 6 (‘Clean Water and Sanitation’) and 12 (‘Responsible Consumption and Production’).
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2.
The ILO Green Jobs report (2013) estimates that there are 20 million informal recycling workers. Lack of reliable statistics on waste pickers is still a huge gap. 3. The focus is on municipal waste, that is, waste from homes, businesses, shops, schools, from public cleaning services such as sweeping, pruning and so on. Note that definitions of municipal solid waste may vary between countries. 4. Popular recycling, a term used by Brazilian waste picker leaders and their advocates, is seen as the advance of waste pickers in the recycling value chain, gradually aggregating the set of collection and sorting activities involved in the industrial processing of recyclables, constituting another type of production chain. 5. Scholarly work that combines knowledge production with and for the studied communities and groups. It entails knowledge co-production that shifts the position of the researcher as the main generator of knowledge towards community or group-based knowledge often following standards of participatory methodologies.
References
Bartone, C. (1988). The Value in Wastes. Decade Watch (September), 3–4. Campos, H.K.T. (2014). Recycling in Brazil: challenges and prospects. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 85, 130–38. https://doi.org/10 .1016/j.resconrec.2013.10.017. Cavé, J. (2020). Managing urban waste as a common pool resource. In M. Chen & F. Carré (eds), The Informal Economy Revisited: Examining the Past, Envisioning the Future (chapter 24). London: Routledge. Coad, A. (2006). Solid Waste, Health and the Millennium Development Goals – A Report of the CWG International Workshop Kolkata. St. Gallen: CWG. Chikarmane, P. (2012). Integrating waste pickers into municipal solid waste management in Pune, India. WIEGO Policy Brief (Urban Policies) No. 8. https://www.wiego.org/sites/default/ files/migrated/publications/files/Chikarmane _WIEGO_PB8.pdf. Cook, E., & Velis, C.A. (2020). Global review on safer end of engineered life. Engineering X (founded by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Lloyd’s Register Foundation), https:// raeng.org.uk/media/ko0adleh/engineeringx -global-review-engineer-life.pdf. Dias, S.M. (2014). Waste and citizenship forum’s trajectories – achievements and challenges. IPSA CONGRESS 2014 Session – Local Sustainable Development Policies (pp. 1–24). Dias, S.M. (2016). Waste pickers and cities. Environment and Urbanization, 28(2), 375–90. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247816657302. Dias, S.M., & Ogando, A.C. (2015). Rethinking gender and waste: exploratory findings from participatory action research in Brazil. Work
Waste management and development 609 Organisation, Labour & Globalisation, 9(2), 51–63. Fernandez, L. (2020). Waste pickers and their right to the city: dispossession and displacement in nineteenth-century Paris and contemporary Montevideo. In M. Chen & F. Carré (eds), The Informal Economy Revisited: Examining the Past, Envisioning the Future (chapter 23). London: Routledge. Gutberlet, J. (2015). Cooperative urban mining in Brazil: collective practices in selective household waste collection and recycling. Waste Management, 45, 22–31. https://doi.org/10 .1016/j.wasman.2015.06.023. ILO [International Labour Office] (2013). Sustainable development, decent work and green jobs. Report to the 102nd session of the International Labour Conference. Retrieved from https://www.ilo.org/ilc/ILCSessions/ previous-sessions/102/reports/reports -submitted/WCMS_207370/lang--en/index .htm. Linzner, R., & Lange, U. (2013). Role and size of informal sector in waste management – a review. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers – Waste and Resource Management, 166(2), 69–83. https://doi.org/10.1680/warm .12.00012. Medina, M. (2007). Waste picker cooperatives in developing countries. In M. Chen, R. Jhabvala, R. Kanbur & C. Richards (eds), Membership Based Organizations of the Poor (pp. 125–41). London: Routledge. Parizeau, K. (2015). Urban political ecologies of informal recyclers’ health in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Health and Place, 33, 67–74. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2015.02.007. Parra, F. (2020). The struggle of waste pickers in Colombia: from being considered trash, to being recognised as workers. Anti-Trafficking Review, 15, 122–36. https://doi.org/10.14197/ atr.201220157.
Rogers, H. (2005). Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage. New York: The New Press. Rutkowski, J.E., & Rutkowski, E.W. (2015). Expanding worldwide urban solid waste recycling: the Brazilian social technology in waste pickers inclusion. Waste Management and Research, 33(12), 1084–93. https://doi.org/10 .1177/0734242X15607424. Samson, M. (2009). Refusing to be Cast Aside: Waste Pickers Organising Around the World. Cambridge, MA: Wiego. Samson, M. (2020). The political work of waste picker integration. In M. Chen & F. Carré (eds), The Informal Economy Revisited: Examining the Past, Envisioning the Future (chapter 25). London: Routledge. Scheinberg, A. (2011). Value added: modes of sustainable recycling in the modernisation of waste management systems. Thesis, Wageningen University, Wageningen NL, Gouda: WASTE Advisers on Urban Environment. Scheinberg, A., Wilson, D.C., & Rodic-Wiersma, L. (2010). Solid Waste Management in the World’s Cities. London and Washington, DC: Earthscan. Simon, D. (1999). Development revisited: thinking about, practicing and teaching development after the Cold War. In D. Simon & A. Narman (eds), Development as Theory and Practice (chapter 2). London: Longman. Wilson, D.C., Velis, C.A., & Rodic, L. (2013). Integrated sustainable waste management in developing countries. Proceedings of Institution of Civil Engineers: Waste and Resource Management, 166(2), 52–68. https://doi.org/10 .1680/warm.12.00005. Zapata Campos, M.J., & Zapata, P. (2013). Switching Managua on! Connecting informal settlements to the formal city through household waste collection. Environment and Urbanization, 25(1), 225–42. https://doi.org/10 .1177/0956247812468404.
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Women and development Concerns about the relationship between development and women began in the 1950s through policies related to welfare, such as family planning and food aid. They became more official when the UN General Assembly called for the creation of the Commission on the Status of Women in 1962. The expressions ‘women and development’ (WAD) as opposed to ‘women in development’ (WID) appeared in the 1970s responding to two different conceptions of the world of development. WID suggested that women ‘in’ development were not always included as equal partners with men but equality could be achieved within the system. On the other hand, WAD implied a more critical view of processes of development under capitalism that generated class and other hierarchies, including gender differentiation. Thus, WAD considered a wider set of development models that could result in different outcomes for women. In the 1980s, WAD was replaced by GAD (gender and development) to indicate the importance of ‘gender’ as a category of analysis to replace ‘women’. These expressions were part of the new field that grew exponentially since Esther Boserup published her book Women’s Role in Economic Development in 1970. To be sure, before 1970, anthropologists in particular had paid attention to differences between men and women in a variety of societies in the process of development but Boserup was the first economist that addressed the issue from a wider and comparative perspective. Having worked with the UN, she was able to provide an empirical analysis of how development had affected women across continents and countries. Her comparative perspective was most useful and inspiring. The 1970s were also the beginning of the UN Decade on Women that began with the Mexico City conference in 1975, continued with the Copenhagen conference in 1980, and ended in Nairobi in 1985. A fourth conference in Beijing took place in 1995 that evaluated the results of the Decade and pushed forward its accomplishments and plans. The conferences were very important international events that contributed to spread the interest in the role of women in the process of development in different societies. They were also very crucial to stimulate empirical and
conceptual knowledge about gender-related implications of policy and action in the world. As suggested by the unprecedented participation in the Beijing conference, the UN Decade on Women generated much interest and resulted in a great deal of activities and outcomes.1 It immediately became an agenda for women’s empowerment and gender equality that included 12 critical areas2 that built on the work and the consensus reached on the previous conferences on women and on the hard work and legal advances of the previous decades. The Platform of Action in many ways was a summary of much research on women’s condition and of the many actions that had taken place during previous decades. It represented the new field of Women and Development that had emerged during the 1970s out of Boserup’s book and the many contributions that followed, both in the global North and the global South. An initial discussion was on the nature of development and its effects for women. In her pioneer book, Boserup argued that development had marginalized women as it concentrated in the growth of urban industries that had attracted men while women had remained in rural areas or in home production. Hence, development had – and this was one of Boserup’s messages – marginalized women while opening new avenues for men. With examples from Africa, Latin America and Asia, the book was a very important contribution to a subject that had been ignored by the development literature until then. During the 1970s, Women’s Role in Economic Development was read and discussed by many who became interested in the field across the world. Its main message was about the need ‘to integrate women in development’. The book became a source of inspiration and the starting point for the empirical research and theoretical work that followed. Praise and critiques followed at the same time. As argued by Beneria and Sen (1981), Boserup neither questioned what kind of development was normally assumed nor did she discuss the hierarchies and class differences that were generated in the process. They argued that capitalist development led to differentiation between women and men, first, in the division of labour by tending to assign women to the domestic sphere and men to the market sphere and, second, by segregating them in different ‘segments’ in
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the labour market. Thus, the development ‘model’ assumed was not questioned. In any case, the empirical work in the 1970s and early 1980s was important in showing the patterns in the gender division of labour in many countries together with the initial questions regarding unpaid women’s work (Abdullah and Zeidenstein 1978; Beechy 1977; Deere 1976; Young et al. 1981). The 1980s saw further questioning of the nature and extent of this work and discussed the statistical invisibility of unpaid work (Beneria 1979, 1981; Waring 1988). The conceptual contributions at the time prepared the ground for the continuous effort done along these lines ever since (Goldsmith-Clermont 1983; Chadeau 1992; UN 1996; Floro and Miles 2003). A turning point in the increasing consciousness about the nature of women’s work was represented by UNDP’s effort to recognize the importance of documenting and analysing gender disparities in all societies. As stated in its 1995 Human Development Report, ‘the empowerment of women must be an integral part of sustainable human development.’3 The Report, written in preparation for the 1995 Beijing Conference, pioneered the inclusion of estimates on women’s unpaid work and the publication of relevant statistical series for women across countries. Since then, UNDP’s annual reports have continued to provide basic information on women and gender gaps that have also stimulated the publication of data on women by other international and national institutions. Over time, there has also been a variety of time-use surveys and estimations of unpaid work addressing the issue of undercounting and undervaluing women’s work practically in all countries and feeding action and policy. Further, in the 1990s, the notion of care work was introduced and followed by many rich discussions on national budgets and macro-economic policies up to the present. The 1980s and 1990s were decades of much change in the world economy that affected heavily the women and development field. First, the debt crisis had a profound effect on the economies of many countries, particularly in Latin America and Africa. To deal with the debt, policies were introduced that represented a profound change in the development model. Indebted countries had to adopt packages of ‘structural
adjustment policies’ (SAPs) promoted by the World Bank and the IMF together with other international financial institutions and governments. SAPs were austerity programmes that were instrumental in the introduction of neoliberalism or market-oriented decision-making which gave rise to the neoliberal era. They fostered privatizations and the reorientation of production towards external markets. Macroeconomic policies of austerity included government budget cuts which increased unemployment and were especially negative for women who lost their jobs in high proportions. Households had to readjust to squeezing budgets, often intensifying women’s unpaid work. Hence, SAPs were policies that proved not to be gender neutral as assumed in macroeconomic theory. Neoliberalism ran parallel to globalization of production. Although the transfer of production from high- to low-cost countries had begun in earlier decades, particularly in the late 1970s, it became widespread in the 1980s and especially in the 1990s. The dramatic increase in economic interdependence across countries took place through the rapid growth in capital flows, production and trade. Together with the role of international institutions, multinational corporations played a crucial role in the spread of neoliberalism and of markets in most countries, thus contributing to the change in development models worldwide. At first, foreign investment concentrated in Asian countries such as South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, China and India but also in Mexico and Brazil. Eventually it spread to other locations in Latin America and Africa. One of the outcomes of the growth of world markets and the outsourcing of jobs to low-cost countries was the feminization of the labour force which changed the working landscape for women and men in many countries (Standing 1989). A great deal of empirical work on the profound effect of globalization on women documented its effects and stimulated much debate (UNDP 2010). The feminization of the labour force had contradictory effects on women who benefitted from the increased demand for their labour but often with wide gender gaps and in very precarious conditions (Seguino 2000a, 2000b; Berik 2008). In its 2012 report Gender Inequality and Development, the World Bank presented a positive evaluation of globalization and Lourdes Beneria
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its impact on gender equality. As expected from an institution that had contributed heavily to shaping neoliberal policies, the report argued that globalization accelerated economic growth in most areas of the world with a rising demand for women workers. Hence, it was argued, women benefitted from this growth which contributed to their empowerment. Yet no attention was paid to the precarious conditions facing workers in the lower echelons of labour hierarchies, the informalization of labour markets, and raising inequalities worldwide. The role of multinational corporations and their subsidiaries in promoting investments in world factories with cheap labour was not mentioned either. But the collapse in 2013 of the Raza Plaza building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which housed five garment factories, killed at least 1,132 people and injured more than 2,500, became the symbol of the negative effects of globalization under neoliberalism. Within this framework, a good deal of the literature and concern about women has focused on the informal sector, the precarious part of employment that has absorbed a high proportion of the working population. The many debates about the poor working conditions and the nature of the sector go back to the 1970s when it was seen as the result of underdevelopment but expected to grow thinner or disappear as countries developed (Hart 1972). However, informality and precarious working conditions became the rule rather than the exception even in countries with relatively high levels of growth, such in Latin America, Africa and India. Women have been involved in the informal economy in higher proportions than men and this includes part time, temporary work and subsistence activities. The ILO has traditionally been concerned with the problems connected with this sector and, in 2001, launched its Decent Work Agenda which deals not only with precarious employment but emphasizes respect with fundamental rights of workers. The agenda also applies to the formal sector and is part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It’s important to note that, since the 1987 economic crisis, informalization of labour markets and precariousness has also increased very significantly in the global North (OECD 2009). Other specific areas of concern that can be considered part of the women and development field have emerged over the years. For Lourdes Beneria
example, since the 1960s, women’s employment in the maquiladora industries of northern Mexico and other areas has been a focus of debates, with contributions all the way through the present (Fussell 2000; Salzinger 2003; Dominguez et al. 2010). The debate has been part of the discussion on global labour standards and work conditions of women in much of the industrial South (Kabeer 2000; Çagatay 2001; Berik and Rodgers 2010). A different but important issue has been that of land and property rights for women, an area that includes much variety in terms of geographical differentiation in women’s land rights, agrarian reforms, inheritance, agrarian policies, and the feminization of agriculture (Agarwal 1994; Deere and Leon 2001; Deere 2009, 2017; Doss et al. 2021). Most of these areas of work have been related in one way or another to concerns about poverty and its eradication, which has been a constant throughout the gender and development field since its emergence (Chant 2007). Much has changed since the women and development field emerged in the 1970s. Many of the themes and questions that were initiated with Boserup’s book are still with us. However, the new developments over the decades have widened the field and opened other avenues for research and action. Globalization and neoliberalism, with their far-reaching consequences, have generated many questions about the development of capitalism at the international level. In particular, capitalist dynamism has proved its capacity to generate growth but with increasing inequalities that threaten the survival of the system and of this planet. Poverty at the bottom – despite the tremendous abundance at the top of society – and the ecological crisis are the biggest threads. New problems have surfaced such as those linked to international migration, the informalization of labour markets and the generation of precarious employment. Each of them generates special problems for women, thus leading to questions about class formation and gender hierarchies. Women have made gains in many areas even though equality with men is still a long way off. Hence the difference between the WAD/GAD and the WID approaches continues to be essential to evaluate critically the framework of development and economic model under which women live. Lourdes Beneria
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Notes 1.
