Development and social change a global perspective Mc Michael - Chapter 1 summary PDF

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Development and social change a global perspective Mc Michael - Chapter 1 summary...

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McMichael – Development and Social Change, 5e – Instructor’s Resources

Chapter 1 Development: Theory and Reality Chapter Summary: The chapter begins by examining the ecological and social crises stemming from our current consumerbased practices of globalization and development and identifies the obstacles and possibilities for global efforts toward sustainability. It then examines how the idea and practice of development emerged during the colonial era that socially engineered non-European societies by reconstructing labor systems and disorganizing the social psychology of subjects. Exposure to European liberal discourse fueled anti-colonial movements for independence Specifying development as consumption privileges market as vehicle of social change. Moreover, theorization of development as a series of evolutionary stages, as posited by Rostow’s The Stages of Economic Growth, as A Non-Communist Manifest, naturalizes the process, whether it occurs on a national or an international stage. Because of continuing First World dependence on raw materials from the Third World, some societies were more equal than others in their capacity to traverse Rostow’s stages, and a global theoretical context is provided by “Dependency analysis” and Wallerstein’s “World-system analysis.” Concepts of commodity chains, food miles and ghost acres, which help illuminate the social and environmental linkages of global production, are then introduced. As global interdependencies deepen, global inequalities expand. The interconnections among the lifestyles of people in the global north and south suggest that such relationships are mediated by political and economic policies. In other words, the global market is not natural, but rather a political construct. The post-colonial world order emerged from the combined force of decolonization politics and the new model of publicly regulated capitalist markets. The development project (1940s – 1970s) was an internationally orchestrated program of national economic growth, with foreign financial, technological and military assistance. Governments focused on implementing human rights-based social contracts with their citizens. The globalization project (1970s- 2000s), superimposed open markets across national boundaries, liberalized trade and investment rules, and privatized public goods and services. Corporate rights gained priority over the social contract and redefined development as a private undertaking. The neo-liberal doctrine of market freedoms has been met with growing contention symbolized by the anti-neoliberal social revolt in Latin America, Middle-East rebellions, and growing weight of China (and India) in the world political economy. Thus, Polanyi’s double movement is alive and well. An incipient sustainability project, heavily influenced by the climate emergency, is forming. While China leads the green technology race, a myriad of environmental (justice) movements across the world push states, business leaders and citizens towards a new formulation of development as “managing the future” sustainably. In this context of growing contention and with the emergency of climate change, McMichael asks whether the global market will remain as dominant as in the past. Chapter Outline: I. Introduction a. Development, today, is increasingly about how we survive the future and reverse our “ecological footprint,” rather than how we improve on the past i. How we manage “energy descent” and adapt to serious ecological deficits and climatic disruptions will define our existence ii. Who belongs to which ‘bloc’—Global North or Global South—and therefore most responsible for emissions serves to distract authorities from substantive action b. Another crisis confronting 21st century nation-states: global crisis of unemployment and debt i. Compromised by mushrooming public austerity policies across the nation-state system ii. Tested in the global South from the 1980s and now in societies of the North c. Development ideal of a social contract between governments and citizens is crumbling as hardwon social rights and entitlements erode d. Book is a guide to the rise and transformation of development as a vector of global social change over the last two centuries II.

Development: History and Politics a. Development had its origins in the colonial era b. Cowan and Shenton: distinction between development as an immanent and/or universal social process, and development as political intervention

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c.

d.

e. f. g. h.

III.

In 19th century, development is understood philosophically as the improvement of humankind i. Practically, European elites interpreted development as the social engineering of emerging national societies 1. Formulating government policies to regulate capitalism and industrialization’s disruptive social impacts 2. Balancing technological change and class formation with social intervention ii. Such transformations became the catalyst of competing political visions (liberal, socialist, conservative) of the ideal society Development served ideologically to justify imperial intervention, whether to plunder or civilize and was built on a power relationship i. Extraction of colonial resources facilitated European industrialization ii. Europeans took on “white man’s burden” of managing colonial subjects as they experienced wrenching social transformations iii. To adapt or marginalize colonial subjects to the Europeans’ presence, subjects were disciplined through forced labor, schooling, segregation in native quarters 1. Example: British introduce “Lancaster school” factory model to Cairo in 1843, transforming both English and Egyptian society, producing new forms of social discipline among laboring populations and middle-class citizen-subjects 2. Industrialism produced new class inequalities in each society and racialized international inequality Became formalized (and standardized) as a project in the mid-20th century as empires collapsed i. An emancipatory promise, the new global ontology 1945, United Nations: institutionalized the System of National Accounts with a universal quantifiable measure of development, Gross National Product (GNP) Colonial rule of subjects via the mission of civilizing inferior races morphed into the Development Project that was based on the ideal of self-governing states composed of citizens united by ideology of nationalism By the end of the twentieth century, the global development project focused on market governance of and by self-maximizing consumers

