Loomnie

I was looking through my computer earlier today and I discovered a review I wrote during my first weeks as a Masters in Development Studies student at Uppsala in Sweden. The first thing those guys did was to encourage us to question the whole idea of development by making us read Gilbert Rist’s The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith. Below is a review I wrote of the book – an assignment. As I read through it today I strongly resisted the urge to edit my 24 year-old self, so excuse the sometimes flowery language. 

Words, Spirits and History: A review of Gilbert Rist’s The History of Development

What is it with words? While some hardly make a sound others simply stand out, they call attention to themselves, beg to be heard. One of them is development. It is simply unimaginable that this word, and its most recent offsprings, human and sustainable development(s) should be subjected to as much rigorous examination and criticism as Gilbert Rist does in The History of Development. But the word is not what Rist battles with, it is the philosophy which gives the word life, which makes it relevant; it is the spirit which the word conjures, and the faith which it commands that necessitate such examination. Then, words have long had a way of creeping into our consciousness and dominating our imagination, but not without some aid. Rist set out to explain the process by which this word gained and kept prominence. Perhaps the first thing it would be good to know is that the word has an origin.

Even before opening the book we get an idea of where the word came from. From the subtitle of the book we have a vague idea of the word’s birthplace, but not its birth process. Rist traces the process by which development came to become the dominant paradigm of measuring relations between North and South, he shows that the word has its roots in Western consciousness. He goes as far as to Aristotle’s conception of nature as development in circles, i.e. as a series of beginnings and ends and new beginnings, to St Augustine’s view of history as eschatological as it is presumed to be linked to the Bible, and ultimately to Jean-Baptiste Say and his social evolutionists who saw the western world as the most advanced one because of its high level of production and consumption. Apart from this argument for the western world’s referencing of itself as the ideal, their defeat of “savage races” seemed to lend credence to social evolutionism. It seemed only sensible to conclude that the western human was the most advanced of humans. Of necessity, this set the stage for the next level in the development of the history of development: colonialism.

In the late nineteenth century, the savage needed protection, and guidance in utilising the abundance of natural resources which nature had deemed fit to thrust upon him, or so the colonialists say. It was a period in which global relations marched from conquered/ conqueror to savage/civilised, and so colonised/coloniser. Several arguments were used to convince the people of the nobility of the endeavour, one was economical and another was purely paternalistic. Who wouldn’t blame the civilised world if they failed to bring civilisation to the dark parts of the world? If some parts of the world were uncivilised it was only morally obligatory for the part that was to bring civilisation to the other part. But the dominant paradigm was soon to adopt a different, more portent and enduring concept, that of development.

Rist gives the birth of development as the time of President Harry Truman’s inaugural address. From that time on, the relationship of countries of the north and those of the south came to be defined by the level of development. The paradigm shifted from that of colonised/coloniser to underdeveloped/developed. The main problem of this distinction was its assumption that underdevelopment is a natural stage of humanity. It was not an effect but could only be the antecedent of the “developed” Northern world. It was as if the North could look at the South and see how it was before it was touched by development. This perception of things could absolve the North of any responsibility in making the South the way it was, as underdeveloped is an intransitive verb, it is not an effect but can only be affected. The peoples of the South were no longer viewed as individual nations with individual histories, they were simply underdeveloped countries; they were deprived of the privilege of having their situations explained by history and were instead described as the natural state of being that was embarrassing and so would have to be helped to the state of the industrialised countries. And the way to do this was given as increasing the GDP. Perhaps we should say a little about Rostow’s proposition and his stages of economic growth.

Rostow’s recommendation for economic growth underlines an assumption that is an offspring of the development paradigm. Since it is believed that underdevelopment is a natural state from which the developed countries rose, it was only natural to presume that to effect development all one had to do was to follow the steps through which the North rose and then development would necessarily arrive in the underdeveloped regions. Rostow’s scale of development then starts with the underdeveloped stage, a natural state in which development is lacking and which has to proceed to the stage in which the preconditions for development are taking shape. During this time the society is gearing for the next stage when the preconditions are already set and the society is ready to develop. This stage Rostow calls the take-off stage – the GNP starts rising and the move towards industrialisation is instituted. The fourth stage is the drive to maturity stage. Here, the societies are already experiencing a rise in GDP and since the elite are benefiting strongly from this they would be encouraged to ensure the continuation of growth. The final stage is that of high consumption rates since the gains of productivity is distributed to the people. This stage is also characterised by the welfare state. This is another evolutionist account of development that, needless to say, is doomed to fail in capturing the development process.