As reported by UN Women, “An unprecedented 17,000 participants and 30,000 activists streamed into Beijing for the opening of the Fourth World Conference on Women in September 1995. They were remarkably diverse, coming from around the globe, but they had a single purpose in mind: gender equality and the empowerment of all women, everywhere.” 2. Including Women and Poverty, Education and Training for Women, Women and Health, Violence Against Women, Women and Armed Conflict, Women and the Economy, Women in Power and Decision-Making, Institutional Mechanisms for the Advancement of Women, Human Rights of Women, Women and the Media, Women and the Environment and The Girl-Child. 3. UNDP, Human Development Reports 1955, Oxford University Press, 1995.
References
Abdulla, A. and Zidenstein, S., 1978. Village women of Bangladesh: prospects for change, https://doi.org/10.2307/1965708. Agarwal, B., 1994. A Field of One’s Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beechey, V., 1977. Some notes on female wage labor in capitalist production, Capital and Class, Autumn, 45–66. Beneria, L., 1979. Reproduction, production and the sexual division of labor, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 3, 203–25. Beneria, L., 1981. Conceptualizing the labor force: the underestimation of women’s economic activities, The Journal of Development Studies, 17(3), 10–28. Beneria, L. and Sen, G., 1981. Class and gender inequalities and women’s role in economic development: theoretical and practical perspectives, Feminist Studies, 8(1), 157–76. Berik, G., 2008. Growth with gender inequity: another look at East Asia development, in G. Berik, Y. van der Meulen Rodgers and A. Zammit (eds), Social Justice and Gender Equality: Rethinking Development Strategies and Macroeconomic Policies, 154–86, New York: Routledge. Berik, G. and Rodgers, Y., 2010. Options for enforcing labor standards: lessons from Bangladesh and Cambodia, Journal of International Development, 22(1), 56–85. Boserup, E., [1970] 2011. Women’s Role in Economic Development, Abingdon: Earthscan. Çagatay, N., 2001. Trade, Gender and Poverty, New York: United Nations Development Programme.
Chadeau, A., 1992. What is a Household Non-Market Production Worth?, Paris: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Chant, S., 2007. Gender, Generation and Poverty, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Deere, C.D., 1976. Rural women’s subsistence production in the capitalist periphery, Review of Radical Political Economics, 8(1), 9–17. Deere, C.D., 2009. The feminization of agriculture? The impact of economic restructuring in rural Latin America, in S. Razavi (ed.), The Gendered Impacts of Liberalization: Towards Embedded Liberalism?, 99–127, New York and Abingdon: Routledge. Deere, C.D., 2017. Women’s land rights, rural social movements, and the state in the 21st-century Latin American agrarian reforms, Journal of Agrarian Change, 17, 258–78. Deere, C.D. and Leon, M., 2001. Empowering Women: Land and Property Rights in Latin America, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Dominguez, E., Icaza, R., Quintero, C., López, S. and Stenman, A., 2010. Women workers in the Maquiladoras and the debate on global labor standards, Feminist Economics, 6(4), 185–209. Doss, C., Qaisrani, A., Kosec K., Slavchevska, V. and Gaille, A., 2021. The feminization of agriculture: changing patterns of work and responsibilities, in R. Pyburn and A. van Eerdewijk (eds), Advancing Gender Equality Through Agricultural and Environmental Research: Past, Present and Future, Washington, DC: IFPRI. Floro, M.S. and Miles, M., 2003. Time, work and overlapping activities: evidence from Australia, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 27(6), 33–67. Fussell, E., 2000. Making labor more flexible: the recompositing of Tijuana’s Maquiladora female labor force, Feminist Economics, 6(3), 59–80. Goldsmith-Clermont, L., 1983, Output-related evaluations of unpaid household: a challenge for time use studies, Home Economics Research Journal, 12(2), 127–32. Hart, K., 1972. Employment, Income and Inequality: A Strategy for Increasing Productive Employment in Kenya, Geneva: ILO. Kabeer, N., 2000. The Power to Choose: Bangladeshi Women and Labor Market Decisions in London and Dhaka, London and New York: Verso. OECD, 2009. Is Informal Normal? Towards More and Better Jobs in Developing Countries, Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
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614 Elgar encyclopedia of development Salzinger, L., 2003. Genders in Production: Making Workers in Mexico’s Global Factories, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Seguino, S., 2000a. Gender inequality and economic growth: a cross-country analysis, World Development, 28(7), 1211–30. Seguino, S., 2000b. Accounting for Asian economic growth, Feminist Economics, 6(3), 27–58. Standing, G., 1989. Global feminization through flexible labor, World Development, 17(7), 1077–95. UN [United Nations], 1996. Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, Report of the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, 4–5 September 1995. UN Document No. A/ CONF.177/20/REV.1, New York: United Nations.
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UNDP [United Nations Development Programme], 2010. Human Development Report 2010. The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development, New York: UNDP. Waring, M., 1988. If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics, San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row. World Bank, 2012. World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/ entities/publication/51c285f6-0200-590c-97d3 -95b937be3271. Young, K., Wolkowitz, C. and McCullagh, R. (eds), 1981. Of Marriage and the Market: Women’s Subordination Internationally and Its Lessons, London and Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
The World Commission on Environment and Development The challenge of how to maintain (or improve) people’s material living standards without at the same time destroying the ecological basis of this development has been part of human history for millennia. On a local level, questions of deforestation, pollution and climatic variation have always had a crucial impact on the ability of humans to satisfy their material needs (Diamond, 2005). By the later part of the twentieth century, it became clear that these challenges were no longer only local. Even before the growing awareness of climate change as a central environmental threat, population growth, constantly rising energy needs, urbanization, pollution, and generally the rising environmental footprint of an increasingly industrialized world had raised alarms that global development was on an unsustainable track. The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), better known as the Brundtland Commission after its chairwomen Gro Harlem Brundtland, placed the term ‘sustainable development’ on the international agenda. The Brundtland Commission did not invent the expression. The term had already been used as the title of a World Bank background paper in 1984, in a study by the International Institute for Environment and Development and, most famously, by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as a chapter title for their 1980 World Conservation Strategy (IUCN, 1980) The underlying questions had already been discussed for some time (Satterthwaite, 2006; Redclift, 1987). In particular, the WCED could build on two strands or discussions taking place at the United Nations and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In 1972, the UN held a Conference on the Environment in Stockholm. Its preparation revealed the tension between high-income countries in the North, where a growing environmental movement pushed governments to engage in environmental protection, and low-income countries in the South, whose governments feared that economic restrictions imposed by the North would obstruct their development. At the time, before the
spectacular economic rise of China, before Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) and the growing importance of other emerging economies, the dividing between rich, industrialized nations in the global North, comprised mostly of former colonial powers, and a much poorer, largely rural global South, comprised mainly of former colonies, was comparatively clear. The tensions ran so deep that, for a while, it was uncertain if the conference would even take place. Thanks in large part to the negotiating skills of conference Secretary-General Maurice Strong, it was held and produced a lengthy Declaration and Action Plan. Both documents revealed the difficulty of addressing environmental protection in the face of widespread poverty and obvious development needs in large parts of the world. The declaration argued that basic human needs such as food, shelter, work, education and healthcare which developing countries needed must not be ignored in the interest of ‘uncertain future needs’. Consequently, the ‘problem was how to reconcile those legitimate immediate requirements with the interests of generations yet unborn’ (UN, 1972, § 36). In the following years, these contemporary development demands of countries in the global South assumed centre stage in debates about a New International Economic Order (NIEO) which channelled demands by a group of Southern countries for fairer terms of trade and better political representation. A series of tangible policy goals were listed in a Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order, adopted by the UN General Assembly in May 1974 (UN, 1974). These UN debates triggered negotiations between a smaller group of representations of Northern and Southern countries and for a few years, these discussions looked as they could change the global system. But the combined effect of rising neoliberalism and the international debt crisis put an end to those hopes. Meanwhile, the OECD engaged in similar debates, questioning the nature of desirable development, notably about the question of ‘how to continue reaping the benefits of economic growth, while avoiding undesirable or unacceptable damage to the environment’ (OECD, 1979, p. 17). As solution, a 1979 position paper proposed a change of approach, seeing the environment not as an externality but as an integral component
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of the economy and, thereby, to integrate considerations about the environment in any economic decision. Ideally, this would make the environment and the economy complementary rather than contradictory (Borowy, 2018). These ideas and concepts were circulating within the UN and the OECD when, in 1982, a UN resolution called for the creation of a Commission designed ‘to propose long-term environmental strategies for achieving sustainable development by the year 2000 and beyond’ (UNEP, 1982). In practice, then UN Secretary General Perez de Cuellar would appoint a chairperson who would then assemble the rest of the commission. Perez de Cuellar’s first instinct was to ask Jimmy Carter, but informal contacts with the White House revealed that this choice would not be appreciated by the Reagan administration. Since the collaboration of the biggest economy of the world was considered essential, Perez de Cuellar changed plans and appointed Gro Harlem Brundtland, a Norwegian social democrat and the only politician in the world who had been both prime minister and minister of the environment. Probably, Brundtland’s most important choice was that of Jim MacNeill as Commission Secretary-General. As Director of the OECD Environment Directorate, MacNeill brought with him the perspective of the principles on which commission discussions would build: the environment and the economy should and could be rendered compatible, and economic (and basically all other) policies needed to integrate comprehensive, upstream considerations of environmental considerations. While deciding on whether to accept the offer, MacNeill drafted a position paper in this vein, which Brundtland approved. Together, they decided that the commission should include development in its mandate and agreed on the title of World Commission on Environment and Development. Brundtland consulted with MacNeill and other advisers while inviting commissioners. Eventually, the 23 Commissioners came from 22 countries from the global North and South as well as from both sides of the Iron Curtain and included three women.1 Some members were relatively unknown outside of their countries. Others were renowned actors Iris Borowy
in international politics such as Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the Stockholm Conference and subsequently first Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme; Janez Stanovnik, former Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Europe; and William Ruckelshaus, who had just begun his second term as Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency. In some ways, the Commission members formed a rather homogeneous group: nine had PhDs and most had published books and/ or scientific articles. A full nine members, were, had been or would be ministers in governments of their countries. Seven had held senior positions in governmental departments. Fourteen had been involved in pro-environmental activities, as politicians, officials, activists, lawyers, researchers or entrepreneurs and several had experience in economics as academics, officials, ministers, or businessmen. Almost all commissioners had been active in at least one international organization, be it at a UN body and/or beyond. Nevertheless, the group was quite diverse in professional training, political views and expectations on what the commission could or should achieve. Officially Commissioners participated in their private capacity, and to some that seemed self-evidently true. Others acted with various degrees of governmental support and/or control (Borowy, 2014, pp. 55–70). At the first substantive meeting in October 1984, commissioners endorsed MacNeill’s proposal to address the perceived causes rather than the symptoms of environmental degradation and adopted his list of suggested issues, each responsible for a cluster of problematic effects: ● Population and Economic Development, Technology and Environment ● Energy: Environment and Development ● Industry: Environment and Development ● Agriculture: Environment and Food Security ● Forestry, Agriculture and Environment ● Human Settlements: Environment and Development ● International Economic Relations and the Environment ● Global Environmental Monitoring and Reporting ● International Co-operation.
