Notes of all the lectures for the exam of Development and Globalization. Of the course taught by De Thije and Maiyo in September/October 2018, including all guest lectures
Lecture 1 – Introducton (history, colonialism, globalisatonn
- Mobility, infrastructure and other developments to do with movement have to do with
globalizaton and global development.
- Development is a complex concept, which means diferent things to diferent people. It also
involves diferent stages, concepts, levels, actors and scopes. All the diferent lenses have diferent
meanings for development.
- Development is disruptve of existng systems (livelihoods, nature, social services), this will increase
segregaton and thus confict. Development has winners and losers.
- Developmental course
Development is a constructed concept
Bolstered by a dominant discourse
Discourses legitmize ideas, policies, plans and programmes/actons
BUT-interventons have real social and ecological efects at the local level
e.g. transnatonal land deals and win-win discourses
- Local level paterns of development
Efects of development interventons afect diferent people diferently
How do they experience it, how are they involved, do they want development??
Many tmes there is resistance against the interventon because of the way the interventons
afected or will afect their lives. -> Access restrictons, user rights, land and resource rights,
cultural and heritage rights, tenure (in)security/losing ttles, environmental degradaton,
forcible relocaton/violent movement of the people, threats, intmidaton, violence. -> are all
possible negatve consequences for the people living in the place of development.
- Aid and development
The global north comes to the global south with good intentons, are they really only good
intentons following the people afected? It seems they the recipients of age are grateful and
happy. But the northern people might use this experience as an act of exotcness and
tourism. So is it really about the people they are helping or is it about self-enhancement?
Nowadays development seems more collaboratve and it does not only come from the global
north anymore.
- Development projects give huge opportunity for corruptness by leaders of the development
country. Motves of all partes can be questoned on ethics. The role of power should be taken into
account.
- Development does not afect everybody equally, there are always diferentatons, some will
beneft, some will not. It is not to say that somebody loses out, but some (mostly powerful people)
proft more than others.
Five important lessons:
1. Developments has winners and losers
2. Structure and agency in development
3. Inequality in internatonal relatons
4. Politcal history of the thinking over development
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, 5. Ecological limits to growth
The lesson of structure and agency
- Structure: people are constrained in their actonss and face a very narrow range of choices
determined by structural factors connected, for example, to class, geography, social hierarchy and
ethnicity
- Agency: Meaning (Geertz)s Power (Foucault)s Agency as the other side of power, degree to which
individuals have control over their own lives, actors have optons and use these, resistance too
- How to reconcile structure with agency?
- Bourdieu: habitus is a set of dispositons inherited and reproduced over tme. The habitus generates
certain practces and perceptons, but it is not deterministc and there is room for individualism.
Habitus is embedded, it can be seen in your gestures and manners, it is also shared.
- Giddens: Agents (actors) have the ability to change structures, and to resist and rework their
inherited structures of living. At the same tme, though, these structures provide a real, powerful,
and at tmes sufocatng framework within which people must live.
- Ortner: Large scale cultural and politcal processes must be grounded in, and understood as
emergent from, the practces of real people on the ground. Agency is interested, culturally
consttuted practce embedded in power relatons. People have agency to change meaning in their
own mind and the mind of others: this includes resistance to meaning imposed on you by more
powerful others.
Euphemisms for the Global Other
- Poor people, low income countries, contnents of Africa and South America, non-European
- Other labels
Modernizaton theory Underdeveloped countries
Dependency Systematcally underdeveloped
Cold War Third World
80-90’s Least/less developed countries, developing countries
2000’s Global South
Lecture 2 – Introducton (history, colonialism, globalisatonn
1. Globalizaton
- Rapidly increasing and complex interactons between societes, cultures, insttutons and individuals
world-wide.
Stretching politcal, economic, and social actvites across natons and contnents
Intensifcaton of internatonal contacts (fows of trade, investment, culture, etc.)
