Lecture 1 - Entanglements of Development and Environment Flashcards
(28 cards)
Jason Hickel - Foreign Aid Is Ascam
- hides how global inequality work
- coloinal period - generated income gaps
- four times bigger income gap today
- 2 trillion dollars in aid, loans and so forth
- 5 trillions dollars go back from global south to north
- interest payments on debt- international trade rules
- 5 % goes only to rich leaders of south
- power imbalances - richest countries organize intl- trade in their interest - the intl systems are organized to prioritize the richest
WTO - rich nations all bargaining power
IMF-rich nations most voting power +US veto power
global apartheid at heart of international institutions
- 1950s - independence of african nations
- western lost access to raw materials - hence intervened with new coloinal logic through 1) coups with dictators, 2) aid flowing in reverse.
change rules of game
1) democratize global governance
2) cancel old debts
3) end illicit financial flows and resource theft
4) allow subsidies and tariffs
5) global minimum wage
POORCOUNTRIESDONTNEEDCHARITY-THEYNEEDJUSTICE
Sustainability - World Bank
A requirement on our generation to manage the resource base, such that the average quality of life, that we ensure ourselves can potential be shared by all future generations
!Planetary boundaries!
SAFE OPERATINGSPACE - for humanity - concerning the Earth system with the planet’s BIOPHYSICAL processes
Renewable energy as sustainable development
- Destroying ecosystems
- Need critical minerals which destructs mineral
- Water use, mineral use leads to scarcity and suffering through labor etc
Critical Development Studies
Considers development as a post-world war or post-independence extension of Euro-American colonial rule
Anti-Politics Machine (Ferguson - 1990)
- Development and poverty is presented as a technical issue
- It hides power inequalities
- Intention to address colonial damage - there are still unintended consequences or side effects which leads to the spread of power structures
- Failed projects create these structural changes
The depoliticisation of development/poverty (Ferguson)
- Erases history and deeply political power structures by pretending that development and poverty are technical issues (technical solutions to technical problems)
- Development projects rely on state power to function - enhancing power of ruling class over local communities or GOVERNMENTALITYby Foucault
- In the case of Lesotho - could dominate areas they did not do before
- The universalisation of development agenda - unaware of local conditions
The Thaba Tseka project
- Thaba-Tseka project: development project in Thaba-Tseka in Lesotho, rural village - Canadian Intl. Dvt Agenda - to improve agricultural production
- Failed in its intentions - still had effects, for instance transport infrastructure, greater presence of government, police stations, immigration office etc.
Government Service and state power expansion
A misleading term - never simply a service, also gaining political control
- state power expanded in Thaba Tseka eg through MILITARISATION, new local administration
ALLUNINTENTIONAL
“The Anti-Politics Machine”
what is most important in a development project is not always what it fails to do, but what its “side-effects” are- or in this case, “instrument -effects”
Side/Instrument effects (Foucault)
Effects that are also instruments of what “turns out” to be an exercise of power
The development paradox in Thaba Tseka
- Planned development is a machine that eliminates poverty and incidentally involves state bureaucracy
- Planned development is a machine for reinforcing and expanding bureaucratic state power, incidentally taking poverty as point of entry
= launcing an intervention with no effects on poverty but concrete side effects that are UNINTENTIONAL
Technical problems and solutions
By reducing poverty to a technical problem –> development becomes a means to de-politiizse the question of poverty –> invisible increase of state power
Two-fold “instrument-effect” of the Thaba Tseka project
- Institutional - expanding state power
- Ideological - de-politicisation of poverty and state = suspension of politics in the most sensitive political operations
this is the anti-politics machine and why failed development projects are replicated.
Uniformity in development interventions
Despite distinct local differences on the ground, most development projects look and are applied similarly =
STANDARDIZATION of development practices
Lesotho x South Africa
South Africa - “betterment schemes” = to rationalize and improve agriculture in “reserves”. Apartheid regime suggested devt of agricultural land throuhg removal of 50% from reserves to make bantustans, homeland for African peoples
Led to practice whwere “surplus people” relocated from white areas could be accommodated and controlled aka instruments of coercion
SIMILARITESTOT-T
1. Technical and apolitical justified state intervention
2. Economic failure made other needs satisfied
3. Accommodation and control of uprooted people
4. Anti-politics machine at work
5. instrument effects- not ultimately about agricultural production but managing and controlling labor reserves and dumping ground.
Lesotho x Zim
- peasants driven off land - demonstrations, resistance
- bureaucratic rationality requires taht people’s land and lives should be organized ideally so government can administer them easily
- peasants resisted this “rural development” which mainly increased state control, over peasantry.
Etatization
The expansion of state power through national development
- Inefficient projects are efficient for the reproduction of the ruling group.
- problematic term in this case because it considers the strengthening of power to be intentional, colonial etc instead of unintentional
Staticization (Foucault)
The state is NOT an entity holding or exercising power and it is not a substance possessed by “rulers”.
It is a point of coordination and multiplication of power relations.
- power relations have become rationalised and centralised in form of state institutions
Bio-power (Foucault)
Disciplining the body and optimising its capacities such that the state fosters productive forces of society through governing
THISWASNOTTHECASEINLESOTHO!
Jason Hickel x Ferguson
- Looks at wider structural and historical forces that shape inequality
- Debt cancellations should be a way to right the wrongs
Methodological nationalism (Hickel)
Analysing each country in isolation.
- In terms of development, poverty, anything.
- Eg looking at GDP or most sustainable development goals. - carbon footprint may occur in another country outside the borders (Norway)
Effect: erases the longstanding, unequal relationships between countries that have defined the last 500 years. Only when you take history into account will you see how the wealth of high-income nations depends on processes of appropriation from the rest of the world.
Migration - seen as a problem only from south to north, not the north to south
Ghosh - Nutmeg’s Curse, main argument
Presents climate change not merely as a technological or economic problem, but as a historical and cultural crisis rooted in systems of power and exploitation.
Linda speaking facts
- future-oriented scholarship on climate change leading to failure to consider the past and present and ultimately inaction
Nutmeg’s Curse - overview
- Follows a commodity thorugh the commodity chain over time and space - using World Systems Theory
- Questions broader structures of power, history and geo-politics.
- Argues that the dynamics of climate change today are rooted in a centuries old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism
- Questions the relationship between colonial extractive economies and the “naturalness” of natural resources - and the environmental concerns, both historical and contemporary.
