A final paper I wrote for my development and globalization class at UC Berkeley.
Question 1: Defining Development
Development should always remain rooted within an empowerment of collective freedoms and social equity that sparks new visions and definitions of economic growth. Centering development on freedom is imperative because it gives direct agency to people who seek to catalyze their social opportunities and futures (Sen 1999:11). The diverse assortment of political, economic, and social realms all holds a stake in freedom, and when conjoined, can produce a strong foundation in establishing a development process that heightens the capabilities of the individual (Sen 1999:11). However, while exercising individual freedom is accessible to some, freedom often demands collective efforts to initiate its inclusion with development (Evans 2002:56). Development can hold an individual component, yet most of its ability to empower freedoms lies in the expansion of collective efforts. Organized groups such as unions and women’s groups represent powerful spheres that not only establish community but also offer the force required to pursue and achieve the freedoms they desire (Evans 2002:56). Additionally, the benefits arising from collective action not only constitute freedoms, but they also build and sustain the culture and identity of our communities (Evans 2002:57). Development, then, not only empowers freedom, but when fused with collaborative efforts, can help define or re-define the systems and institutions governing society. While the empowerment of collective freedoms remains crucial to development, social equity must also be emphasized. Allowing market mechanisms to “self-regulate” the collective futures of labor and land has the potential to dismantle society (Polanyi 1944:76). Development driven by free-market outcomes subjugates people and their environments to market logic, treating them as commodities despite their obvious fictitious nature, given that labor, land, and money are never created for sale (Polanyi 1944:75-76). Development must remain immersed in diverse socio-cultural arenas that can advance efforts to sustain social equity and address concerted and democratic demands. When development actively seeks to establish collective freedoms and promote social equity, new ways of understanding and formulating alternatives arise- grassroots movements entrenched in local autonomy, knowledge, and identity that don’t seek development alternatives, but rather create new options to development itself (Escobar 1992:27). Development must be rethought – not merely to dismantle discourse perpetuated by the West, which frames the “Third World” as “underdeveloped” (Escobar 1992:49). It must also give agency to grassroots movements that provide new imaginations and alternatives, establishing spaces for cultures and communities formerly compressed by the vices of dominant Western paradigms (Escobar 1992:49). Done effectively, development doesn’t solely empower collective freedoms; in so doing, new windows are opened that embrace a myriad of social movements and opportunities aiming to redefine dominant discourse and shape alternatives better aligned with democratic demands. Development that prioritizes collective freedom and equity urges us to continually rethink its role within societal paradigms, guiding one to view who development serves, and who it has marginalized and plundered to establish superiority throughout the West.
To properly establish ideal development in the global system, as outlined above, institutions and global economies must accept new roles. Since its inception within the global system, neoliberalism has become a hegemon within both discourse and application of development (Harvey 2005:3). As a result, a sort of ‘creative destruction’ ensues from the neoliberal process, wherein institutions, labor, social relations, and ways of life have all been tweaked and adjusted to properly address and respond to market logic (Harvey 2005:3). To properly express how development should be practiced in the global system, free-market ideals must be adjusted to centralize collective freedoms and social movements before mere market outcomes. Development must not only gear itself with a foundational bureaucracy producing autonomous decisions, but it must connect or embed these decisions with societal demands to better serve collective interests (Lin, Predatory States, April 10). To claim autonomy, states must hold their own rules, identities, and bureaucracies that can cushion against predatory threats like corruption (Lin, Predatory States, April 10). Thus, since neoliberal hegemony has effectively dissolved autonomy with widespread market logic, development runs the risk of serving similar private interests, without regard for its societal actors and collective interests. In the global system, developmental states must become double-sided: on one end, to better focus on bureaucratic efficiency that promotes selective tasks and goals; on the other, to embed themselves with societal reforms and goals that move beyond pure market outcomes (Evans 1989:583). Beyond embedded development, global institutions like the IMF and World Bank must also take on new duties. In the past, we’ve seen neoliberal development open markets in efforts to solve problems plaguing social equity, like poverty, which may even exacerbate the issue (Stiglitz 2007:4). The IMF even admits that market liberalization doesn’t create developmental growth, but instability, due to fundamental focuses on GDP rather than living standards and sustainability (Stiglitz 2007:17). Additionally, the IMF has delegitimatized itself on issues of democratic governance, due to their lack of democratic decision-making within their organization (Stiglitz 2007:19). As a result, the responsibility of these institutions rests in their ability to effectively promote local interests that can better illustrate many varied developmental goals across the global system. The IMF and World Bank undoubtedly play huge roles within the global system – it would be difficult to remove their influence. Given their power, development must demand that their strengths be exercised not only to highlight diverse social interests, but to allow countries and communities to define their visions of development, away from strict focuses on markets that have historically exploited and undermined them.