This growing interconnectedness is linked to the evolutons of communicaton and
transportaton (greater velocity of movement, goods, informaton, people) ‘tme-space
compression’
Distant events have a deeper local impact and global-local boundary is blurred
- Globalizaton = homogenizaton (the fatening of diferences)
- Globalizatons = Westernizaton (McDonaldizaton)
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,- Globalizaton is predominantly an economic process (dominated by Western transnatonal
corporatons)
- Overheatng (Eriksen)
But…
- Is more than an economic relatonships alone e.g. global moral community (‘one moral space’)
- Globalizaton always implies localizaton
- Scales are important: scope and compass, social scale, cultural scale, temporal scale
2. thinking about development
- A past: Development can be seen as a process that can be fnished, a past process.
- To achieve: Or as an ideal that we should achieve and aim for, in the future.
- Concrete strategy, a planned interventon (emphasised in the text book
- Development can be an employment opportunity, for example for economist and anthropologist
- Working defniton: should include change (positve, good change)/ to undo poverty. Keep in mind
that positve/good can have diferent kinds of meaning for every involved person. Undoing poverty is
more concrete, is a part of positve/good change.
- All the defnitons of development all have the noton of ending poverty/misery. But the ideas and
ways to get there can difer very much.
Develop Mato Grosso (example)
- Region in Brazil
- Amazon opened up for farmers
- It was not possible to grow the products they wanted to plant. The people became impoverished
- Someone found gold, a gold rush happened
- They started to cut the wood, sell it, mine and produce gold, sell gold.
- Afer the gold came the soy, to plant soy you have to cut more trees
- There is a lot of discussing between the gold miners and the soy farmers. The soy looks beautful,
the goldmines look like a mess. A lot of negatve comments about gold.
- Economic progress for the people means development.
- How people relate to the natural context must be taken into account when developing.
- While others want to protect the rainforest, the people living there might want to take out the gold
or plant soy frst and then replant the forest so that they can make a living. Or cut some wood for
their own safety.
Thinking about development (contnued)
- Policies are not neutral, where do they actually come from?
- Colonial interventons
Economic (infrastructure): colonists constructed roads and railways, but was this always in
the advantage of the natve people?
Desire to help (missionaries etc.)
Paternalistc: to ideas of what to do came from Europe
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, To strengthen colonial economy, so that is European could proft from it. For example by
building infrastructure for trade. Profts where not invested in the colonial country
To legitmize colonialism, making colonizaton seem positve
Natonalists afer independence inherited development thinking of the colonial state
- Modernizaton:
Overcoming the efects of WWII
Marshall Plan for Europe and Japan: United Natons, World Bank (IBRD) Internatonal
Monetary Fund (IMF) WTO (GATT) to make smooth and peaceful internatonal relatons
possible.
- To become modern:
Linear progression (Truman) (mimicking historical experience): the goal was to become
modern, like the West.
Development as a historical process resultng from modernizaton: Traditonal societes
should go through the same processes and stages as Europe had gone so that they would
become modernized.
Stages of development (Rostow)
1. Traditonal society: High percentage of people are involved with agriculture and a high
percentage of the country’s wealth is invested in ‘non-productve’ actvites such as the
military and religion.
2. Preconditons for take-of: an elite group initates innovatons economic actvites. Under
the infuence of these well-educated leaders, the country starts to invest in new
technology and infrastructure. External trade begins to occur
3. Take- of: rapid growth is generated in a limited number of economic actvites, such as
textles or food products. These few, take-of industries achieve technical advances and
become productve, while other sectors of the economy remain dominated by traditonal
practces.
4. Drive to maturity: Modern technology difuses to a wide variety of industries, which then
experience rapid growth comparable to the take-of industries. Workers become more
skilled and specialized. The economy is producing a wide range of goods and services and
there is less reliance on imports.
5. Age of Mass Consumpton: The economy is geared towards mass consumpton. The
consumer durable industries fourish. Service tertary becomes increasingly dominant.
Modernizaton cannot be copied into other places and other tmes.
- Control
New colonialism: the motves of current development that have to do with aid and security.
But also economically, countries from the north are aggressively expanding in developing
natons, bringing problems (obesity) as well as wealth. (McDonaldizaton)
Technology is control, the developers own the technology, no transfer of knowledge
Dependência: development as control. Dependency is an historical conditon which shapes a
certain structure of the world economy such that it favours some countries to the detriment
of the others and limits the development possibilites of the subordinate economics, a
situaton in which the economy of a certain group of countries is conditoned by the
development and expansion an another economy, to which their own is subjected.
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