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To this list, commissioner proposals would later add three more: ● Biodiversity ● The Commons ● Peace and Security (Borowy, 2014, pp. 64, 95–6). These items would structure discussions at Commission meetings and would, eventually, form chapters of the Commission report, Our Common Future. Between 1983 and 1987, the Commission met eight times in different places around the world: the first meetings in Geneva and Jakarta were largely used to establish the Commission, its mandate, work programme and the routine of meetings. In Oslo and Sao Paulo, commissioners concentrated on discussing the key issues of the work programme and clarifying positions. Subsequent meetings in Ottawa, Harare, Moscow and Tokyo were dedicated to drafting the report, Our Common Future. In their work, commissioners were supported by a secretariat in Geneva, which collected or commissioned information papers, collected the copious suggestions received from the public and, eventually, drafted the book chapters. The final manuscript grew in a lengthy process of drafting, debating, revising, negotiating, compromising and redrafting. However, though central to Commission work, discussing those topics and report chapters took up a surprisingly small part of the meeting time. Meetings lasted between six and twelve days. Typically, three days were used for a total of twelve Commission sessions, half of which were dedicated to discussing the topics or draft report chapters and the rest were used for press conferences, meeting invited guests and discussing future workplans, strategies and financial matters. The other days were spent with public relations (opening ceremony, statements and press conferences), visits to places of environmental/developmental relevance and on public hearings. These hearings became a trademark of these meetings, as commissioners heard delegates of civil society or other stakeholders. These various and lengthy activities not only helped publicize Commission work but they also went a long way to create a sense of trust among the commissioners which helped find common ground between – sometimes, vehement – disagreements.
One point of disagreement was nuclear energy, which some commissioners accepted as an indispensable and relatively pollution-free source of energy, but others passionately rejected, as a potentially mortal threat to humanity. The topic became even more contentious after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. It was solved literally only on the last day of meetings with a painful though innocuous compromise phrase, born from a commitment to making the Commission succeed. But, while deeply felt, this was an isolated issue. By contrast, a North–South divide in world views affected virtually all topics under debate. Generally speaking, Commissioners from Northern countries tended to see reconciling environmental protection and economic development as mainly a challenge that all countries faced in their territories for which low-income countries deserved support, while Commissioners from the global South tended to see local problems as functions of an unequal world order which privileged the affluent of the North and forced Southern societies to engage in environmentally destructive procedures. To the latter, discussing development as an issue of Southern countries while ignoring the decisions in the global North on which it depended made no sense. To the former, focusing on the big global decisions while ignoring local and national deficiencies similarly made no sense (Borowy, 2018). Gradually, the Commissioners realized that any recommendation – and any report explaining such recommendations – would require negotiating contradictory demands in at least four dimensions: in addition to Northern versus Southern perspectives on development, questions of mass consumption and the concomitant resource depletion and pollution touched on the needs of present versus future generations. Moreover, mainly economic perspectives, which regarded economic development as a given, with the mitigation of environmental destruction as a secondary goal, competed with environmental perspectives, which accepted the need for an intact environment as a given, with improved economic development as a secondary goal. Finally, Commissioners needed to decide the nature of their final recommendations, where scientific accuracy and the obvious need for drastic changes clashed with the need to present findings that were sufIris Borowy
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ficiently acceptable to move a critical mass of governments, organizations and people to discuss and endorse them. Disagreements sometimes ran deep, and not everyone was ready to make the compromises necessary for a unanimous report. A little more than one year into the process, the Commissioner from Mexico left. On other points, all Commissioners easily agreed. All saw the need for poverty reduction, for an increase in environmentally friendly technology and for legal and political reforms that would introduce new coordinating and regulatory features into international relations. Given their background, all instinctively looked towards international organizations as central actors in a global shift towards sustainable forms of development. As a result, Commissioners aimed at making the most of achieved agreements, finding reconciliatory solutions for the rest, if possible, or, if not possible, glossing over remaining contradictions. One result was the definition of sustainable development as development that ‘seeks to meet the needs and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability to meet those of the future’, which subsequently became almost universally accepted as the foundation of sustainable development. Less widely known, the Commission report added that priority should be given to the needs of the global poor and that some consideration should be given to long-term limitations of development (WCED, 1987, p. 43). The fact that the Commission and Our Common Future would be remembered mainly for this definition was not necessarily foreseeable at the time. Emphasized repeatedly and more strongly in the text was the concept which Commissioners considered central to sustainable development, that environment and development needed to be considered as interlinked, conceptually, politically and financially. For instance: ‘Governments must begin now to make the key national, economic and sectoral agencies directly responsible and accountable for ensuring that their policies, programmes, and budgets support development that is economically and ecologically sustainable’ (WCED, 1987, p. 20). This approach to development should apply not only to national administrations. Rather, a transition to sustainable development would ‘require a change in attitudes and objectives and in institutional Iris Borowy
arrangements at every level’ (WCED, 1987, p. 62). It would also require a fundamental change in public and private decision-making. In order to implement this transformation, the Commissioners recommended the establishment of several new institutions, including a UN board for sustainable development, a global risk assessment programme, a special international banking facility for development and for the protection of critical habitats and ecosystems and increased responsibility of an International Court of Justice for environmental and resource management problems. Nationally, the report urged for reformed legal structures which would make it a state responsibility to ‘observe the principle of optimum sustainable yield in the exploitation of living natural resources and ecosystems’, to make available all relevant information to the public and to assess all major new policies regarding their effect on sustainable development (WCED, 1987, pp. 308–42). Funds to support the transition for low-income countries should derive, among other measures, from an international charge on the use of international commons like ocean fishing, transportation, sea-bed mining, Antarctic resources or from the use of the orbit for satellite positioning; taxes on international trade, both general and specific; or fees on international financial transactions such as International Monetary Fund (IMF) drawing rights (WCED, 1987, pp. 341–2). It was a radical programme, and if implemented, it could have dramatically changed the face of global development. A world in which private actors, national authorities and international organizations all made development decisions on the basis of combined economic and environmental considerations would clearly have been on a different trajectory from the one that actually existed after 1987 (Borowy, 2018). However, obviously, this did not happen. Shortly after its publication, Our Common Future was read and debated in many forums in international organizations, NGOs, academic institutions and popular media as well as by many people around the world. Thereby, the expression of sustainable development became a universally familiar term. However, in the process the idea of the environment and development being connected was routinely watered down to mean some vague, effortless form of compatibility rather than as a result of a tough policy transforma-
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tion. This misrepresentation of the concept made it easily acceptable in mainstream discourse but also led to sometimes vehement rejections by environmental and development activists. Both reactions have not done justice to the work of the Brundtland Commission, whose members struggled for three years to forge meaningful development direction out of virtually irreconcilable demands. Iris Borowy
Note 1.
Gro Harlem Brundtland, Chairwoman (Norway); Mansour Khalid, Vice Chairman (Sudan); Jim MacNeill, Secretary General (Canada); Susanna Agnelli (Italy); Salez Abdulrahman Al-Athel (Saudi Arabia); Pablo Gonzalez Casanova (Mexico); Bernard Chidzero (Zimbabwe); Lamine Mohamed Fadika (Ivory Coast); Volker Hauff (Federal Republic of Germany); István Láng (Hungary); Ma Shijun (China); Margarita Marino de Botero (Colombia); Nagendra Singh (India); Paulo Nogueira-Neto (Brazil); Saburo Okita (Japan); Shridath Ramphal (Guyana); William Ruckelshaus (USA); Mohamed Sahnoun (Algeria); Emil Salim (Indonesia); Bukar Shaib (Nigeria); Vladimir Sokolov (USSR); Janez Stanovnik (Yugoslavia); Maurice Strong (Canada).
References
Borowy, I. (2014). Defining Sustainable Development for Our Common Future. A history of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission). Routledge. Borowy, I. (2018). The history of sustainable development and the United Nations. In: J. Caradona (ed.), Routledge Handbook of the History of Sustainability (pp. 151–63), Routledge. Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. Penguin Books. IUCN [International Union for the Conservation of Nature] (1980). World Conservation Strategy. IUCN–UNEP–WWF. OECD (1979). The State of the Environment in OECD Countries. OECD. Redclift, M. (1987). Sustainable Development. Exploring the contradictions. Routledge. Satterthwaite, D. (2006). Barbara Ward and the Origins of Sustainable Development. IIED. UN [United Nations] (1972). Report of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Brief Summary of the General Debate. UN. UN [United Nations] (1974). Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order, http://www.un-documents.net/s6r3201 .htm. UNEP [United Nations Environment Programme] (1982). Draft Resolution recommended by the Governing Council of UNEP at its 11th session, 23 May 1982. UN Archive. WCED [World Commission on Environment and Development] (1987). Our Common Future. Oxford University Press.
Iris Borowy
World-systems theory The world-systems perspective is a strategy for explaining institutional change that focuses on whole intersocietal systems rather than single societies. The main insight is that important interaction networks (trade, information flows, alliances, and fighting) have woven polities and cultures together since the beginning of human sociocultural evolution. Explanations of institutional change need to take intersocietal systems (world-systems) as the units that evolve. But intersocietal interaction networks were rather small when transportation was mainly a matter of hiking with a pack. Globalization, in the sense of the expansion and intensification of larger economic, political, military, and information networks, has been increasing for millennia, albeit unevenly and in waves. The intellectual history of world-systems theory has roots in classical sociology, Marxian political economy, geopolitics, and theories of social evolution. But in explicit form the world-systems perspective emerged only in the 1970s when Samir Amin, Andre Gunder Frank, and Immanuel Wallerstein began to formulate the concepts and to narrate the analytic history of the modern world-system. The idea of the whole system means that all the human interaction networks small and large, from the household to global trade, constitute the world-system. It is not just a matter of ‘international relations’ or global-scale institutions such as the World Bank, for example. Rather, at the present time, the world-system is all the people of the Earth and all their cultural, economic, and political institutions and the interactions and connections among them. The world-systems perspective looks at human institutions over long periods of time and employs the spatial scales that are required for comprehending these whole interaction systems. Interaction networks become larger with the development of technologies of transportation and communications, and so small regional world-systems have expanded and merged to become the Earth-wide system of the present. The modern world-system can be understood structurally as a stratification system composed of dominant core societies (themselves in competition with one another) and dependent peripheral and semiperipheral
regions, a few of which have been successful in improving their positions in the larger core/periphery hierarchy, while most have simply maintained their relative positions. This structural perspective on world history allows us to analyse the cyclical features of institutional change1 and the long-term patterns of development in historical and comparative perspective. We can see the development of the modern world-system as driven primarily by capitalist accumulation and geopolitics in which businesses and states compete with one another for power and wealth. Competition among states and capitals is conditioned by the dynamics of struggle among classes and by the resistance of peripheral and semiperipheral peoples to domination and exploitation from the core. In the modern world-system the semiperiphery is composed of large and powerful countries in the Third World (e.g. Mexico, India, Brazil, China) as well as smaller countries that have intermediate levels of economic development (e.g. the East Asian newly industrializing countries). It is not possible to understand the history of institutional change without considering both the strategies and technologies of the winners and the strategies and forms of struggle of those who have resisted domination and exploitation. It is also difficult to understand why and where innovative institutional change emerges without a conceptualization of the world-system. New organizational forms that transform institutions and that lead to upward mobility most often emerge from societies in semiperipheral locations. Thus, all the countries that became hegemonic2 core states in the modern system had formerly been semiperipheral (the Dutch, the British, and the United States). This is a continuation of a long-term pattern of social evolution that Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas D. Hall (1997) have called ‘semiperipheral development’. Semiperipheral marcher states and semiperipheral capitalist city states had acted as the main agents of empire formation and commercialization for millennia. This phenomenon arguably also includes organizational innovations in contemporary semiperipheral countries (e.g. Mexico, India, South Korea, Brazil) that may transform the now-global system. This approach requires that we think structurally. We must be able to abstract from the particularities of the game of musical
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chairs (actors changing roles) that constitutes uneven development in the system to see the structural continuities. The core/periphery hierarchy remains, though some countries have moved up or down. The interstate system remains, though the internationalization of capital has further constrained the abilities of states to structure national economies. States have always been subjected to larger geopolitical and economic forces in the world-system, and as is still the case, some have been more successful at exploiting opportunities and protecting themselves from liabilities than others. In this perspective, many of the phenomena that have been called ‘globalization’ correspond to recently expanded intercontinental trade, financial flows and foreign investment by transnational corporations and banks. We agree with those who argue that globalization is more than just an economic process. Cultural, political, and social interaction networks and shared discourses have also become more integrated on a global scale. Much of the globalization discourse assumes that until recently there were separate national societies and economies, and that these have now been superseded by an expansion of international integration driven by information and transportation technologies. Rather than a wholly unique and new phenomenon, globalization is primarily international integration, and as such it is a feature of the world-system that has been oscillating as well as increasing for centuries. It is well known that there was a great wave of international economic, political, and cultural globalization in the nineteenth century. The cyclical nature of the wave has been quantitatively demonstrated with data on international trade and investment (e.g. Chase-Dunn et al. 2000). The Great Chartered Companies of the seventeenth century were already playing an important role in shaping the development of world regions. Certainly, the transnational corporations of the present are much more important players, but the point is that ‘foreign investment’ is not an institution that only became important since 1970 (nor since the Second World War). Giovanni Arrighi (1994) showed that finance capital has been a central component of the commanding heights of the world-system since the fourteenth century. The current floods and ebbs of
world money are typical of the late phase of very long ‘systemic cycles of accumulation’. Most world-systems scholars contend that leaving out the core/periphery dimension or treating the periphery as inert are grave mistakes, not only for reasons of completeness, but also because the ability of core capitalists and their states to exploit peripheral resources and labour has been a major factor in deciding the winners of the competition among core contenders. And the resistance to exploitation and domination mounted by peripheral peoples has played a powerful role in shaping the historical development of world orders. Thus, world history cannot be properly understood without attention to the core/periphery hierarchy. Phillip McMichael (2000) has studied what he calls the ‘globalization project’ – the abandoning of Keynesian models of national development and a new (or renewed) emphasis on deregulation and opening national commodity and financial markets to foreign trade and investment.3 This approach focuses on the political and ideological aspects of the recent wave of international integration. The term many prefer for this turn in global discourse is ‘neo-liberalism’ but it has also been called ‘Reaganism/Thatcherism’ and the ‘Washington Consensus’. The worldwide decline of the political left predated the revolutions of 1989 and the demise of the Soviet Union, but it was certainly also accelerated by these events. The structural basis of the rise of the globalization project is the new level of integration reached by the global capitalist class. The internationalization of capital has long been an important part of the trend toward economic globalization. And there have been many claims to represent the general interests of business before. Indeed, every modern hegemon has made this claim. But the real integration of the interests of capitalists all over the world has very likely reached a level greater than at the peak of the nineteenth century wave of globalization. This is the part of the theory of a global stage of capitalism that must be taken most seriously, though it can certainly be overdone. The world-system has now reached a point at which both the old interstate system based on separate national capitalist classes, and new institutions representing the global interests of capital exist and are powerful simultaneously. In this light each country can Christopher Chase-Dunn
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be seen to have an important ruling class fraction that is allied with the transnational capitalist class. The big question is whether this new level of transnational integration will be strong enough to prevent competition among states for world hegemony from turning into warfare, as it has always done in the past, during a period in which a hegemon (now the United States) is declining. A hegemon is the most powerful state in a system of states. The insight that capitalist globalization has occurred in waves, and that these waves of integration are followed by periods of globalization backlash, has important implications for the future. Capitalist globalization increased both intranational and international inequalities in the nineteenth century and it has done the same thing in the late twentieth century (O’Rourke and Williamson 2000). Those countries and groups that are left out of the ‘beautiful époque’ either mobilize to challenge the hegemony of the powerful or they retreat into self-reliance, or both. Globalization protests emerged in the non-core with the anti-IMF riots of the 1980s. The several transnational social movements that participated in the 1999 protest in Seattle brought globalization protest to the attention of observers in the core, and this resistance to capitalist globalization has continued and grown despite the setback that occurred in response to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in 2001. There is a tension between those who advocate deglobalization and delinking from the global capitalist economy and the building of stronger, more cooperative, and self-reliant social relations in the periphery and semiperiphery, on the one hand, and those who seek to mobilize support for new, or reformed institutions of democratic global governance, on the other. Self-reliance by itself, though an understandable reaction to exploitation, is not likely to solve the problems of humanity in the long run. The great challenge of the twenty-first century after the current time of
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troubles has calmed, will be the building of a democratic and collectively rational global commonwealth. World-systems theory is an important contributor to this effort. Christopher Chase-Dunn
Notes
1. Human economic, political, social, and cultural institutions are socially constructed and so I use the term ‘social’ as a shorthand for all of these. By ‘social evolution’ I mean a process of patterned change that is distinct from biological evolution because it is based on the intergenerational transmission of information by means of language instead of genetic inheritance. 2. Following Gramsci, hegemony is a form of domination that is based on a combination of coercion and consent. In the modern world-system the hegemons (United Provinces of the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, United Kingdom of Great Britain in the nineteenth century and the United States in the twentieth century) have been those capitalist core states that have succeeded in getting ahead of the competition in profitable new lead industries as well as providing global governance and military security against challenges. 3. Of course, there are other globalization projects, as well as deglobalization projects. But it was Reaganism/Thatcherism that became ideologically hegemonic in the 1980s and which now faces multiple challenges.