Rist also examines the different conferences and reports that were convened and prepared in the name of development. There is almost no need to examine each one in itself, the basic theme that runs though all of them is the desire to write away history by not focussing on the need for a redefinition of development. This is exemplified by the report of the New International Economic Order (NIEO). The text of the report is a reinforcement of the dominant paradigm, it emphasised “economic growth, expansion of trade and increased aid by the industrial nations” as the solution to the problem of underdevelopment. Like many reports produced by such organisations its recommendations were not implemented. Rist says it is really a relief that it was not, as the recommendations would have been more harmful to the Third World than before, it would have widened the gap between the rich and poor countries as it still situated the source of development in the North, and the source would have to help the poor countries to achieve development by assisting them with aid and investment. Experience has shown that private investment in poor countries only come when the investor knows that it can maximise his profit, and this often to the detriment of the economy of the poor countries.

However, there is a report that Rist says stands out for its boldness in declaring that another development is possible. The Dag Hammarskjörld Foundation report extends the concept of development from mere economic growth to something that has to be born by each society out of what is unique to it. This means that there cannot be a universal definition of development. Another thing that sets it aside from all other reports is that it includes the industrialised countries as part of the countries that need to become developed. They need to review their consumption patterns. This report was simply forgotten.

The structural Adjustment Programmes of the 1980s is another point that is worthy of note in the history of development. It was a direct child of the lending activities of Northern creditors who lent money irresponsibly, without enough security, to Southern countries. The major impact of structural adjustment programmes was in impoverishing the peoples the more. It was thought that for the countries to be able to pay off their debt they had to, among other things, cut down on the involvement of government in the economy and the financing of infrastructure projects. The meaning of this is continued impoverishment of the population. This era was the era of the trickle down policies. The harm these policies did in the Third World has been severally studied. Considering that Rist’s mission is to show how contradictory development could be, and in fact is, he paid too cursory an attention to it. For the recency of these programmes and their failure make them scream for attention.

One of the problems with works that set out primarily to criticise a notion is the failure to provide an alternative. Rist’s criticisms are the state of the art in its field; they capture the very contradictions of the term, its actions and proponents. But they fail to provide a way out of the problem. One could try to understand this problem by pointing at the fact that it was not easy to proffer a solution where a whole industry is built around a concept. Rist talks about this when he pointed to the organs of United Nations, and the NGOs, both local and global, that are founded around the development concept. If one were to do away with the concept and its baggage what does one do with the industry? Where does one put them?

Another problem is about what is to be done instead of giving aid and other forms of assistance to poor countries. Rist’s cynicism in criticising these moves as reinforcing the development paradigm is understood but, practically, what is to be done? What is the alternative to this? Isn’t it rather better to continue with these and all its different siblings than to simply sit and whine, especially as the paradigm does not seem about to change in the nearest future? I am saying this at the peril of sounding naïve and simplistic but, being a citizen of the Third World, I understand that a long-term solution would have to take into account not just the immediate satisfaction of hunger but the continued survival, and by extension peaceful existence of a people, it would be more naïve to fail to act for today while being pre-occupied with thinking about tomorrow.

To answer the questions about what to do Rist offers three answers. One of them borrows from Christian Comeliau. This approach advocates economic growth and the proper integration of the Southern economies into the world economy, especially according to how they can gain from it. This is against blindly advocating the promotion of free trade. He is not against loans as long as the terms of the loans ensure that they can be paid back. He also advocates the transfer of technology to poor countries by multinational companies. In the classic Rist tradition he picks apart this proposition by questioning the intentions of the people who are supposed to initiate these moves. Will they be sincere enough to initiate the needed reforms? And even if they are what is the assurance that the programmes won’t be abandoned after the next coup d’etat, or elections? What does this leave us but a feeling of utter dejection and disillusionment? The second answer draws from the experiences of some grassroots movements in some poor parts of the world. Instead of seeking to become like the rich countries they organise to change the attitude and behaviour of the people, encouraging them to concentrate on what they posses and not on what they lack. Although Rist admits that a person who believes in GDP and per capita income would point to the material needs of these people, he concludes that what they feel would nevertheless be fewer discontentments as it would be if they were concentrating on their needs. But for how long can such islands sustain in the world where diffusion of information is the norm and not the exception?

The third and most appealing answer to the question is a total rethinking of the relationship between societies, drawing from the anthropology and history disciplines, as against a purely economic approach. These disciplines should help to study alternative models to achieving the state popularly referred to as development. This is because theoretical models that are expected to capture the reality, and reality, or alternative reality, can be perceived basically from historical and anthropological perspectives. This is a theoretical approach that does not neglect the potency of the two earlier suggestions. For Rist, the three form a good team, although certainly not the best.

