All lectures and clips Development & Globalization
Lecture 1
Introduction to development
This course is an introduction to the interrelated themes of development and globalization
History of development: 1950s
- context: post-world war II, cold war, shifting hegemonic powers
- truman inauguration speech, 1949
- discussion question
- what kind of development does President Truman speak of?
- research, technology, disease, his world view over those of others, producing
more food because half of the people live in misery, oppression from
communist & peace that is established
- What happened with comunism
- America tried to get other countries on the side of democracy. development
is political, the aim is not always good
- Crewe & Axelby: the idea of a global geographical divide between have and have
nots. (p5)
- Discussion question
- was Truman right about the geographical divide?
- one sided view
Anthropology & Development: 1950s
- what could anthropology contribute to the new project of development?
Anthropology Development
Soft/qualitative hard/quantative
slow & uncertain knowledge fast scientific data
understanding other cultures changing other cultures
- 1950s were a mismatch between anthropology and development
- anthropologists were sidelined and critiqued
History of development: 1960s & 1970s
- context: decolonization, global recession
- development by whom? UNEP, UNDP, World Bank, IMF, OECD
- institutionalisation of development
- Development how? Increase GDP, loans
- Life and dept Stephanie Black 2001
- connection between development and independancy
Anthropology & Development: 1960s & 1970s
- Marxist anthropology & dependency theory
- feminist anthropology
- looking into this structural inequality
1
, - core and periphery
History of development 1980s
- context: debt crises of developing countries, neoliberalism
- development by whom? Banks, IMF, world bank, private sector, NGOs
- development how? Structural adjustment programs, privatization and liberalization -
are not helping at all
- Margeret Thatcher = face of neoliberalism
- in development: this is called the lost decade
Anthropology & DEvelopment: 1980s
- activism
- engage with grassroots movement
- example: Andrew gray: indigenous rights and development
- good example of ethnography: engagement
History of development: 1990s - currently
- context
- globalization
- governance
- climate change & natural resource crisis
- development how?
- MDGs, SDGs, sustainable development, good governance (less corruption),
improved institutions, rights, livelihoods
- Development by whom? NGOs, private sector, celebrities, grassroots organization,
networks, partnerships (together with) states
- development for whom? global south? (new label)
Anthropology & Development 1990s- currently
- 1990s
- post development
- today anthropologists can:
- do discourse analysis, critique development and think about alternatives to
development
- but not only
- according to James Ferguson anthropologists should engage more with
development in order to still matter as a discipline
Clip 1
Structure, Agency, Mimicry
1. structure and agency
Structure
- people are constrained in their actions
- they face a very narrow range of choices determined by structural factors connected,
for example, to class, geography, gender, social hierarchy and ethnicity
- atonomous choices, capacity to act
2
, And agency
- The capacity to act
- i am using the term agent as someone who acts and brings about change and whose
achievements can be judged in terms of her own values and objectives
- degree to which individuals have control over their lives
And too much agency?
- nowadays there really is no primary poverty left in this country (UK). in western
countries we are left with the problems which aren’t poverty. All right, there may be
poverty because people don’t know how to budget, don’t know how to spend their
earnings or a have a personality defect - thatcher
Bourdieu: Habitus
- dispositions/agency that are inherited and reproduced
- socialization
- habitus = determined by social class
Ortner: Serious games
- agency? yes, but always produced by social relations…
- relations of solidarity
- relations of competition
- agency is interested, culturally constituted practice embedded in power relations
2. mimicry as agency
Ferguson
- How to study cultural mimicry while still being true to anti-imperialism?
- The scandal of Africans who wants to be like whites was that they threatened, by
their very conduct, to confirm the claim of the racist colonizer: that African ways were
inferior to European ones (553)
Appropriation and resistance
- integrating symbols of colonial power into an indigenous cultural logic
- by enacting European culture, Africans denaturalize the political authority of
Europeans, they extract European traits and make them work for themselves
- mimicry is thus, in this reading, an act of defiance to European order, a declaration of
autonomy
Ferguson’s critique
- a different kind of agency: not resistance or defiance, but a desire to be included
- appropriation argument obscures message
- mimicry: a claim to full membership (of global society)
- “ … an anthropological insistence on interpreting gestures of similitude in terms of
parody and magic has the effect of obscuring the continuing claims of africans and
others to full memberships rights in a world society (559)”
Key points
3
Lecture 1
Introduction to development
This course is an introduction to the interrelated themes of development and globalization
History of development: 1950s
- context: post-world war II, cold war, shifting hegemonic powers
- truman inauguration speech, 1949
- discussion question
- what kind of development does President Truman speak of?