References
Arrighi, Giovanni (1994), The Long Twentieth Century. London: Verso. Chase-Dunn, Christopher and Thomas D. Hall (1997), Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Chase-Dunn, Christopher, Yukio Kawano and Benjamin Brewer (2000), ‘Trade globalization since 1795: waves of integration in the world-system’, American Sociological Review 65(1): 77–95. McMichael, Philip (2000), Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge. O’Rourke, Kevin H. and Jeffrey G. Williamson (2000), Globalization and History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
World Trade Organization Introduction
This entry critically analyzes the theoretical and empirical basis of trade liberalization and finds that the arguments of many mainstream economists concerning the static and dynamic gains from free trade are based on weak theoretical grounds. It also discusses the impact of trade liberalization on the industrial and agricultural sectors and shows how the performance of both sectors has a long-term impact on local industrialization, food security, employment and the well-being of people in developing countries. In the post-2008 financial crisis period, capital-exporting countries blame goods-importing countries for excessive spending. This is the way to avoid with their under-consumption. The neoliberal globalization has internationalized production, and also the increasing threat of reallocation abroad assists the employers to hold down wages in the advanced economies. More than half of the present global trade involves the movements of goods around cross-border production networks among the countries like the USA, Germany, China and the East Asian countries. The internalization of production violates the neoclassical trade theory, but also big companies use tax havens and move to low-tax countries. We examine here the traditional arguments relating to the static and dynamic gains from trade liberalization, which appears to be based on weak theoretical premises. Despite the fact that new trade theories take into account the complex situation of the present international trade and in some areas justify state intervention, they are based on neo-classical models, but take into account strategic behaviour and market imperfections, and justify interventionist trade. Free trade theory finds widespread support among the international financial institutions, namely the IMF (International Monetary Fund), World Bank, and WTO (World Trade Organization) (Siddiqui, 2016). This free trade approach deepens the process of uneven development and unequal exchange as seen, for instance, in the Trump administration’s attempts to hinder China’s economic development by means of disadvantageous trade
agreements. At present, Chinese developmental policies challenge US global corporations such as Boeing and Microsoft because they require some control over the nature of the US investment by granting China a degree of technology transfer. Existing WTO-enforced intellectual property rights, from which US corporations benefit, provide, among many other things, exorbitant patent rights for medicines and grant Microsoft Windows an effective monopoly on operating systems. With genuine free trade, consumers in the USA and elsewhere could get cheaper medicines and have more choice in operating systems, but US corporations would not have the levels of profit guaranteed by current arrangements (Siddiqui, 2018a).
Theoretical background
Free trade theory emphasizes that if protections are removed resources should flow from high-cost to low-cost countries resulting in an increase in productivity. David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage provides a foundation for understanding the nature of mutually advantageous international free trade and forms the basis of arguments generally used to defend a laissez-faire approach (Siddiqui, 2018b). Protection is seen as interference in the free play of beneficent market forces (Kruger, 1996). Ricardo’s model assumes that all resources will be fully employed, but in reality we find that in developing countries mass unemployment and mass poverty have often existed alongside vast but under-exploited resources. During the British colonial period, for example, the imposition of free trade policy on India made it possible for the Lancashire cotton industries to prosper while hand loom production in India was systematically undermined by the active intervention of the British authorities (Bagchi, 2000). Another notable example could be cited here: in 1699 with the Wool Act Britain banned the export of woollen cloth from the colonies to other countries. This proved to be a severe blow to the Irish wool industry. David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage assumes that capital will not leave its origin-country in search of higher returns in other countries (Ricardo, 2004). However, it is not a demand for capital from abroad but rather home country credit creation leading to investment booms and collapse in major
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advanced economies that have driven global credit cycles such as the developing countries debt crisis in the 1980s, the East Asian financial crisis of the 1997 and the global financial crisis of 2008. It is said that Holland’s capital export to Britain in the seventeenth century and two centuries later Britain’s flow of capital to the USA did help industrial growth in these countries. In fact, search for higher yields in the excessive capital countries rather than borrowing countries’ thirst for credit seems to the important factor in this matter. The recent experience following financial liberalization disproves the claims made by the WTO about the benefits to poor countries. In fact, financial liberalization has not resulted in net capital inflows from rich to poor countries, although there are a few exceptions. Rather, it has facilitated capital flight from poor to rich countries (Siddiqui, 1998). Britain adopted ‘free trade’ policies in the nineteenth century when it possessed relatively more advanced technologies and industries compared with those of other European countries. These policies were extended to the colonies to further Britain’s business and trade interests. From the mid-nineteenth century, Africa and Latin American countries were also integrated into the world economy as suppliers of primary commodities, as envisaged by the ‘comparative advantage’ model. At the same time that colonies were encouraged to specialize in the production and export of primary products rather than manufactured goods, Britain abolished import duties on raw materials produced in the North American colonies. Thus, Britain slowed, or completely prevented, modern industrial development in the colonies and in other territories in which it enjoyed pre-eminent influence (Siddiqui, 2020a). Bagchi observes: ‘In the victory of private enterprise, the construction of a state fostering its growth played a critical role, and free trade as a policy did not gain ascendancy until Britain had already emerged as the most powerful nation in the world economically, militarily and politically … it had begun preaching the doctrine of free trade to others, even enforcing it with gunboats and soldiers, as in the case of opium war’ (Bagchi, 2000, 403–4). It is claimed that if all countries adopt free trade policies then, ‘the world economy can achieve a more efficient allocation of resources and a higher level of mateKalim Siddiqui
rial well-being than it can without trade’ (McConnell and Brue, 2005, 696). In contrast to this, Bieler and Morton found: ‘Trade liberalisation has often implied deindustrialisation and import dependence. An analysis of the consequences of trade liberalisation in Africa and Latin America during the 1980s and1990s, for example, reveals widespread job losses, increasing unemployment and declining wages in both continents’ (Bieler and Morton, 2014, 40). During the post-war period, the ‘late comer’ export economies such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and, more recently, China, on the basis of low wages and with the adoption of new technology and access to Western markets, led to higher growth rates, rise in productivity and profits (which were domestically re-invested) and improvements in living conditions in these countries. Historically, the difficulties of ‘early developers’ such as the UK and the USA was different. For instance, the UK in the early twentieth century and the USA in second-half of the twentieth century had relatively higher wages and therefore experienced adverse impact from the low-wage countries. As a result, both countries found export capital profitable. In the late 1980s and 1990s, at the behest of the World Bank and the IMF and as a condition for their loans, most of the Latin American countries adopted Structural Adjustment Programmes or SAPs (i.e. neoliberal reforms), while China, which was not a member of the WTO, was able to maintain greater control over both trade and foreign capital investments. The Chinese government was able to encourage foreign investors to establish joint ventures with local companies that included agreements on technology transfer. In China, rapid urbanization and higher growth also resulted in a sharp increase in the scale of the domestic market. By 2010 China had become a net importer of food, the largest importer of soy, and accounted for half of the world’s total imports (Siddiqui, 2020b).
WTO and trade liberalization
The WTO has become as an important international multilateral institution, not only by bringing liberalization of trade in agriculture, manufacturing and services but also through its dispute settlement mechanism. In particular, the WTO’s negotiations at Doha in 2001
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resulted in policies made largely to protect the interests of agro-business corporations based in the West, while offering few benefits to farmers in developing countries (Stiglitz and Charlton, 2006). The WTO aims to liberalize world agricultural markets by eliminating subsidies to inefficient producers, tariffs, and the practice of holding food stocks by governments (WTO, 2013). The result was supposed to be a rise in agricultural commodity prices through a deregulated market that would benefit farmers. At the same time, increased competition was supposed to generate greater efficiency and thus bring down prices to the benefit of consumers. However, such assumptions ignored the fact that agricultural trade is in fact characterized by large economic, social and political inequalities. Due to climate limitations, developed countries cannot produce coffee, cocoa, bananas or tea but want these commodities for their food processing industries and they want to acquire these from deregulated markets. In the cotton and sugar markets, however, distortions exist because of subsidies given to producers in both the United States and the European Union and therefore these products are protected from liberalization. With the signing of the WTO’s international treaty Agreement on Agriculture in 1995, developing countries were granted little access to new markets in the developed countries but were required to accept significantly more imports. This depressed local investment and production, ultimately exacerbated food deficits and undermined food security in developing countries. The agricultural sector plays an important role not only in maintaining a healthy rural environment and ecology but also in the economic development of a country (Siddiqui, 1994). It makes a significant contribution to per capita income and employment, especially in the developing countries. Neoliberal policy reforms in agriculture alter the situation in this sector and restructure the economic fabric of the society. Food security and self-sufficiency are important contributing factors to the stability and economic growth of regional and international economies. Accordingly we should examine the impact of trade liberalization (i.e. free trade) on the agricultural sector and food security issues in the developing countries.