These answers are good enough on the surface but considering that development is such a new creature that has grown in so much importance over a short period of time, a creature that can be likened to a religion, with its own priests and institutions, what is the assurance that these are practical answers? Just like Rist criticises the first answer we can almost see resistance to the development of an alternative paradigm. To be practical, are studies advocated by anthropologists not going to be funded by development agencies? Are these anthropologists not going to work within certain frameworks prescribed by development experts? In a world where research-funding agencies provide funding only for projects in their own interest, what would be the incentive to embark on such studies? Rist’s book is a classic deconstructionist text but it falls flat when it attempts to do more than that.

The three doctoral candidates will work on the following research subjects:

1. Historical relations between demography and land use in West Africa

2. Decision‐making within rural households in West Africa

3. The politics of adaptation to climate change in West Africa

Expectation:
The candidate will be expected to participate in the interdisciplinary and disciplinary
courses of the ZEF Doctoral Studies Program from 1st October 2011 ‐ February 2012.
He/she will develop an individual research proposal until February 2012. For data
collection, 10‐12 months of field research in West Africa will be required. During the
writing‐up period of the dissertation, the candidate will be based at ZEF in Bonn.
Duration of the doctoral studies:
Three years starting from August 2011 under conditional acceptance of the confirmation
by the funding agency. A scholarship awarded will cover living, research as well as travel
cost.

Requirements for the applicants:
• very good degree (Diploma, Master or Magister) in social anthropology, social
geography, political sciences or development sociology
• very good writing skills in English are required for the dissertation
• very good knowledge of French are required for research in a francophone
country
• good knowledge of field research methods is required
• experience in research is of advantage
• work experience in West Africa is of advantage

African candidates are highly encouraged to apply.

Applications:
The eligible candidates are invited to send their application including
• a letter of motivation
• a concept note that addresses the research topic, problem statement, research
objectives and question, suggested methodology (2‐3 pages)
• Curriculum Vitae
• copies of academic certificates
• a letter of reference.

Please, send the hard copy of the application to:
Center for Development Research
Dr. Irit Eguavoen (ZEFa)
Walter‐Flex‐Str. 3
D‐ 53113 Bonn
Germany

Closing date for the application is the 20th June 2011. Short–listed candidates will be
contacted for an interview.
The scholarships start in August 2011. The calls for application are published on the project websites:

Weiterführende Links:
www.wascal.org, www.zef.de

… is the title of a new book by Lucy Norris of the Department of Anthropology, University College, London.

The blurb:

In today’s globally connected marketplace, a wedding sari in rural north India may become a woman’s blouse or cushion cover in a Western boutique. Lucy Norris’s anthropological study of the recycling of clothes in Delhi follows garments as they are gifted, worn, handed on, discarded, recycled, and sold once more. Gifts of clothing are used to make and break relationships within middle-class households, but a growing surplus of unwanted clothing now contributes to a global glut of textile waste. When old clothing is, for instance, bartered for new kitchen utensils, it enters a vast waste commodity system in which it may be resold to the poor or remade into new textiles and exported. Norris traces these local and transnational flows through homes and markets as she tells the stories of the people who work in the largely hidden world of fabric recycling.

Click for more information on the book.

… more oil is spilled from the [Niger] delta’s network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP‘s Deepwater Horizon rig last month.

For instance:

On 1 May this year a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Community leaders are now demanding $1bn in compensation for the illness and loss of livelihood they suffered. Few expect they will succeed. In the meantime, thick balls of tar are being washed up along the coast.

Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline was attacked by rebels. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state and another in Ogoniland. “We are faced with incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years old,” said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP.

Read the article here. Hopefully, one of the outcomes of the Gulf oil spill would be that people start talking more about spills in other parts of the world.

If you are in London on June 14 and you are interested in textile recycling, see the announcement below. I will be making a presentation on Igbo trade networks and secondhand clothing

RECYCLING TEXTILE TECHNOLOGIES

A one-day workshop from 9am to 5pm, on June 14th 2010

To be held at the Pearson North Lecture Theatre, University College London

Waste is a valuable, yet often little understood, resource that may be used to subvert and reconfigure moral, legal, social and political boundaries in the pursuit of livelihoods and business success. Textile recyclers have developed a range of socio-technological practises to enable material transformations to take place that often remain invisible to those studying modern economies. This one-day interdisciplinary workshop brings together researchers working on textile recycling across disciplines and sectors, including anthropologists, geographers, historians, designers, waste consultants and consumer researchers. Through this exchange we hope to develop a greater understanding of the underlying relationships between people and things, raw materials and technologies, the emergence of entrepreneurs and innovators in social networks, and their contextual variations. For further details, please see the

Call for Papers. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/anthropology/news/index.htm#19