While achieving many of the goals for development outlined above can happen, there are many factors inhibiting a potential change in the global system. Globalization hasn’t only undermined democratic processes in developing countries, it has done so almost forcibly, subordinating countries to extractive policies that primarily benefit advanced industrial economies (Stiglitz 2007:9). However, the problems facing development lie beyond application; they are also present in language. Development discourse today still paints the global south as being “underdeveloped”, reinforcing colonial power dynamics between the global north and South, and subjugating the global south to a Western model of development (Escobar 1992:47). Development deserves proper nuance and diverse representation throughout language and application. However, current development patterns still suggest that all too often, Western developmental analyses continue to prescribe one-size-fits-all solutions that exacerbate structural and institutional inequities.
Question 2: Problems and Solutions
Among the major problems in development and globalization, the pervasiveness of the neoliberal hegemon across the global system has accelerated inequality and concentrated poverty. Neoliberalism’s dominance lies mainly in its ability to restore class power, given that its role as a political tool allows for vast capital accumulation among the few who benefit; the economic elite (Harvey 2005:19). Neoliberalism is further sustained by its ability to twist and take on different shapes. Meaning, when neoliberal principles, such as free markets and trade, inhibit the restoration of class power, they may be forgotten entirely to ensure the continuous financial flourishing of the elite (Harvey 2005:19). Class power is further solidified by various defenses – namely, military, police, and legal apparatuses to protect neoliberal market outcomes by whatever means necessary (Harvey 2005:2). The preservation of the economic elite must reside at the helm of the neoliberal process, which centralizes inequality not as a symptom, but as a structural necessity to the proper functioning of free markets. To create the free-market neoliberalism desires to function effectively, it must treat labor, land, and money as commodities. However important these three elements are to a functioning economic society, they cannot be viewed as commodities, or things created for sale (Polanyi 1944:75). Labor represents human activity, land represents nature, and money is an object of purchasing power – none are to be bought and sold, and are thus, fictitious (Polanyi 1944: 75-76). Neoliberalism doesn’t solely exploit these three elements; it dislocates them entirely (Polanyi 1944:76). Expanding neoliberal logic across all modes of development spells even further destruction: viewing human society as a mere attachment to the economic system, eroding cultural institutions, polluting landscapes, and alienating workers from their autonomy (Polanyi 76-79). In its plunder of the global south, neoliberalism, especially when perpetuated from the West, contributes to the discourse surrounding development, as mentioned earlier. Framing non-Western societies as “underdeveloped” not only creates avenues for exploitation but also adopts Western-centered ideals when the global north attempts to help “develop” these countries. The result is a blatant disregard for local knowledge and well-being, often because Western assessments of “basic needs”, as perpetuated by the World Bank, aren’t at all grounded in people’s everyday experience (Escobar 1992:46). This is mainly because Western societies implement strategies that are not only contextually absent but rooted in colonial power dynamics that continue to serve the economic elite.