The WTO wants to introduce the idea that agriculture and food production should be treated as any other form of production and be subjected to the rules of competition in deregulated and open markets similar to those in the industrial sector. The supporters of this approach claim that if such policies are followed in the developing countries they will increase output under competitive conditions and achieve levels of surplus and prosperity similar to those enjoyed by Europe and North America even though those regions do not, in fact, apply such policies in their domestic markets. The developing countries as a group would be wise, therefore, to defend their interests and seek reform of the WTO in order to protect their agriculture, manufacturing and service sectors, and their interests in general. Free trade in agriculture undermines food sovereignty and adversely affects the possibilities for autonomous development and food self-sufficiency in developing countries. For example, the WTO’s 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures do not allow the use of local content specification to increase linkages between foreign investors and local manufacturers or restrictions on the outflows of capital by investors. Other WTO policies such as the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights further allow privatization and concentration of knowledge in the hands of global corporations. Unlike manufacturing, agricultural production cannot take place throughout the whole year and therefore prices cannot be lower during the harvest season than during the rest of the year. In the developing countries subsidies were aimed at reducing production costs by providing inputs lower than market prices, but farmers are often forced to sell their products soon after harvest due to difficulty with storage and the need for money to repay debts, which is known as stressed sale. To ensure prices, governments buy agricultural commodities at prices higher than markets to protect farmers from market fluctuations. Additionally, during shortages, governments release agricultural products from storage to stabilize prices in the market. Under WTO rules, such food stock holdings are prohibited and farmers in developing countries are left entirely at the mercy of the market (Siddiqui, 2015). Kalim Siddiqui
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Farmers in North America and the European Union operate highly mechanized capital-intensive agriculture, and productivity ranges between 10,000 and 20,000 quintals of cereals per farmer per year. In developing countries, especially in Africa and Asia, farming is far less mechanized and capital-intensive, and productivity ranges from just 100 to 500 quintals per farmer per annum (Siddiqui, 2018b). In 1991, with the adoption of neoliberal reforms in India, the government reduced its investment in irrigation and extension services in agriculture and for the last two decades the crisis in rural communities has deepened (Siddiqui, 2016). In addition to cuts in government spending and greater emphasis on market forces, farmers have had to suffer the demonetization and cash crisis of 2016. This was done soon after monsoon harvest and due to lack of banknotes farmers were unable to sell their products or buy seed to sow winter crops. The agrarian crisis has been reflected in the increasing number of farmers’ suicides and forced migration to the cities. Over the same period, the availability of institutional finance to farmers has been reduced, meaning that the cost of borrowing has risen and also global agricultural commodity prices have declined, particularly since 2017. As a result, profitability in the agriculture sector has decreased. India is the largest producer of wheat and second largest producer of rice. In 2017, the production of wheat in India was nearly 96.6 million tonnes and consumption was about the same. However, India still exported nearly three million tonnes from government stocks. In the same year, rice production was 105 million tonnes and consumption was 103 tonnes, but India exported 11 million tonnes of rice from government stocks. The balance between global food prices, food security and the living standards of the poor is thus extremely precarious under neoliberal policies, even in an economy as large as that of India. In India, the Bharatiya Janata Party government suggests that farmers should move away from producing food grains towards other crops – this has also been suggested by developed countries in recent years. Developed countries have huge over-production of food grains, of which they have a surplus, and in the name of diversification it is suggested they should reduce food grain production. There seems to be a paradox here Kalim Siddiqui
– despite the surplus food-grain production, still nearly a quarter of India’s population is malnourished. Recently, millions of Indian farmers have marched and protested against new ‘Farm Laws’ in New Delhi; under these laws, big corporate investment and control will increase and gradually reduce state involvement in the agriculture sector. Hoarding at a large scale will be permitted and agricultural commodities such as food grains being stored has been legalized, enabling the manipulation of food prices for the benefit of big corporations, while the other two laws aim to eradicate MSP (minimum support prices), and to promote contract farming. Finally, the ‘Farm Laws’ will make farmers more dependent on market forces and big corporations, and gradually state involvement in agriculture will be withdrawn. This market-driven policy will have long-term disastrous consequences both for the environment and also for small and poor farmers in India and will also increase rural inequality and poverty.
Conclusion
The proponents of ‘free trade’, which is based on David Ricardo’s ‘Comparative Advantage’ model, choose to forget that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the transition of European and North American agriculture towards greater use of technology and capitalist large-scale production took place at the same time their industrial sectors were expanding and their surplus populations were migrating to the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. These developments resulted in the largest land-grabbing and resource-extraction exercises in human history, during which Indigenous populations were eliminated or enslaved, and their land and natural resources expropriated. Because developing countries have no such possibilities, the adoption of the WTO’s agriculture neoliberal reform policy inevitably leads to greater poverty and to ecological destruction exacerbated by climate change. In fact, rich countries have advanced through a combination of tariff protection, government intervention, strategic investment and use of military force; however, when it comes to today’s poor countries, the benefits of so-called ‘comparative advantage’ is being insisted on by international financial institutions and rich countries.
World Trade Organization 627
The destruction of self-sufficiency in food grains means that a country now will not produce the food grains it requires, and will have to depend on food imports to meet domestic needs. Adequate quantities of food grains may not always be available in the world market when the country needs them; this is particularly important in the case of a large country like India. The real-life world market may be different from that presented by neoclassical economists, who assume that there are large numbers of buyers and sellers who have a totally impersonal relationship. However, the world food market depends upon the goodwill of developed countries like the United States and the European Union, who happen to be the large food exporters. Therefore, for developing countries like India, state support is crucial for small farms, which employ intensive manual labour systems and hence create more jobs. There is also a need to increase domestic food production and to strengthen food sovereignty, while at the same time sustainability and ecological aspects should not be ignored. To achieve all these, the role of the state is very important, and market forces alone cannot accomplish it. This entry concludes that the free trade approach (i.e. trade liberalization) will deepen the process of uneven development and unequal exchange between poor and rich countries. The trade liberalization agenda has been broadened since the mid-1990s from the previous focus on trade in manufacturing to include services and agriculture. Despite the fact that developing countries will have some access to protected markets in the EU and North America, and they will be able to export agricultural commodities, larger benefits of agricultural trade liberalization will be reaped by the developed agricultural export countries such as the US, Canada, EU, Australia and New Zealand rather than developing countries. Kalim Siddiqui
References
Bagchi, A.K. 2000. ‘The Past and the Future of the Development State’, Journal of World-System Research, 6(2): 398–442. Bieler, A. and A.D. Morton. 2014. ‘Uneven and Combined Development and Unequal Exchange: The Second Wind of Neoliberal “Free Trade”?’ Globalizations, 11(1): 35–45. Kruger, A. 1996. The Political Economy of Trade Protection, Boston: National Bureau of Economic Research. McConnell, C.R. and S.L. Brue. 2005. Economics: Principles and Policies, 16th edn, Boston: McGraw Hill Irwin. Ricardo, D. 2004. The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, New York: Dover Publications (first published 1817). Siddiqui, K. 1994. ‘International Trade and Problems of Inequality in the Developing Countries’, in C. Aall and E. Solheim (eds), Miljø Årboka [in Norwegian], pp. 20–39, Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget. Siddiqui, K. 1998. ‘The Export of Agricultural Commodities, Poverty and Ecological Crisis: A Case Study of Central American Countries’, Economic and Political Weekly, 33(39): A128–A137. Siddiqui, K. 2015. ‘Trade Liberalisation and Economic Development: A Critical Review’, International Journal of Political Economy, 44(3): 228–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 08911916.2015.1095050. Siddiqui, K. 2016. ‘International Trade, WTO and Economic Development’, World Review of Political Economy, 7(4): 424–50. Siddiqui, K. 2018a. ‘U.S.– China Trade War: The Reasons Behind and Its Impact on the Global Economy’, The World Financial Review, November/December: 62–8. Siddiqui, K. 2018b. ‘David Ricardo’s Comparative Advantage and Developing Countries: Myth and Reality’, International Critical Thought, 8(3): 1–28. http://doi.org/10.1080/21598282 .2018.1506264. Siddiqui, K. 2020a. ‘Britain’s Trade with China in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century: A Review of the Opium Wars’, Asian Profile, 48(3): 207–21. Siddiqui, K. 2020b. ‘Prospects of a Multipolar World and the Role of Emerging Economies’, World Financial Review, November/December: 65–77. Stiglitz, J. and A. Charlton. 2006. Fair Trade for All, Oxford: Oxford University Press. WTO [World Trade Organization] 2013. The Case for Open Trade. https://www.wto.org/english/ thewto_e/whatis_e/fact3_e.htm.
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Further reading
Ghose, A.K. 2004. ‘Global Inequality and International Trade’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 28: 229–52. Reinert, E. 2007. How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor, London: Constable & Robinson. Rodrik, D. 2004. How to Make a Trade Regime Work for Development, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sen, S. 2005. ‘International Trade Theory and Policy: What is Left of the Free Trade Paradigm?’ Development and Change, 36(6): 1011–29.
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Siddiqui, K. 2016. ‘Will the Growth of the BRICs Cause a Shift in the Global Balance of Economic Power in the 21st Century?’ International Journal of Political Economy, 45(4): 315–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 08911916.2016.1270084. Siddiqui, K. 2020. ‘The Study of Economic History and the Importance of Understanding the Past’, World Financial Review, November/ December: 46–59.
Index
Aboriginal communities 107, 108 absolute poverty 1–3, 295, 499–500 Acemoglu, D. 127, 133, 243, 383 Acilar, A. 188 advocacy 5–8 defined 5 effectiveness 7 inside and outside 6 issues 7–8 relationship-building and -maintenance 6 strategies 5–7 affordable housing 10–12 access to 11 Agenda for Sustainable Development 61, 225, 579, 612 Aggarwal, S. C. 300 agrarian capitalism 14 agrarian change (AC) 13–17 agrarian transitions 13–14 agricultural capitalism 351 agricultural development 13, 65, 101, 224, 534, 535 agricultural sector 13, 14, 16, 20, 533–5, 568, 570, 623, 625 agriculture, modernizing 14–15 Aichi Targets 431 aid for peace 118–19 aid modality 18–20 characteristics and objectives 18–20 definition 18–20 food aid 19 programme aid 18–19 project aid 18 project support 18 strengths and weaknesses 19–20 technical assistance 19 Aiken, W. 174 Alkire, S. 57 Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) 67–8 Alter, K. 548 Altvater, E. 556 Amengual, M. 124 Amin, A. 549, 550 Amin, S. 164 Anand, Sudhir 326 Anderson, K. 158 Anderson, M.B. 122, 123 Andres, Luis 367