Participants:

o    Beverly Lemire, University of Alberta, Canada

o    Olumide Abimbola, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany

o    Karen Tranberg Hansen, Northwestern University, USA

o    B. Lynne Milgram, Ontario College of Art and Design, Canada

o    Julie Botticello, UCL, United Kingdom

o    Ingun Grimstad Klepp, Tone Skardal Tobiasson, Charlotte Bik Bandlien and Kirsi Laitala, SIFO (NICE), Norway

o    Nicholas Morley, Oakdene Hollins, United Kingdom

o    Pammi Sinha and Kanchana Dissanayake, University of Manchester, United Kingdom

o    Lucy Norris, UCL, United Kingdom

Organisers:

Lucy Norris and Julie Botticello, Dept of Anthropology, UCL

Registration:

The registration fee covers refreshments and lunch with vegetarian options.

Waged: £25 and Unwaged: £18

Please contact Julie Botticello on ucsajbo@ucl.ac.uk to reserve your place. The deadline for registration is *7th of June 2010.*

Programme:

9.40 – 10.00    Registration & Coffee (in the North Cloisters)

10.00 – 10.10    Welcome: Danny Miller; Introduction: Lucy Norris and Julie Botticello

Session 1:         Building networks and breaking boundaries

Chair: Danny Miller

10.10 – 10.40    Beverly Lemire, Textile Networks and Textile Meanings: the European Secondhand Trade in Historical Perspective,   c1600-1850

10.40 – 11.10    Julie Botticello, Negotiating Status and Value: Processing Rags for Global Export

11.10 – 11.40    Lynne Milgram, Mobilizing Livelihood, Centering Margins: Women and the Transnational Hong-Kong Philippine Used  Clothing Trade

11.40 – 12.00    Coffee Break (in the North Cloisters)

Chair: Nicky Gregson

12.00 – 12.30    Karen Tranberg Hansen, From Family Business to International Empire: Global Networks in Secondhand Clothing Trading

12.30 – 1.00    Olumide Abimbola, Igbo Trade Networks and Secondhand Clothing

1.00 – 1.15    Discussion

1.15 – 2.00    Lunch (in the North Cloisters)

Session 2:          The return of recycling technologies

Chair: Dinah Eastop

2.00 – 2.30    Ingun Grimstad Klepp, Tone Skardal Tobiasson, Charlotte Bik Bandlien, Reinventing Old Solutions to New Problems?

2.30 – 3.00    Nick Morley, Pulp Fiction? Re-innovating Paper Manufacture from Textiles

3.15 – 3.30    Coffee Break (in the North Cloisters)

Chair: Susanne Küchler

3.30 – 4.00    Pammi Sinha, Kanchana Dissanayake, Local Knowledge and Skills in Remanufacturing Fashion

4.00 – 4.30    Lucy Norris, Remains or Resource? Alternative perspectives on dirt and the success of used clothing transformations in  India

4.30 – 5.00    Final discussion

We are grateful to the Journal of Material Culture for their contribution to the workshop. The event is taking place as part of the Waste of the World  programme funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC RES 000-23-0007).

Details about the conference will be available shortly on the UCL’s anthropology department conference web page: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/anthropology/conferences/index.htm

Maps and Directions:

Pearson North Lecture Theatre, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/efd/roombooking/building-location/?id=003 , is located in the Pearson Building, off Gower Street, in the Northwest corner of the main quadrangle. Registration on the day will take place in the North Cloisters, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/efd/roombooking/photo/?room=13363&building=MABNS , which is under the dome in the UCL main building, on the eastern edge of the main quadrangle.

To reach UCL, the most convenient underground stations are Warren Street (for Northern and Victoria lines) and Euston Square (for Hammersmith and City, Circle and Metropolitan lines). The venue is also within walking distance (5-10 minutes) of Goodge Street and Russell Square underground stations, and Euston, King’s Cross, and St Pancras underground and mainline stations.

For a UCL Campus map:

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/maps/

For an underground map:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/gettingaround/1108.aspx

For transport within London:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/

For information on travelling into London from various Airports:

http://www.visitlondon.com/ or http://www.ukguide.org/

Food will grow more expensive as the earth warms

From New York Times: Exporting waste illegally to poor countries has become a vast and growing international business, as companies try to minimize the costs of new environmental laws, like those here, that tax waste or require that it be recycled or otherwise disposed of in an environmentally responsible way.

Rotterdam, the busiest port in Europe, has unwittingly become Europe’s main external garbage chute, a gateway for trash bound for places like China, Indonesia, India and Africa. There, electronic waste and construction debris containing toxic chemicals are often dismantled by children at great cost to their health. Other garbage that is supposed to be recycled according to European law may be simply burned or left to rot, polluting air and water and releasing the heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. Continue reading.

I wrote a column about it some weeks ago.