This document contains the lecture notes of the course Rethinking Global Inequality: People, Power and Poverty, part of the minor Development Studies at the University of Groningen.
Rethinking Global Inequality: People, Power and Poverty
Lecture 1: introduction
What is the problem and why is it a problem?
- What is the problem in a word (and the expression of it) (concept, theory)
- What is in a meaning? Meaning making?
- Interpretations (perceptions, interest, experiences, framing)
- Context matters (socio-cultural, economic and political)
- Time matters (historical, contemporary and future)
- Definition matters
Order of thinking:
Perception Framing Treatment
Humanity and interconnectedness
Existence, Nature, People and Places = globalization, glocalization, and translocality
Reality, experiences and action/interventions
1. What to know? Why is knowing important?
2. How to know it? And why is this important
3. Why rethinking global inequality: people, power and poverty?
The intersection between global and local natural and social processes
- Requires theorizing that allows us to re-assess the core feature of people and place
relationships that are still embedded in specific locations but increasingly and intensely
interconnected through different forms of globalization and glocalization
- The multifaceted dynamics generated by the interconnected social processes, as well as the
complex actor/institutional configurations, provides a valid ground to examine the link
between development and IR
- Simultaneity, intensity and the instant nature of the impact of lobal and local process thrust
the question of development into academic and policy debates and vice versa
Globalisation: Global social processes and impact of international economy (Hirst & Thompson;
Power):
Features:
- Dissolving borders?
- Deregulation (market versus state involvement)
- Flows – capital mobility, goods and ‘people’
- Flexible production (containerisation of plants, flexible and cheap labour)
- Networked – ICT, digitalisation
- TNCs/MNCs, IOs and INGOs as major actors
Implications:
- Governance and the Nation-state
National political and economic strategies and actions
Deregulation versus reregulation
Multilevel governance
, Concentration of financial flows in the Triad (Europe, Japan and USA versus BRICS)
G8 and powerful governance pressure over markets
Inequality/equality:
- Unequal and/or unjust distribution of resources and opportunities in society (within and
across groups/countries)
- How is it entrenched in various socio-economic and political structures?
- What are the manifestations and causes?
- What and whose resources?
Whose responsibility?
o Moral ethics of equity and social justice
o Normative idea of ‘deservingness’
- What formula? Or guiding principles?
Poverty (economic well-being, capability, and social exclusion):
- Aberrant behaviour or isolation, seen as the cause of poverty
- Social, behavioural, and political underpinnings of human well-being
- Lack of individual capabilities, such as education or health, to attain a basic level of human
well-being
Power:
How are global institutions equipped to respond to the challenges of the 21 st century?
- Poverty eradication (uitroeiing)
- Climate crisis
- Economic crisis
- Conflicts
- Pandemics
What does the world’s response to Economic crisis 2008, Ebola and Covid-19 and Russian invasion of
Ukraine tell us about the state of international cooperation and global governance?
Power within development discourse:
Ideas about development, shaped by:
- Experiences of colonialism and post-colonialism
- Economic theories
- Interpretations of history
- Cultural perceptions and social attitudes that embed power in relationships and hidden
assumptions linked to ideas about race, the assumed superiority of western institutions and
gender
People (development challenges and responsibilities):
- Morals or questions about shared humanity
- Principles (UN Charter)
Social progress
Human rights
Freedoms (from want and fear)
MDGs and 2030 Sustainable Development Goals
- Interventions
Development assistance: does aid help or hinder development?
, Inequality, power and poverty
1. What is problematic?
From world regions perspective
From a nation-state perspective
2. What is challenging?
From a knowledge perspective
From a policy perspective
From a practice perspective (profit and non-profit)
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