Ang, Y.Y. 127 animal capital 33–5 capitalism 33 colonialism 33 consumption commodities 33–4 labour and 34–5 raw material 33–4 anthropocentrism 431 Anti-Politics Machine 462 Anyanwu, J.C. 299, 300 Appadurai, A. 87 Arcand, J.L. 242 Aron, J. 305 Arora, R.U. 565 Arrighi, Giovanni 621 artificial intelligence (AI) AI snake oil 45 bias 44 carbon footprint 45 controversies 44–5 and development 42–7 energy consumption 45 ethical, responsible, or trustworthy 45–6 governance 43 human resources 44 infrastructure 43–4 international collaborations 46 lower- and middle-income countries 43–4 national and regional strategies 46 opaqueness 44–5 policies and regulations 46 responses 45–6 surveillance systems 45 technical tools 46 artistic freedom 40 artists as change agents 40 arts 37–41 communication for development 38 development’s cultural turn, support 37–8 diverse approaches 38 drivers of economic development 39–40 identity and immanent development 39 ongoing challenges 40 for peace-building 38–9 post-conflict transformation 38–9 asylum seekers 263–4 authoritarian states 91, 92, 94, 428 automated computer translation 43
629
630 Elgar encyclopedia of development Azariadis, C. 570 Badgett, L. 505 Bailey, G.D. 185, 186 Bakker, K. 493 balance of payment (BOP) 18 Baldwin, R. 300 Bandung and decolonization 51–4 developmentalism 54 diminution, refusing 52–3 forging a spirit 51–2 self-determination 52 Bankoff, G. 201 Barnett, M. 349 Barua, M. 432 basic goods approach (BGA) 56 basic needs approach (BNA) 55–8 assessment 57–8 and basic goods 56–7 and basic rights 56 needs versus capabilities 57 origins and content 55–6 Batten, T.R. 113 Baú, V. 103 Bauer, P.T. 570 Baxter, J.L. 55 Baxter, P. 465 Beaudet, P. 597 Beazley, M. 109 Beck, T. 242, 243 Behnke, R. 185, 466 The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) 60–64 critical issues 63–4 The Digital Silk Road (DSR) 60–61 The Global Development Initiative (GDI) 61–2 The Health Silk Road 61 sustainability and COVID-19 62–3 Beneria, L. 610 Bennholdt-Thomsen, V. 557 Bentham, J. 432 Beresford, P. 108 Bernstein, H. 13 Best, R. 220 Bhabha, H. 48, 134 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) 65–8 Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) 67–8 approach 66–7 brief history 65 critiques of 67 current areas of focus 65 Blaser, M. 367 Blaut, Jim 29 Block, Fred 183 bloomery process 421 Boege, V. 572
Bok, S. 56 Bolivia 362 Book of Han 421 Borras Jnr, M. 405 Boserup, Ester 224–6 lifetime achievements 224–5 Bottom, K. 106 Boulding, Kenneth 157 Bows, A. 158 Bradshaw, Sarah 587 Brand, U. 308, 493 Braudel, Fernand 27, 28 Bray, R. 436 Braybrooke, D. 55, 56 Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) 75–7 New Development Bank 76–7 origins 75–6 Brenner, R. 354 Bretton Woods 71–4 Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs) 71, 73, 74, 286, 378–81 critical development debates and 380–81 financial activities of 379–80 Brinkerhoff, J.M. 572 Brown, C. 604 Brundtland Commission 176, 615, 619 Buckley, P. 267 Budapest Declaration 114 Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA) 564 Burke, P.J. 220, 222 Burki, S.J. 55, 57 Bush, K. 117–19 cadastre 399 Cambridge Analytica 393 Campbell, C. 171 capability approach 23, 175, 176, 178, 215, 323, 324 capacity development 6 capitalism 33, 35, 79, 80, 82, 91, 96, 126, 131, 134, 164, 351, 352, 431, 435, 436, 483, 487, 556, 557 Capitalism and Modernity 29 capitalist development 91, 131, 133, 136, 164, 165, 435, 436, 450, 492, 557 capitalocentrism 484–85 Carayannis, Tatiana 287 Cardoso, F.H. 163 Carling, J. 590, 592 Carpentier, N. 185 Carson, R. 215 Carswell, Grace 153 Casson, M. 267 Castañeda, N. 165 Castells, M. 165, 182, 587 Chambers, R. 102, 460, 461, 582 Chanda, R. 298
Index 631 Chang, H. 305 Chant, S. 587–8 Charter of Athens 606 Chase-Dunn, C. 353, 620 Chaturvedi, S. 531 Chenery, H. 55 Chibber, Vivek 181 child labour 84–7, 338 definition of 84 determinants of 85–6 policies 86–7 trends and status 84–5 children's rights 470, 473, 538–40 child sponsorship (CS) 372, 374 friends CS programme 373–4 origins of 372–3 China 29, 60–63, 75, 76, 152, 253, 292, 296–8, 421, 423, 528, 529, 536, 562, 624 Chowdhury, A. 306 Chu, Yin-wah 183 Cities, Class and Power 587 Cities, Slums and Gender in the Global South 588 citizen aid 89–90 amateurs or professionals 90 defining 89 voluntary nature 89 citizenship 139, 185–7, 396, 430, 437, 493, 494, 522 defining 185 Cittaslow network 546 civic space 8 civil society 5, 8, 39, 91–5, 234, 390, 392, 400, 403, 549, 551 and development 91–5 international development institutions 92 policy and political environment 93–4 civil society organizations (CSOs) 8, 441, 442, 460 Clark, D.A. 57 Clarke, G. 235–6 Clarke, M. 235 class 96–9 capital and labour 97 dimensions of 96–8 dispossession and exploitation 96–7 and gender 97–8 ideology, patriarchy, and racism 98 and politics 98–9 class relations 14, 91, 96, 97, 99 climate change 62, 168, 262, 287, 308–10, 366, 429, 431, 465, 467, 544, 579, 595, 598, 599, 603, 608 climate justice 431–3 Cochrane, S. 214 Communicating with Communities (CwC) 103 communication 22, 38, 101–3, 189, 209, 359, 365, 438, 444 communication for development (C4D) 101–4
behaviour change communication 101–2 origins of 101 participation 102 in peacebuilding 103 communication for social change (CfSC) 102–3 Community Action 114 community capacity-building (CCB) 105–9 community development 105–9, 111–15, 471 community development child sponsorship (CDCS) 375 community economies 484–6 Community Economies Collective 486 community resilience 115 compulsory education 86 conflict 38, 103, 117–19, 139, 181, 229, 231, 310, 333, 347, 361, 399, 465, 590 conflict sensitivity criticisms 119 and do no harm (DNH) 117–19 content development 6 Conway, G. 582 Cooke, B. 462 Corning, P.A. 55 Cornwall, A. 512, 524, 526 corporate food regime 251, 253, 254, 405 corporate social responsibility (CSR) 121–4 and business studies 121–2 codes of conduct 123 development projects/partnerships 123–4 and development studies 122–4 human rights 123 and poverty 122 stakeholder theory 121–2 corruption 126–8, 172, 177, 181, 303, 304, 337, 398, 400, 573, 578 and development 126–9 COVAX 67 Covello, S. 189 COVID-19 pandemic 10, 253, 260, 265, 274, 296, 298, 327, 343, 358, 385 Cowen, M.P. 590 Cox, O. 134 Crenshaw, Kimberlé 276 critical theories 395 Critique of Anthropology 27 CS INGOs 374 cultural/culture change 130–33 and development 130–36 differences 48, 108 expressions 37–40, 319 heritage 319, 320, 363, 595 and institutions 133–4 and sustainable development 135–6 violence 135 Cumings, Bruce 181 customary law 138–40 and development 139
632 Elgar encyclopedia of development versus statute law 138–9 Daly, H. E. 577, 579 Dasgupta, D. 300 data injustices 142–3 data justice 142–4 Data-Justice-for-Development Manifesto 144 Davey, E. 342 Death, C. 311 Deaton, A. 332 debt 146–9 crises 18, 56, 73, 121, 146, 148–9, 269, 440, 564, 611 debt cum growth 146–8 domestic factors and market imperfections 148 global finance 149 international monetary system, instability 147–8 neoclassical 147 radical political economy 146 trade and balance of payments 148–9 two gap models 146–8 decent work (DW) 151–4, 431 concept of 151–2 recent evidence 152–4 degrowth 156–60 academic publications 159 activist slogan and academic concept 159–60 blank canvas 160 economic growth 157–9 environmental sustainability 157–9 policymaking 160 training 159–60 dehumanization 436, 461 Demirgüç-Kunt, A. 242 Democracy in America 91 demographic transition 478, 481, 482 DeNardis, Laura 391 Department for International Development (DFID) 525, 584 dependency theory 146, 162–5, 351, 563 contemporary relevance of 165 Marxist dependency theory Africa 164–5 Latin America 164 origins and intellectual inspiration 162–5 reformist dependency theory 163 regional and scholarly diversity 162–3 Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds 49 de Sousa Santos, B. 483 developing countries 16, 75, 146–9, 163, 167–9, 222, 290, 292, 295, 533, 563, 564, 601, 630, 632 concerns 295–6 developing economies 72–4, 268, 484
development actors 66, 68, 338, 346, 347, 349, 385, 386, 551 development agenda 130, 264, 276, 300, 321, 415 development aid 65, 197, 346–9, 441, 442, 450, 451 developmentalism 53, 54, 135, 156, 353 developmentality 433, 435–6 developmental state 126, 128, 180–83, 439 ‘death’ of 182 ideational foundation 180 policies 180 rational bureaucracy and pilot agency 180–81 reconfigured and reconceptualized 182–3 research, East Asia 180–82 sociopolitical contexts 181–2 state autonomy and social embeddedness 181–2 Development as Freedom (DF) 21 development assistance 118, 385, 428, 451, 479, 572 development communication see communication for development (C4D) development cooperation 236–8, 253, 347, 348, 408, 409, 526, 530, 531 The Development Dictionary 489 development discourses 130–33, 136, 320, 325, 486, 489, 512, 513, 515 development economics 21–5, 135, 162, 338, 533 development ethics 55, 57, 174–8 accountability 177 cultural freedom 176 decolonization 177 empowerment 176 environmental sustainability 176–7 epistemic justice 176 equity 176 human rights, realization 176 integrity 177 meaning of 174 public discussion 174–5 theory and practice 177–8 well-being 175–6 development field 5, 276, 299, 409, 451, 611, 612 development institutions 92, 93, 133, 175, 177, 236, 513 development interventions 37, 103, 172, 272, 338, 339, 428, 505 development paradigms 136, 205, 489, 596, 597 development policies 56, 57, 71, 273, 276, 435, 439, 452, 553, 591, 603 development processes 91, 102, 153, 225, 298, 300, 305, 319, 325, 596, 599 development projects 117, 121, 123, 124, 172, 174, 177, 200, 201, 426, 428, 429 ‘Development: Which Way Now?’ 21 development work 101, 102, 347, 376, 386, 428 Devereux, S. 553
Index 633 Diamond, J. 108 Diffusion of Innovation 101 digital citizenship 185–7 and civic participation 185–6 defining 185 and education 186 and identity 186–7 digital inclusion 188–90 future of 189–90 measuring 188–9 origins of 188 and social inclusion 188 digital infrastructure 43, 44, 46 digital media technology 186, 187 Digital Silk Road (DSR) 60–61 Dijsselbloem, Han 466 disability 10, 89, 175, 188, 276, 323, 328, 363, 543, 544, 553 and development 192–6 millennium development goals (MDGs) 193–4 observations 195–6 policy developments 193–4 poverty and 192–3 rhetoric to practice 194–5 sustainable development goals (SDGs) 193–4 twin-track approach 194 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) 194 disabled people 356–8 disaster and development 197–201 development, consequence 199–200 as development opportunity 199 as interrupted development 197–9 misguided and rejecting development 200–201 Disaster Capitalism 200 disaster risk reduction (DRR) 198, 200 environmental turn in 201 disasters 89, 103, 159, 197–201, 341, 510 distributive data justice 143 Doherty, B. 549 domestic racism 428 domestic violence 203–5 defining 203 and development 203–6 as development issue 204–5 feminist understanding 203–4 violence contradicts development goals 205 violence impedes development 204 do no harm (DNH) 117–19, 573 Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace – or War, 117 Dos Santos, Theotonio 162 Doyal, L. 55 Drazen, A. 570
Drèze, Jean 21 dual economic theory 533–4 Lewis model 533 Ranis–Fei model 533–4 Duffield, M. 442 Dunning, J. 267 Du Toit, A. 436 early childhood change course of 211–12 development 208–12 factors influence 210–11 happenings in 208–9 ‘what develops’ in 209–10 Easterly, W. 418 ecofeminism 556 political economy of 559–60 economic activity 84, 180, 219, 222, 272, 298, 441, 484, 606 economic development 14–15, 295–7 economic growth 23, 156–8, 174, 175, 203, 221, 222, 241–3, 308, 309, 365, 366, 479, 568, 577, 580 economic growth stages 568 age of mass consumption 570 drive to maturity 569–70 preconditions for take-off 568–9 take-off stage 569 traditional society 568 economic miracles 480 economic nationalism 180, 252, 298 economic theory 21, 23, 135, 225, 438, 533–8 Economy and Society 126 ecosocialism 556 Ecuador 362 education contesting, and development 217 and development 214–18 and economic development 214–15 and human development 215 and human rights 216–17 and sustainable development 215–16 electricity 222 and development 222 Eliminating World Poverty 520, 525 Eliza, AI program 42 Elvin, Mark 29 Elwood, S. 435 Employment, Growth, and Basic Needs: A One-World Problem 55 empowerment 102, 108, 176, 177, 272, 274, 324–5, 461, 462, 583, 587 of women 243, 325, 595, 601, 616 Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World 48 energy change with economic development 219–21 and development 219–22
634 Elgar encyclopedia of development drive economic growth 221–2 economic activity, role 219 entitlement 24 environmental crises 308, 309 Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) 384 environmental sustainability 156–8, 176, 177, 309, 412, 413, 582, 584, 585, 605 equity 324 Escobar, A. 48–9, 489 Esteva, G. 489, 490 evaluative space 21 Evans, Peter B. 126, 180–83 Evans-Pritchard, E. P. 465 ‘everyday’ 228 everyday peace 228–32 dangers, dark side 231–2 exclusion 142 extreme poverty 2, 171, 209, 242, 288, 412, 414, 499, 501, 518, 524 Fainstein, S. S. 607 Fairey, T. 39 faith-based organizations (FBOs) 234–8, 342, 508, 509 categorizing 235–6 defining 234–5 development cooperation, added value 237–8 and official development system 236–7 Faletto, E. 163 Fals-Borda, O. 356, 460 Federici, S. 551 Fei, J.C. 528 feminism 78, 79, 160, 271, 273, 274, 353, 504 Feminism without borders 79 Feminist genealogies, colonial legacies, democratic futures 79 Ferguson, J. 462, 525 Figueroa, M. E. 102 finance and development 241–4, 269 development, determinants 243 and economic growth 241–2 financial capital 14, 259, 378, 583, 584 financial development see finance, and development financial inclusion 246–9 global initiatives, data 248–9 measuring 247–8 microfinance or fintech 247 policies 246–7 social inclusion, form 246 financial institutions 91, 92, 149, 246–8, 569 financialization 10, 16, 165, 251, 311, 405, 406 First World War 111, 146, 285, 286, 538, 540, 548, 570 Fisher, I. 241 food aid 19–20, 250, 610 food regimes 13–14, 250–55, 405