- research, technology, disease, his world view over those of others, producing
more food because half of the people live in misery, oppression from
communist & peace that is established
- What happened with comunism
- America tried to get other countries on the side of democracy. development
is political, the aim is not always good
- Crewe & Axelby: the idea of a global geographical divide between have and have
nots. (p5)
- Discussion question
- was Truman right about the geographical divide?
- one sided view
Anthropology & Development: 1950s
- what could anthropology contribute to the new project of development?
Anthropology Development
Soft/qualitative hard/quantative
slow & uncertain knowledge fast scientific data
understanding other cultures changing other cultures
- 1950s were a mismatch between anthropology and development
- anthropologists were sidelined and critiqued
History of development: 1960s & 1970s
- context: decolonization, global recession
- development by whom? UNEP, UNDP, World Bank, IMF, OECD
- institutionalisation of development
- Development how? Increase GDP, loans
- Life and dept Stephanie Black 2001
- connection between development and independancy
Anthropology & Development: 1960s & 1970s
- Marxist anthropology & dependency theory
- feminist anthropology
- looking into this structural inequality
1
, - core and periphery
History of development 1980s
- context: debt crises of developing countries, neoliberalism
- development by whom? Banks, IMF, world bank, private sector, NGOs
- development how? Structural adjustment programs, privatization and liberalization -
are not helping at all
- Margeret Thatcher = face of neoliberalism
- in development: this is called the lost decade
Anthropology & DEvelopment: 1980s
- activism
- engage with grassroots movement
- example: Andrew gray: indigenous rights and development
- good example of ethnography: engagement
History of development: 1990s - currently
- context
- globalization
- governance
- climate change & natural resource crisis
- development how?
- MDGs, SDGs, sustainable development, good governance (less corruption),
improved institutions, rights, livelihoods
- Development by whom? NGOs, private sector, celebrities, grassroots organization,
networks, partnerships (together with) states
- development for whom? global south? (new label)
Anthropology & Development 1990s- currently
- 1990s
- post development
- today anthropologists can:
- do discourse analysis, critique development and think about alternatives to
development
- but not only
- according to James Ferguson anthropologists should engage more with
development in order to still matter as a discipline
Clip 1
Structure, Agency, Mimicry
1. structure and agency
Structure
- people are constrained in their actions
- they face a very narrow range of choices determined by structural factors connected,
for example, to class, geography, gender, social hierarchy and ethnicity
- atonomous choices, capacity to act
2
, And agency
- The capacity to act
- i am using the term agent as someone who acts and brings about change and whose
achievements can be judged in terms of her own values and objectives
- degree to which individuals have control over their lives
And too much agency?
- nowadays there really is no primary poverty left in this country (UK). in western
countries we are left with the problems which aren’t poverty. All right, there may be
poverty because people don’t know how to budget, don’t know how to spend their
earnings or a have a personality defect - thatcher
Bourdieu: Habitus
- dispositions/agency that are inherited and reproduced
- socialization
- habitus = determined by social class
Ortner: Serious games
- agency? yes, but always produced by social relations…
- relations of solidarity
- relations of competition
- agency is interested, culturally constituted practice embedded in power relations
2. mimicry as agency
Ferguson
- How to study cultural mimicry while still being true to anti-imperialism?
- The scandal of Africans who wants to be like whites was that they threatened, by
their very conduct, to confirm the claim of the racist colonizer: that African ways were
inferior to European ones (553)
Appropriation and resistance
- integrating symbols of colonial power into an indigenous cultural logic
- by enacting European culture, Africans denaturalize the political authority of
Europeans, they extract European traits and make them work for themselves
- mimicry is thus, in this reading, an act of defiance to European order, a declaration of
autonomy
Ferguson’s critique
- a different kind of agency: not resistance or defiance, but a desire to be included
- appropriation argument obscures message
- mimicry: a claim to full membership (of global society)
- “ … an anthropological insistence on interpreting gestures of similitude in terms of
parody and magic has the effect of obscuring the continuing claims of africans and
others to full memberships rights in a world society (559)”
Key points
3
