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Entire course summary of 'Development and Globalization' year 2020/2021
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Crewe and Axelby Summary - Development and Globalization
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Course summaryDevelopment and Globalization
Period 1of year 2 Cultural Anthropology
Vrije Universiteit
2020
Week 1: Introduction in Development
Brief history of development
o 1950s: right after WW2. Shifting hegemonic powers as the age of empire ends.
Majority of the world living under the poverty line. U.S and the ‘will to improve’. The
rise of the United Nations and the creation of Human Rights. Large divide between
the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’.
o 1960-1970: age of decolonization and global recession. Anthropology started to
engage in development in the 70s. Dependency theory. The Third World as the
Periphery, the First World as the Core (Marxist Anthropology). The idea of the West
benefitting from the inferiority of the Global South.
o 1980: age of dept crises and the beginning of neoliberalism. Feminist anthropology.
Empowerment as the solution. Anthropologist engaging in human rights and
empowerment of indigenous people.
o 1990s-currently: globalization, governance and sustainable development. The creation
of SDG’s (sustainable development goals). More involvement of the Global South in
the world of development. The rise of NGO’s and development as a capitalist
industry. Anthropologists as critics of the development world. Ferguson: development
still matters and anthropologists should engage in it. Seeing development as a
problematic discourse that anthropologists should critique. Erikson: the post-1991
world is an overheated world, above all characterised by frictions and tensions.
Development as modernity
o To western modernization theorists, development can be achieved by mimicking the
historical experience of the industrial states in the Global North.
o Western construct. Very ethnocentric.
o Based on capitalist economic thinking. Modernization can only be achieved by
industrialization and a shift to a capitalist society.
o Development as a construct to further the hegemonic power of the Global North
Dependency theory
o The theory: keeping the Global south underdeveloped by making them dependent on
the Global North for its development.
o Development is no more than an exercise of power.
o Beneficiaries of development staying inferior to the global north.
o Excluding the Global South from the world society and the world market. This makes
them stay inferior and dependent on the Global North for economic and social
development.
, o It is those with the least power and greatest dependency to be the most
underdeveloped and impoverished.
Good governance
o Eurocentric construct of a government with a rule of law and corruption free.
o Created around the 1990.
o The west imposing their idea of a ‘good government’ on less developed countries.
o A country with a ‘good government’ is the gateway to modernization and thus
development.
Anthropology and development
o Anthropologists as a mediator between the agencies and the subjects of development.
o Making the global south more involved in their own development.
o Introducing development in the Global North.
o Changing or at least critiquing problematic development discourse.
o Anthropologists should understand the needs of beneficiaries (development subjects).
Structure and agency in the world of development
o Lack of agency in development aid. Beneficiaries are constrained by the structure of
development agencies. Beneficiaries are pictured as ‘poor people’ without any agency
creating a problematic image (‘poverty porn’).
o Agency is always constrained to some extent. People are always unable to make
complete free choices. Ortner: “agency is interested, culturally constituted practice
embedded in power relations”.
Ferguson: mimicry and membership to ‘the new world society’
o Mimicry as a form of resistance for colonial power. Mimicry is thus, an act of
autonomy and an act of deviance to European order. Mimicry as a claim to full
membership to the ‘new world society’ and modernity.
o Ferguson: mimicking European society is a way for Africans to climb up the social
ladder and fit in with the ‘civilized group of people’ (this was portrayed) who were
members of the world society.
o Abjection: the disconnection from Africans with the privileged world in the North
(Racial hierarchy excluding Africans from the world society).
o Ferguson: giving Africans the membership of ‘the new world society’ will give them
the social and economic rights that they deserve. Their exclusion is keeping them as
the oppressed subject to the ‘modern North’.
o Participation in the new world society is a gateway to modernization independence
and thus, development.
‘Jumping scales’ (Ferguson, p. 171)
o In the article ‘mimicry and membership’ there are two letters included. These letters
are appeals to a global entity or authority that might be able to address global
inequality directly. The appeals are coming from African victims of global inequality
that seemed to have lost faith in any redemption at the national level. Hence, they
‘jump scales’ to an international level in the hope the global authority has the chance
to grant rights and solve inequality.
, o Jumping scales refers to the switch of appeals from a national level to an international
or global authority (i.e. World Bank, NATO, America, Members and Official of
Europe).
Seminar question and answer
Q: Which structures and agencies do you identify in the clip (Ed Sheeran)? And which
structures and agencies are absent?
A:
o Structures: white privilege, development agencies, structure of poverty.
o Agencies: little agency in their own life and in the video, Ed Sheeran having the
agency to change something with monetary funds.
o Their agency is constrained in the video. Young children constrained by poverty.
Gang violence, geographic constraint.
Week 2: Introduction in Globalization
Key notes:
o Globalization happens locally and needs local carriers.
o Globalization means different things in different places.
o Global problems show the intricacies of local issues (look at the corona crisis).
o Globalization always needs local carriers. Anthropologists therefore look at the local
to understand the global (and the other way around).
Eriksen: 7 dimensions of globalization
1) Disembedding (or deterritorialization): Physical distance is becoming less irrelevant.
Production, consumption, policies and identities become detached from local places
(leading to non-places without local identity and a feeling of belonging). Re-
embedding (localization, reterritorialization): embracing the particular and rejecting
global identities. The more similar we become the same, the more we stress our local
uniqueness and our embeddedness in place.
2) Acceleration: speed increases and time-space are compressed. Temporal and spatial
experiences are increasingly shrinking.
3) Standardization: creating cultural standards. Sharing of cultural standards (the
metric system etc.). Enables connectedness.
4) Interconnectedness: creating social networks and them become wider and denser.
The emergence of transnational institutions. Creating an interconnected global
society.
5) Movement: Movement is restricted by your economic capital. Differences between
migrants, refugees and tourists. Governments view people as economic subjects.
6) Mixing: the mixing of cultures. Think of cultural appropriation and adaptation.
7) Vulnerability: the increasing worries of our environmental vulnerability. Global
warming, depletion of resources, pollution. Related to ‘the double bind’ (see below).
Global agency (Lee) and socio-economic vulnerability
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