analysis 250–51 corporate, restructuring 251–2 countermovement 252–3 futures 253–4 food security 250, 252, 258–62, 401–4, 406, 583–5, 623 conceptual issues 258–9 government policy, role 259–61 managing demand 261–2 pillars and platforms 258–9 population, incomes and bio-fuels 261–2 supply outlook, improving 261 food sovereignty 17, 68, 252, 253, 625 forced displacement 263 forced labour 86, 336–8, 360, 416, 418, 484 forced migration 263–5, 431, 592, 626 as development agenda 264–5 displacement, decade 263 internally displaced persons 264 refugees and asylum seekers 263–4 foreign aid 384 foreign direct investment (FDI) 73, 267–9, 298, 300, 301, 383, 438, 564 and development 268–9 multinational enterprise 267–8 scale of 268 working definition 267 Forsyth, M. 299, 518 Fortaleza Declaration 76 Foucault, Michel 48 Fourth World Conference on Women 273 fragile states 572, 573, 603 Frank, A.G. 26–31, 162, 164 B-phase 29–31 Eurocentrism, attack on 27–8 mode of production 26–7 return of Asia 28–9 societal evolutionary forms 26–7 system crisis 29 free trade 28, 72, 74, 101, 135, 456, 623–6 Freire, M. 608 Freire, P. 461 Friedmann, J. 607 front-line peasant movement 254 Fry, T. 513 Fukuyama, F. 126, 130, 131, 306 functionalist theories 395 functionings 1 Galton, Francis 170 Garau, P. 608 Geddes, P. 606 gender 11, 80, 188, 271–4, 276, 327, 467, 475, 504, 505, 584, 585, 587, 588, 592, 610 concept of 271–2 and development 271–5 approaches 272–3
Index 635 equality 62, 65, 236, 237, 273, 413, 543–5, 603, 610, 612 feminism, waves of 273–4 global forums 273 identity 11, 272–4, 504, 506 and intersectionality 276–7 justice 81, 82 Gender, Generation and Poverty: Exploring the ‘Feminisation of Poverty’ in Africa, Asia and Latin America 588 Gender Inequality and Development report 611 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 71, 564 genetically modified organisms (GMOs) 15 Geneva Declaration 540 Genoa 487 geocultures 134, 353 and development 134–5 Geography 278 world’s development divides 278–84 Georgescu-Roegen, N. 55 Ghai, Dharam 151 Ghatak, Anchita 237 Gibson, K. 481 Gibson-Graham, J. K. 82, 513 Giddens, A. 185 Gill, S. 354 Gillespie, K. 435 Gills, B. K. 30 Gleason, B. 186 global development 65, 66, 438, 439, 442, 525, 528, 597, 598, 615, 618 The Global Development Initiative (GDI) 61–2 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) 298 global food security 261, 262 global governance 76, 168, 285–8, 391, 404, 450, 453 actors 285 future of 288 historical and political foundations 285 international organizations (IOs) 286 shared goals, achieving 288 shared threats, responding 287–8 globalization 16–17 and development 298–301 dimensions of 298–300 development 300 global labour market 396 global North–South 290–93 Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) 46 global poverty 174, 177, 430, 523, 573, 601 global value chains (GVCs) 295–300, 338 and economic development 295–7 shocks and resilience of 296–7 Gold, Thomas B. 181 Goldar, B. 300 Goldin, I. 299–300 gold mining 424
good governance 73, 92, 127, 303–6, 398, 400, 439, 441 conceptual, methodological, measurement issues 304–5 critique 303–4 empirical evidence 305–6 historical context 303 reforms agenda, implications 306 Goody, Jack 29 Gough, I. 55 governance 285 government revenues 601, 602 GRAIN 403, 405 Gramsci, Antonio 91 Grassroots Post-Modernism: remaking the soil of cultures 489 green economy 308–11 decoupling 310 evolution of 308–10 injustices of 310–11 new politics 311 green growth 135, 158, 201, 309, 310, 429, 580 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 10 green revolution 15 Griffen, J.P. 55 Grindle, M. 306 gross national product (GNP) 21 Grown, C. 276 Grugel, J. 493 Guichard, S. 301 Guijt, I. 462 Guillén, M.F. 165 Gumucio Dagron, A. 102 Gunderson, L.H. 512 Gupta, P. 299 Hall, Thomas D. 620 Hamilton, L. 21 Hammadache, A. 305 Haq, Mahbub ul 323, 326 Hardy, Thomas 229 Harriss, John 13 Harrod–Domar model 22, 23 Hart, G. 590 Haslam, P. 597 The Health Silk Road 61 health systems 67, 313–17 financing 313–15 healthcare services, purchasing 315 non-personal health services 316 personal health services 316 pooling 314–15 provision of services 315–16 resource generation 316–17 revenue collection 313–14 stewardship 317 Heise, Lori L. 203 Helsper, E. 188
636 Elgar encyclopedia of development Hennart, J. 267 heritage 319–21, 325, 327, 329, 333, 487, 571, 596 defining 319 and development 319–21 commonalities, search 320 separate or opposite areas 319–20 sustainable development, enabler 320–21 heterosexism 501 high-income countries 43, 44, 65, 298, 359, 475, 530, 553, 577, 579, 580, 615 The History of Civil Society 91 The History of Development: from western origins to global faith 489 Hoadley, J.S. 56 Hoban, M. 108 Hobson, John M. 182 Holling, C.S. 512 Hoselitz, B. 131 Hout, W. 165 Houzer, E. 467 Hovorka, A. J. 433 How Rich Countries Got Rich … and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor 133 Høyland, B. 331 Hull–Rust Mahoning iron mine 424 human capital 19, 20, 214, 296, 300, 325–6, 365, 366, 577, 583, 601 development 242, 300, 571 human development 44, 46, 215, 216, 300, 323–7, 329, 331, 332, 597, 598 human development (HD) approach 215, 300, 323–9 capability approach 323–4 concept and approach 324–6 future pathways 328–9 historical development 323 measuring progress 328 philosophical underpinnings 323–4 Human Development Index (HDI) 215, 320, 325, 328, 331–4, 359, 597, 598 country scores 332–3 future use of 333 human development report (HDR) 323, 326–8 humanitarian action 341–3, 346–9, 408–10 humanitarian actors 344, 348, 349 humanitarian aid 235, 236, 341–4, 348 access and international humanitarian law 342 cultural traditions and approaches 341 funding 342–3 localization 343 needs and priorities, shaping 343–4 systems and stakeholders 341–2 humanitarian–development nexus 346–9 challenging 348–9 humanitarianism 341, 344, 348, 504 humanitarian practice 230–31
humanitarian response 341, 343, 408, 456, 510 human security 325 human societies 278, 385, 478, 483, 577 human trafficking 336–9 Huntington, S.P. 126, 132 Huynh, K. 305 Hymer, S. 267 ICANN 391–2 Ikpe, E. 572 The Impact of Population Growth on Agricultural Output 224 impoverishment 338, 383, 435, 436 inclusive financial system 246–9 inclusive research 356–8 debates in 357 defining 356–7 growth of 357–8 income poverty 1, 501, 575 Indigenous peoples 107, 170, 172, 176, 177, 356, 359–63, 557, 558 conflicts over development 361–2 definition of 359–60 and development 359–63 history of 360 Indigenous concepts, development 362–3 international response and UN declaration 360–61 MDGs and SDGs 363 protect Indigenous rights, activism 360 individual child sponsorship 470, 471 individual/family child sponsorship (IFCS) 375 individual or institutional child sponsorship (IICS) 374–5 industrial development 419, 425, 534, 591 inequality 325 information and communication technologies (ICTs) 391 information-centred activities 6 information value chain 142 infrastructure defining 365 development or degradation source, enabler 365–6 and economic development 365–8 finance and provision 367–8 methodologies, economic development goals 366–7 private, public or public–private partnerships 367–8 and wealth of nations 365–6 infrastructure investments 188, 366, 367 Ingram, D. 177 Inoue, H. 353 institutional neoliberalism 440–41 instrumental data justice 143 internally displaced persons 264
Index 637 International Association for Community Development (IACD) 112, 114, 115 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) 71 international child sponsorship 372–6 International Clearing Union (ICU) 71–2 international community 278–80, 284, 290, 517–20, 522, 525, 526 The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 10 The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 10 International Handbook of Gender and Poverty 588 international humanitarian law (IHL) 342 International Labour Organization 55, 84, 225, 336, 360, 553 international migration 299, 395, 396, 481, 590, 612 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 18, 71–4, 248, 249, 267, 286, 378–81, 436, 563, 564 international NGOs 39, 94, 235, 341, 405, 457, 458, 550 international organizations 118, 123, 285, 286, 320, 321, 450–53, 458, 616, 618 international peasant movement 254 International Poverty Line (IPL) 499 international trade and economic development 383–4 history of 383 international volunteering 385–8 debates 387–8 diversity in 386 futures of 388 international volunteering for development (IVD) 386 Internet exceptionalism 391 Internet governance (IG) 390–93 brief history of 391 definition 390–91 The Internet in Everything 391 intersectionality concept, origins 276 development studies and policy 276–7 and gender 276–7 intimate partner violence 203, 204 Isla, A. 558 Jacho-Chávez, D. 305 Jahan, Selim 328 James, R. 234 Jamison, D. 214 Jenkins, H. 185 Jenkins, R. 165 Jennings, M. 235, 236 Johnson, Chalmers A. 180, 181 Johnson, K. 356 Johnson, S. 383
Jolly, Richard 287 Jomo, K. S. 306 Jones, Eric 28 Jordan, L. 6 Jorgenson, D.W. 534 Junkers 13 Kahneman, D. 332 Kalekin-Fishman, D. 228 Kander, A. 221 Kapoor, I. 462 Kay, C. 163 Kelman, I. 201 Kenis, A. 308 Kerlin, J.A. 549, 550 Keynes, John Maynard 71 Kim, Sung-young 183 King, R.G. 241 Klein, N. 200 Kodongo, O. 299 Koori people 107, 108 Koser, K. 586 Kothari, U. 462 Kotler, P. 101 Kramer, Mark 122 Krätli, S. 467 Kurtz, M. 304–5 Kvangraven, I. H. 146 labour market interventions 554 labour migration 383, 395–7, 535, 536 global labour market 396 key migration theories 395 temporary labour migration 396–7 Laderchi, C. R 57 LaFollette, H. 174 land administration 399 land consolidation 401 land development 398–400 Landes, David 28 landesque capital 226 land governance 398–402 assessment 401 components 399 global sustainable development agenda 401–2 importance of 399–400 land policy 400 land reform 400–401 land grabs 251, 403–6 financialization 405–6 food regimes 405 origins and evolution 403–5 resistance 406 theoretical explanations 405–6 land management 363, 398–9, 401 land parcel 399 land policies 10, 399, 400, 467
638 Elgar encyclopedia of development land reform 15–17, 181, 400, 401 land rights 253, 361, 399–401, 405, 467 land tenure 398, 399, 405, 466, 467 land use 254, 398–400 planning 11, 401, 605 land value 398, 399 La Porta, R. 243 large language models (LLMs) 42 Laserna, R. 165 Lasswell, H. 102 Las Tesis 554 Latin America 15, 73, 162–5, 290, 455, 481, 492–95, 559, 588 Lau, L. 214 Lawson, V. 435 Lee, Hye-Kyung 183 Lee, K. 222 legal pluralism 139–40 Leiten, K. 85 Levine, R. 241–3 Lewis, A. 533 Lewis, I. M. 465 LGBTI 328 Lievens, M. 308 life expectancy 23, 331, 332 Linneker, Brian 588 Lipset, S. M. 91 Lister, Ruth 499 Livingstone, J. 467 localization 408–10 Lockheed, M. 214 López-i-Gelats, F. 467 Lorde, A. 172 Loriaux, Michael 183 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) 65–8, 298–301, 553–4 Lowenthal, David 319 lower- and lower-middle income countries (LLMICs) 46 low-income countries 174, 177, 475, 476, 478, 578–80, 602, 603, 615, 617, 618 Lucas, R.E. Jr. 241 Mabogunje, A. L. 590 Macdonald, L. 493 Mac Ginty, R. 228–30 marginalized communities 37, 79–82, 448, 462 market failures 304, 309, 365, 367, 368, 441 Martin, S. 591 Martin, W.G. 354 Marx, Karl 33, 91 Mason, R. 165 Mathieson, A 595 Matthews, S. 489 Mazumdar, Pauline 170 McCartney, M. 570 McCulloch, N. 222 McGinty, S. 105
McGrath, S. 216 McMichael, P. 405, 621 Meisel, N. 306 Mellor, M. 556 Mendes, P. 105 Merchant, C. 556 Merino-Saum, A. 308 middle-income countries 63, 65, 291, 298, 379, 380, 475, 476, 528, 529, 544 Mies, M. 557 migration–development nexus 590–93 nexus, extended 591–6 nexus, projected 592–3 millennium development goals (MDGs) 1, 288, 320, 327, 328, 363, 385, 412–15, 520, 526, 553, 597, 598 achievements 412–13 criticisms/failings 413 mining 421–5 Mira, R. 305 miracle seeds 14 Modelski, George 30 modernization 174, 426–30, 533, 535, 536, 569, 597, 606, 607 theory 72, 132, 348, 422–4 modern world-system 351–3, 620 Mohan, G. 457 Mohanty, C.T. 48, 78–82, 276 monetary poverty 1–3 Moosa, I. A. 55 Morrow, K. 308 Mouffe, C. 495 Mowbray, M. 108 Mudimbe, V.Y. 48 multidimensional poverty 2, 3, 326, 501, 502 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 2 multispecies climate justice 431–3 multispecies poverty politics 435–37 multi-stakeholderism 390 Mūsā, Mansa Kanku 421 Myint, H. 383 Nandy, A. 52 Napier, A. 461 Narayan, D. 1, 3 Nathan, Dev 87 The National Scientific Council on the Developing Child (2004) 210 natural disasters 39, 89, 200, 204, 265, 398, 399 Negoita, Marian 183 Nehru, Jawaharlal 53 Nelson, E. 57 Nelson, P. 526 Nelson, V. 467 neoclassical dual economic theory 534–5 Jorgenson model 534–5 Todaro model 534–5 neoliberalism 438–42, 492–5, 611, 612