Development Theory a. Specifying development as consumption privileges market as vehicle of social change i. Derives from an interpretation of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and formalized in neoclassical economic theory ii. Markets maximize individual preferences and allocate resources efficiently iii. Institutionalized in development policies across the world b. Naturalizing development i. Theorization of development as a series of evolutionary stages naturalizes the process, whether it occurs on a national or an international stage ii. Karl Polanyi: Two ways to answer why development gets “naturalized” 1. Modern liberalism rests on a belief in natural propensity for self-gain (in economic theory, realized as consumer preference) a. Self-gain, expressed through the market, becomes the driving force of the aspiration for improvement, aggregated as development 2. To naturalize market behavior as a transhistorical (and competitive) attribute discounts other human attributes, or values such as co-operation, redistribution and reciprocity a. Economic individualism was specific to 19th century European developments rather than being an innate human characteristics iii. Initially paired private consumption with public provisions (in welfare or development state, mid-20th century); replaced with privatization (last quarter of 20th century) iv. Rostow’s The Stages of Economic Growth, as A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960) 1. Celebrated Western model of free enterprise (vs. state planning) 2. Evolutionary sequence or “stages” traverse a linear sequence: a. “Traditional Society” (agrarian, limited productivity)

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b.

3. 4. c.

d.

“Preconditions for Take-off” (state formation, education, science, banking, profit-systematization) c. “Take-off” (normalization of growth, with investment rates promoting the expanded reproduction of industry) d. “Maturity” (second industrial revolution: from textiles and iron to machine-tools, chemicals and electrical equipment) e. “Age of High Mass-Consumption” (from basic, to durable, goods, urbanization, and rising level of white-collar vs. blue-collar work) Distilled from the U.S. experience; goal to which other (developing) societies should aspire through membership of the “free world” and U.S. assistance Yet, depended on a political context: Markets require creating, securing and protecting by a development state

Global context i. Because of continuing First World dependence on raw materials from the Third World, some societies were more equal than others in their capacity to traverse Rostow’s stages ii. Stimulated “Dependency analysis” and “World-system analysis” iii. Dependency Analysis 1. “Dependency:” the unequal economic relations between metropolitan societies and non-European peripheries accounting for development of the former at the expense of “underdevelopment” of the latter 2. Theory was greatly influenced by: a. Economist Hans Singer: “peripheral” countries exporting more natural resources to pay for increasingly expensive manufactured imports b. Argentinian economist Raúl Prebisch: Latin American states should industrialize behind protective tariffs on manufactured imports c. Marxist theories of (exploitative) imperialist relations between Europe and the non-European world 3. However, “dependency” implies a “development-centrism” where (idealized western) development is the term of reference iv. World-system analysis 1. Advanced by sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein 2. States became political units competing for, or surrendering, resources within a world division of labor a. “Core” concentrates capital-intensive or intellectual production b. “Periphery” is associated with lower-skilled labor-intensive production 3. Now, this geographical hierarchy is complicated by Thomas Friedman’s “flat world” processes (associated with India’s Information Technology boom) 4. Given the power hierarchy, (idealized western) “development” represents a “lode-star” or master concept of modern social theory 5. Denied many other collective/social strategies of sustainability or improvement in other cultures Agrarian questions i. Urbanization is a defining outcome of development and the “stages of growth” metaphor ii. Samuel Huntington: “Agriculture declines in importance compared to commercial, industrial, and other nonagricultural activities, and commercial agriculture replaces subsistence agriculture.” iii. How we perceive these changes? 1. Even as social changes occur within nations, does that mean the change is “internally” driven? Thus, if subsistence agriculture declines or disappears, is this because it does not belong on a society’s “development ladder”? 2. Or is it because of a deepening exposure of smallholders to unequal world market competition by agribusiness (dependency and world-system analysts iv. Absence of peasantries in the First World is a key register for development theory 1. Small farming cultures became development “baselines” 2. A logical extrapolation (if not historical analysis) would define peasant cultures elsewhere as remnants of Traditional Society that are destined to disappear

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e.

f.

IV.

Ecological questions i. Significant ecological blindspot in development theory 1. Passage from subsistence to commercial agriculture is represented as improvement (of single crop productivity), but an insufficient measure if it does not take into account the “externals” 2. Questions not only the veracity of linear projections of development, but also the wisdom of replacing long-standing knowledge-intensive culture/ecology (farming) with an industrialized economic sector (agriculture) ii. UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI): Example of ecological blindspot 1. Overcame singular emphasis on economic growth as development, but reproduced ecological absence iii. 2011: UNDP began to embrace an ecological sensibility 1. Human Development Report (2011) is “about the adverse repercussions of environment degradation for people, how the poor and disadvantaged are worst affected, and how greater equity needs to be part of the solution” iv. “Environmentalist’s paradox:” Short-term generation of material necessities masks longterm implications of ecosystem stress Case Study: Development Paradoxes i. Environmentalist’s paradox, inverted, is in fact a “development paradox” 1. Environment is not equipped to absorb its unrelenting exploitation by the current growth model of endless accumulation ii. Herman Daly’s “impossibility theorem:” the universalization of US-style high mass consumption economy would require several planet earths iii. Costs of ecological degradation are borne disproportionately by the poor, the very same people targeted by the development industry iv. Hence, two paradoxical formulations follow: 1. Development expands opportunity/prosperity but is realized through inequality 2. Development targets poverty but often reproduces it v. Some subsidiary paradoxes include such questions as: 1. Are low-carbon cultures that live with rather than seek to master nature backward? 2. Are non-western cultures judged poor in what makes western cultures rich? 3. Is frugality poverty? 4. Why is malnutrition common to western and non-western cultures? 5. Are non-western cultures rich in what western cultures are now poor (nonmonetized items such as open space, leisure, solidarity, ecological knowledge)? 6. Should we measure living standards only in monetary terms?