In the search for remedies to the global intensification of inequality perpetuated by neoliberal hegemony, I believe there are two effective solutions. Namely, these include Arturo Escobar’s “Post-Development” and Karl Polanyi’s concept of “double movements”. While both explain the necessity of counter-movements to initiate social change and alter the course of development, they differ in their methodology, making them ideal collaborative solutions. The term “development” has only recently been inserted into dominant discourse, right after World War II, and has become a tool perpetuated by the West to deem countries in the global south as “underdeveloped”, creating avenues for their exploitation and intervention via the global north (Escobar 1992:24). In this way, the language surrounding “underdeveloped” countries has directly contributed to their loss of agency and vision within development, as Western analyses and models dominate the formation of the global consciousness (Escobar 1992:49). In response to Western-driven development and globalization, many alternatives arise: reframing democracy, emphasizing and empowering cultural differences, and directly critiquing development itself through social movements aiming to organize societies that respond to contextual needs (Escobar 1992:47-48). These new forms of discourse attempt to properly define the collective struggles of people in the global south in efforts to shed prior imaginations attributed to Western discourse surrounding development (Escobar 1992:47). The rise of autopoietic social movements contributes to these new forms of knowledge. Not only do they have a role to play in challenging the status quo, but they construct social phenomenology – new visions of reality and the social order that contribute to self-producing and organizing development dictated by local and indigenous agents (Escobar 1992:45). The autopoietic character of these social movements equips them to naturally resist Western development outcomes, whilst simultaneously establishing alternatives that aim to find new ways of imagining the “Third World” (Escobar 1992:49). The effects of neoliberal domination haven’t solely affected market outcomes and restored class power; it has changed how people configure development, particularly with knowledge that has contributed to the exploitation of the seemingly “underdeveloped” global south. However, the effects of the “self-regulating market” must still be examined, wherein Karl Polanyi offers another solution. Before the rise of the market economy, defined by its commoditization of labor, land, and money, economic activity was embedded within society (Lin, Polanyi and the Double Movement, February 11). However, the rise of self-regulating markets subsequently resulted in a disembodied economy, catalyzed by the fictitious commodities mentioned above (Lin, Polanyi and the Double Movement, February 11). In other words, through the creation of these new commodities, the framework of society was torn apart. Polanyi uses the disastrous effects of the Enclosure movement and the Industrial Revolution as examples of how disembedding can destroy communities, given that their new role as commodities in a self-regulating system was not natural (Polanyi 1944:79). What is natural, however, is the following response: the spontaneous creation of a double movement that was born out the pressing demand to resist the dehumanizing effects of the new market economy (Polanyi 1944:80). Given that Polanyi believes that self-regulating markets to be “un-natural”, the natural solution takes the form in double-movements that aim to re-embed economic and social activity with society (Lin, Polanyi and the Double Movement, February 11). The prevalence of the neoliberal superpower across development and globalization remains clear, yet the louder the protest, the larger the double movement becomes.
Ultimately, I believe Arturo Escobar’s concept of “post-development” offers the best possible solution to the devastating effects of neoliberal development for several reasons. From the beginning of this course, we’ve centered development discourse as a key process of creating knowledge and shaping power dynamics (Lin, Introduction, January 21). Escobar argues that the influence of development discourse subjugates the non-Western world to powerful language that makes them believe they’re “underdeveloped” (Lin, Introduction, January 21). As a result, discourse opens the door to hegemony, a process coined by Antonio Gramsci, wherein ruling elites intentionally tweak meanings and knowledge to garner consent – in this case, from the “Third World” (Lin, Introduction, January 21). Western-centered development, then, subdues the rest of the world to a dominant global system that mirrors colonial patterns, ignores local knowledge, and caters to the continued restoration of class power. Post-development engages us to rethink these dominant forms of language and their application by highlighting the cruciality of social movements and their fight to establish new spaces and visions for what development is, and whether it needs to be rethought altogether (Escobar 1992:49). In the effort to combat neoliberal hegemony, the right to radically reconsider development and its economic process doesn’t merely change discourse, it exposes the global consciousness to formerly squashed alternatives to development that can produce a new vision for the future.
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