Index 639 and global development 439 institutional neoliberalism 440–41 rise of 439–40 and security/development aid nexus 441–2 Neve, Geert De 153 Nibert, David 33 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 37, 38, 89, 92, 93, 234, 237, 287, 342, 343, 403, 509, 544, 550, 554 non-monetary poverty 2 North, D.C. 127, 133 North–South consensus 290–91 end of 291 North–South dynamic 291–3 Nussbaum, M. C. 1, 432 Nyamu-Musembi, C. 524, 526 O’Connor, J. 559 Ojah, K. 299 Oliver, M. 357 Oliver-Smith, A. 200 Olson, M. 127 O’Neill, Onora 177 open development 444–9 challenges 446–7 digital divide and digital poverty 446–7 engagement matters 448 global North dominance, digital public sphere 447 new governance models, knowledge commons 448–9 open practices and activities 448 unequal findability 447 open educational resources 444, 445, 447 openness 7, 73, 95, 211, 390, 444–8 as inclusive development 445–6 openwashing 444 operationalization 230–31 optical character recognition 43 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 18, 19, 267, 308, 309, 450–52, 573, 612, 615, 616 core functions 452–3 field of development assistance 451–2 geopolitics, developed countries identity and economic expertise 452–3 governance mechanisms 450–51 ideas, peers, and data 451–2 ‘rich man’s club’ and 451–2 Organisation for European Economic Co-operation 450 Ó Riain, Seán 183 Ould-Aoudia, J. 306 Overall, C. 435 Oxfam 455–8 controversies 457–8 family, history 455–7 Oxfam Australia 404
Oya, C. 404 Paradies, Y. 433 Paris Declaration 18 Parr, J.B. 570 Participation: The New Tyranny 462 participatory action-research (PAR) 460 participatory approaches 502 participatory development 460–63 participatory learning and action (PLA) 461, 462 participatory rural appraisal (PRA) 461 Partridge, G. 109 pastoralism 465–8 climate change 467 definitions and numbers 465 gender 467–8 land tenure 466 mobility and environmental rationality 466 paternalism 21, 57 peace and conflict impact assessments (PCIA) 118–19 peacebuilding 39, 103, 104, 119, 237, 408–9 practice 230–31 ‘peasant way’ 252, 253 Pegasus 393 Perez, C. 134 Pigou, A.C. 55 Plan International 470–73 child sponsorship 470–71 community-based, girls and participation 471–73 rights-based approach (RBA) 470–71 political rights 10, 176, 185, 518, 519, 525 pollution 475–6 Pomeranz, Ken 29 population and development 478–9 growth 224, 225, 258, 261, 476, 478–81, 569, 579 Porter, Michael 122 postcapitalism 483–8 postcapitalism vs. postcapitalist politics 485–6 postcapitalist politics 483, 485–7, 490 postcapitalist practices 486–7 postdevelopment 489–90 arguments 489 criticisms of 489–90 in practice and optimism 490 post-neoliberalism 492–96 as concept 493 debates and outlook 495–6 debates and practices 493–95 ‘post-Snowden internet policy’ 397–8 poverty 1, 2, 122, 123, 242, 288, 383, 401, 435–7, 499–502, 522, 524, 549, 554, 588, 591, 601 alleviation 20, 61, 203, 246, 247, 272, 300, 384, 398, 435, 461
640 Elgar encyclopedia of development feminization of 587, 588 reduction 287, 288, 400, 402, 405, 413, 414, 548, 550, 582, 583, 598, 599, 601, 603 and trade 601–4 poverty lines 499 absolute poverty 499–500 count 500–501 relative poverty 500 poverty measurement 499–502 income and multidimensional 501–2 powerlessness 1, 272, 274, 461 Prakash, M. 489, 490 Preston, S.H. 480 pretium tax 421 procedural data justice 143 procurator metallorum 421 productivity 325 programme aid 20 programme-based approaches (PBAs) 18 progressive neo-developmentalism 495 property rights 139, 274, 303, 305, 368, 398, 441, 467, 493, 601, 612 Psacharopoulos, G. 214 public–private partnerships (PPPs) 365, 368 purchasing power parity (PPP) 2 push–pull theory 395 queer development studies 504–6 homophobia cost 505 queering development 504–5 que(e)rying development 505–6 sexuality turn 505 queer theory 504, 505 quick disbursement assistance (QDA) see programme aid racial hierarchy in colonies 171–2 development and 170–73 dismantling 172–3 eugenics and 170–71 rearticulating 172 radical political economy 146 Ranis, G. 533 rapid rural appraisal (RRA) 460 Rauch, J. E. 126 Ravallion, M 333, 334 Reader, S. 57, 58 refugees 89, 103, 217, 234, 237, 263–5, 286, 590, 591 Reinert, E. 133 Reinert, K.A. 56, 57, 298–300 religion 235–8, 243, 272, 274, 276, 507–10 religion and development 507–10 climate emergency 510 history 509 religious identity 235–7
religious traditions 235, 236, 508–10 rent-seeking 368 ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age 29 ReOrienting the 19th Century 27–9 ‘re-peasantization’ 252 reproduction 13, 33, 34, 96, 163, 171, 280, 339, 556, 557, 560 reproductive health 237, 542–45 reproductive labour 98, 557, 558 ‘Rescue, and Real Love: Same-sex Desire in International Development’ 505 resilience 197, 199, 296, 297, 507–10, 544, 548, 551 anthropocentric reasoning 513–14 development today, usefulness 514–15 historical underpinning 512–13 issues 515 narrow economic reasoning 513–14 socio-ecological systems approach 512–13 thinking 512, 513 Ribble, M. 185–6 Riggirozzi, P. 493 rights-based approach (RBA) 216, 348, 349, 470, 471, 518, 520, 522, 524–26, 538, 539, 541, 553 approach to development 522–26 critiques 525–26 historical origins 522–23 politicization of development 523–5 rights-based child sponsorship (RBCS) 380–85 rights-based data justice 143 right to development 517–20 Article 2 517 Ring, L. 228 rising powers 528–31 characteristics, country group 528–30 defining 528–30 South–South cooperation (SSC) 530–31 Rivera-Ferre, M.G. 467 Robinson, J.A. 127, 133, 241, 383 Rodriguez, C. 102 Rogers, E.M. 101 Rogers, H. 606 Romer, P. 269 Rostow, W.W. 28, 568–70 Rothstein, B. 304 Roy, Arundhati 153 Rubinstein, Y 242 Ruckert, A. 493 Rugman, A. 267 Ruhindi, E. 467 ruina montium method 421 rural development (RD) 13–17, 101, 225, 405, 460, 582, 591 rural–urban migration 533–7 defining 533 dual economic theory 533–4 neoclassical dual economic theory 534–5
Index 641 representative migration patterns 535–7 Russo, A. 79 Rustagi, P. 85 Sabates-Wheeler, R. 553 sadaqa 238 Said, Edward 48 Saith, R. 57 Salih, M.A.M. 165 Salleh, A. 557 Salt, David 512 Sarma, M. 248 Save the Children 538–41 child rights-based approach 539–40 historical background 538–9 Save the Children Fund (SCF) 372, 373, 538 early SCF, features 373–4 Schafer, J. 597 Schrank, A. 304, 305 Scoones, I. 467, 582, 585 Scott, D. 599 Scott, W. 216 Second World War 72 sector-wide approaches (SWAPs) 18 Sekler, N. 493 self-determination 51, 52, 55, 111, 285, 360, 361, 363, 427, 461, 517 Sen, A.K. 1, 21–5, 57, 323, 326, 582 development and 22–4 theoretical and practical proposals 21 Sen, G. 276, 610 senior authorship 368 sensor technology 43 sexual and reproductive health (SRH) rights (SRHR) 542–5 abortion 543 cervical cancer 543 contraception/family planning 542–3 global gag rule 544 investing in 543–4 sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV/AIDS 543 sustainable development goals 542 Shah, M. K. 462 Shenton, R.W. 590 Shilliam, R. 172 Shue, H. 56 Shukin, N. 34 Sider, R. 236 Silva, Denise 172 Simister, N. 461 Sinha, A. 432 Skocpol, T. 354 slavery 336–9 impacts, development 336–8 turn to agency 338–9 Slow City movement 541–2 Smith, A. 96
Smith, L. 319 social assistance 554 social enterprise 548–51 conceptual foundations 548–9 context and practice 549–50 hybridity 548–9 rise of 548 schools of thought and typologies 548–9 trajectories, sustainable development and controversies 550–51 social enterprises 89, 311, 386, 486, 548–51 social inclusion 40, 188, 189, 246, 247, 321 social insurance 554 socialist ecofeminism 556–60 ecofeminist critics, ‘green’ politics 558–9 social practice 230 social protection 553–5 definition of 553–4 historic shifts and trends 553 interventions, types 554 objectives and approaches 553–4 policy issues 554–5 social (world) system crisis 29 Societal evolutionary forms 26–7 Söderholm, P. 310 Solivetti, L.M. 571 Sørensen, N.N. 591 South Africa 40, 44, 74–6, 455, 457, 528–30, 607, 608 Southern ownership 8 South–South cooperation (SSC) 530–31, 562–6 historical phases 562 concertation (1945–81) 562–3 containment (1981–95) 563–4 co-option vs. confrontation (1995– present) 564–5 major controversies 565–6 South–South development cooperation (SSDC) see South–South cooperation spatial data infrastructure 399 Springmann, M. 432 Srinivas, H. 105 stages of growth theory 568–71 critics, Rostow’s theory 570–71 The Standard of Living 57 Stark, E. 203 state actors 8, 180–83, 376 state-building 172, 337, 573 state fragility 572–4 Stern, D.I. 221 Stewart, F. 57 Stewart, Frances 329 Stoker, G. 106 Stokke, K. 462 strategy development 5 Streeten, P. 55–7 Strnadová, I. 356 structural adjustment programmes 73
642 Elgar encyclopedia of development structural data justice 143 Stultz, R. 243 Suárez, S.L. 165 subjective well-being 575–6 defining 575 development indicator 575–6 limitations 576 Suk-Yeol, Yoon 98 Sum, N.L. 165 Supple, B. 571 sustainability 324–5 sustainable development 105, 135, 136, 201, 216, 320, 398, 551, 577–81, 597, 599, 610, 618 degrowth and sustainable prosperity 579–80 in high-income economies 579–80 rise of 579 sustainable development goals (SDGs) 1, 10, 62, 201, 203, 288, 320, 346, 363, 385, 401, 402, 412–15, 472, 475, 476, 505, 507, 510, 518, 520, 526, 542, 545, 595, 597–9 achievements 414 criticisms/shortfalls 414 sustainable livelihoods 582–6 history of 582–3 limitations 585 sustainable livelihoods framework (SLF) 583–4 Sutton, P. W. 185 Svampa, M. 495 Switzerland 224, 332, 333, 472, 538, 587 Taglioni, D. 299, 300 Taylor, I. 165 Tedmanson, D. 108 Telfer, D.J. 597 temporary labour migration 396–7 tenure neutrality 11 Teorell, J. 304 Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes, 49 Terwindt, C. 8 Thakur, Ramesh 288 The Theft of History 29 The Standard of Living 57 Third World women and the politics of feminism 78, 79 Thompson, E.P. 99 Thompson, William R. 30 Thurbon, Elizabeth 183 Tikly, L. 216 Tocqueville, Alexis de 91 Tomalin, E. 237 Tomaševsk, Katarina 216 Torres, L. 79 tourism 18, 159, 386, 546, 595–9 COVID-19 pandemic, impact 596 and development 595–9 challenges 598–9
development theory, links 597–8 importance of 596 trade 37, 52, 76, 148, 168, 258, 292, 295, 298, 300, 351, 383, 384, 423, 563, 601–4, 624 liberalization 624–7 policies 149, 180, 456, 584, 603, 604 for poor, benefits 602–3 and poverty 601–4 linkages 601–2 transnational agribusiness 16–17 trickle down thesis 15 Turner, Bill 226 Two Spirit 506 Two Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual (2SLGBTQIA+) persons 504–6 UNCED 105 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) 194 ‘Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarships and colonial discourses’ 79 ‘Under Western eyes revisited: Feminist solidarity through anticapitalist struggles’ 81 UNDESA 3 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) 290 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) 538 The United Nations Decade for Culture and Development 37 United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs 189 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 1, 2, 38, 323–9, 331–4, 523, 611 United Nations disaster agency 197 United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference 71 United States Agency for International Development (USAID) 572 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 10 Unruh, H. 236 UNWTO 596, 598 urban migration 476, 528–32, 587, 588 urban planning 605–8 evolution, global perspective 606–7 global North, experiences 607–8 global South, experiences 608 understanding 605–6 US 71, 72, 225, 226, 276, 296, 379, 380, 391, 392, 424, 425, 440, 518, 519 Uvin, P. 523 value chains 252, 296, 297, 602, 605 Van der Borgh, C. 8 Van Tuijl, P. 6 Vare, P. 216
Index 643 Vasak, K. 517 Vernon, R. 267 Vijfeijken, T.B. 471 violence 35, 52, 103, 203–5, 229, 231, 273, 274, 337, 427, 542, 559, 573 Visser, O. 406 von Gillern, S. 186 voting power 76, 77, 267 Wacziarg, R. 300 Wade, R.H. 165 Wadiwel, D. J. 432 Waisbord, S. 102 Walker, E.R. 56 Wall, G. . 595 Wallerstein, I. 26–8, 30, 351–4 Wallis, V. 308 Walmsley, J. 356, 357 Walter, Brian 512 Walzer, M. 56 waqf 238 Ware, V-.A. 235 Waring, M. 556 waste management conventional solid waste management 606–7 and development 605–8 historical perspectives 606 inclusive solid waste concepts 606–7 integrated and sustainable management systems 606–7 issues and trends 607–8 mainstream paradigms 606 wealth of nations 365–6, 368 Weber, M. 126, 228, 285 Weiss, Linda 182, 183 Weiss, Thomas G. 287, 288 Welch, K.H. 300 Why Nations Fail 127 Williams, P. 229, 231 Williamson, J. 126, 380 Williamson, R. 243 Wilson, C. 570 Wilson, D.C. 606 Winkler, D. 299, 300 Woman’s Role in Economic Development 224–6 women 79–82, 203–5, 225, 271–4, 557, 559, 587, 588, 603, 610–12 empowerment 205, 234, 273, 321, 467, 545, 553, 610 rights 236, 404, 467 women and development (WAD) 610–13
Women-headed Households: Diversity and Dynamics in the Developing World 588 women in development (WID) 610, 612 Women in the Third World 587 Women’s Role in Economic Development 610 Woo-Cumings, Meredith 180 workers 80, 85, 86, 97, 98, 111, 112, 151–4, 396, 557, 607, 612 workforce 98, 316, 317, 603 working-class communities 112, 151, 153, 154 workshops 153, 172, 460 World Bank 2, 66, 71, 73, 74, 265, 286, 292, 303, 309, 347, 361, 378–81, 401, 440, 499, 553, 572, 573 structure and evolution 378–9 The World Bank Annual Report 523 World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) 615–19 world development 26–9, 31, 595 World Development Report 304 world economy 28, 29, 74, 75, 136, 298, 351–3, 422–5, 624 World Health Organization 2, 65, 152, 313, 317, 542 World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) 343, 346, 347, 408 world population 17, 60, 253, 260, 299, 481, 500, 507 world’s development divides 278–84 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 392 world-systems 134, 135, 352, 353, 620, 621 theory 164, 620–22 world-systems analysis (WSA) 351, 354 World Trade Organization (WTO) 37, 71, 72, 168, 286, 291, 292, 296, 384, 440, 441, 595, 602, 623–7 theoretical background 623–4 and trade liberalization 624–6 Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGIs) 304 Wright, E.O. 96 Yates, J.S. 493 Yeophantong, P. 341 Yuvaraj, S. 153 zakat 238 Zaltman, G. 101 Ziai, A. 217, 489 Zileviciute, D. 222