Social Change a. The post-colonial world order emerged from the combined force of decolonization politics and the new model of publicly regulated capitalist markets i. Colonial rule generated a politics of decolonization, including class conflict, identity/cultural claims, and the desire for equality and sovereignty ii. Led to the creation of the (European-based) form of the nation-state and expressed in the establishment of the United Nations organization (1945) iii. First and Third World societies came to be governed by the market (and its metrics), a product of capitalism and its drive to commodify social relations 1. But, according to Polyani, neither labor, land nor money were produced for sale and were really “fictitious commodities” 2. Social movements would arise to protect society from unregulated markets (a “double movement”), to re-embed markets within social controls a. Proof: Establishment of the 20th century welfare state, which became a model for the development state iv. Development as a national standard institutionalized in UN System of National Accounts 1. Monetized economic activity was recorded as Gross National Product (GNP) b. The Projects as framework

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c.

i. Meaning/practice of development changes with changing political-economic conditions 1. Development project (1940s-1980), rooted in public regulation of markets as servants of states; governments protect civil rights through a social contract 2. Globalization project (1980s--), markets regain ascendancy; incorporation of the “good market, bad state” mantra into public discourse 3. Sustainability project (2000s--), tension between these poles continues as the world transitions to a new project governed by a “climate regime” ii. Evidence of a Development paradox, where poverty accompanies economic growth 1. Control of 50 percent of world income by the wealthiest 10 percent 2. High levels of malnutrition in India in spite of economic growth iii. Dynamic that links these projects, and accounts for their succession is a series of Polanyian “double movements” (politicization of market rule via social mobilization) The Development Experience i. Development is an endless process, not an end; not linear ii. Much of what we consume today has global origins 1. Sneakers are produced in China or Indonesia 2. The Japanese eat poultry fattened in Thailand with American corn, using chopsticks made with wood from Indonesian or Chilean forests. 3. Computers, cell phones and nuclear reactors require a metallic ore called coltan, which comes mainly from the Congo where military conflict over this resource has caused 4 million deaths and mining damages the environment. iii. Global consumerism is neither accessible to (or possible for) a majority of humans, nor a universal aspiration 1. 20 percent consume 86 percent of all goods and services, while the poorest 20 percent consume just 1.3 percent 2. Some cultures/peoples are non-commercial, not comfortable with commercial definition, or are simply marginal to commercial life iv. The global marketplace is a matrix of networks of commodity exchanges or sequence of production stages, located in a number of countries at sites that provide inputs of labor and materials contributing to the fabrication of a final product. The chain metaphor illuminates the global social and environmental linkages in the products we consume 1. Commodity chains enable firms to switch production sites for flexible management of their operations (and costs) 2. Requires access through subcontractors to labor forces, increasingly feminized, who often have little security (or rights), in unregulated global workplace. For example, Gap and Foxconn v. Case Study: Waste and the Commodity Chain 1. Waste, in general, and electronic waste (e-waste) in particular are huge and problematic by-products of our lifestyle 2. UN estimates the annual global generation of waste from electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) runs at a rate of between 20-50 million tons 3. UNEP reported that e-waste could increase by 500% over the next decade in rising middle-income countries 4. Extraordinary toxicity of this waste: from 1994-2003, disposal of personal computers released 718,000 tons of lead, 287 tons of mercury, and 1,363 tons of cadmium into landfills worldwide 5. While there are regulations regarding hazardous waste, the 170-nation agreement called the Basel Convention is ambiguous on the question of restricting the movement of e-waste from North to South. 6. Why is the current fixation on the virtual, or “de-materialized” information economy unable to recognize dependence on offshore manufacturing and disposal of waste – both of which pose social and environmental hazards? vi. Our food, clothing and shelter, in addition to other consumer comforts, have increasingly long supply chains 1. “Ghost acres” – additional land offshore used to supply the diet of a nation a. Also includes “food miles”

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b.

Much commercial agriculture is extraverted, rather than introverted as in the Rostow schema c. Example: development paradox in Guatemala 2. Distance between consumers, and producers and environments makes it impossible for consumers to recognize the impact of their consumption or producers to voice concerns about working conditions or health of their habitats a. To enhance transparency with information to support more responsible consumption has become the focus of initiatives such as fair trade, or brand boycotts organized by activist movements or Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) vii. Case study - Consuming the Amazon: 1. Greenpeace traced the lifestyle connection between chicken nuggets and soy grown in the Brazilian Amazon, bringing ethics to consumer attention. 2. Their campaign provoked McDonald’...