IDEV Final Flashcards
Neoclassical Theory
- Modled on the revolution of physics
- Under conditions of perfect competition, price making markets yield a long term set of prices that balance the supply and demand for all commodities in consumption and production
- Conditions: preferences of consumers, productive techniques, the mobility of productive factors, market forces of supply and demand allocating resources efficiently in a way that minimizes cost
- All participants recieve income that compensates their work
- Value is rooted in utility, not labour
- Each additional unit of consumption reduces its utility
Neoclassical Theory- General Equilibrium
- Each product has a supply function that reflects quantity of supply, depending on the costs of production, price and technology
- Equilibrium is reached when a single price satisdies both consumers and produces, resulting in an outcome in which one variable can’t improve without the other worsening
Neoclassical Theory- Implications for Development Theory
- It’s used in public managment, cost-benefit analysis, international development, and social and environmental policy
- Developing countries can increase development by encouraging the free market
Tort Law, Mill’s harm principle
- A person can do whatever they want as long as their actions don’t cause harm to others
- The only reason power can be rightfully exercised over anyone against their will is to prevent them from doing harm to others
- Therefore, because economic life is involved in social interest, Mills Law could be applied to avoid economic violence
Critiques of Neoclassical Theory
- Assumes that people behave rationally in regards to the theory
- Assumes everyone does what the theory needs them to do
- The theory simplifies human behavior
- Recessions and negative growth can cause the general equilibrium part of the theory to be seen as questionable
- Failed in the great depression
Differences Between Classical Economic Theory and Neoclassical Theory
- Neoclassic economists think prices should be based on how much value consumers put onto a product and that consumers make decisions to maximize the utility of a product
- Classical economists think that the value of a product comes from the cost of manufacturing
- Classical economists look at how economic systems expand and contract they look broadly at the economic systems
- Neoclassic economists look at individual or company behaviour
- Classical is a Historical approach, Neoclassical is a mathematic approach
The Counter-Revolution Theory Three Eras
- Keynesian Era
- Neo-Liberal Era
- Contemporary Era
Keynesian Era
- Disturbed the neoclassical economic theories happiness
- Believed that the economic system didn’t automaticaly right itself in reaching the “optimal level of production”
- This was proven by the great depression, when markets were incapable of optimization and also keeping workers employed
- Rejected the theory of comparative advantage and the neoclassical idea that unemployment was a function of supply and demand
- Argued that the creation of demand by supply could happen at any level of employment, and full employment wasn’t the only possibility for capitalism
- The level of employment in an economy is determined by demand
- The groups determining demand are either consumers buying consumption goods or investors buying consumption equipment
- In the Keynesian system, real investment (spending on factories, tools, machines, and larger inventories of goods) was the most important variable because changes in this influenced all other areas of the economy
The Bretton Woods System (Related to Keynesian)
- Keynes led the British delegation during the Bretton Woods negotiations in 1994 that led to the establishment of the World Bank and the International Monetaty Fund
- Keynes supported the idea of adopting a world currency at the time that would be responsible to a newly-established International Clearning Union which provided incentives for avoiding large trade deficits and surpluses
- The US stopped this though by imposing a compromise that ensured that the US treasury could control the World Bank and the IMF
Keynesian Economic Policy and the Role of the State (Monetary, Fiscal, Demand-side stimulus, Social Democracy)
Monetary Policy:
- Governments using interest rates to manage the money supply and manipulate real investment and demand
Fiscal Policy
- Governments using deficit spending to stimulate demand and factor productivity
Demand-side stimulus
- Multiplier effects in which lower interest rates encourage more spending on consumption and producer goods
- Accelerator effects where buisness confidence leads to increasing investment
Social Democracy
- Governments running deficists to create and maintain social saftey nets. Ex. the NHS, and International Monetary Fund
Structuralism- Post War Consensus
- Early recognition that post-colonial economies faced a number of structural challenges that made it difficult- if not impossible to approximate the theory and practicce of neoclassical economics
- In regards to trade, primary export experienced declining terms of trade in relation to manufactured imports
- In regards to inflation, standard approaches such as restricting the money supply by raising interest rates had little to no impact on inflation
Early Calls For Structural Change- Structuralism
- Structural economists argued that developing economies were structurally different from the assumptions and lived experiences of neoclassical economics. Ex. Rural underemployment, enduring class structures, low levels of industrialization and dependence on primary goods
- The solution was to remove those obstacles by engaging in redistributive land reform and import substitution industrialization
The Unfilfilled Promise of Land Reform (Redistributive, Revolutionary, Modest)
Redistributive
- Taking the land from rural elites
- Redistributing to the tiller
- Captialism and private property remain intact
Revolutionary land reform
- Taking land from rural elites
- All land is owned by government
- Private property is prohibited
Modest land reform
- Taking land from rural elites
- Land rights are vested in communes and collectives
- Capitalism and private property remain intact
Example of Redistributive Land Reform: South Korea
- Had exeptional conditions such as a US influence after WW2 and a weakened rural elite
- Land reform was put in place (land ceilings, compensation, and extention)
- Before 1949, 4% owned 50% of the land
- After 1954, 90% owned their own land
- 1952-71 agricultural output grows 3.5% per year
Modest Land Reform in Mexico
- Before 1917, 1% owned 97% of the land, 96% were landless
- From 1934-40, land ceilings of 100 hectares were created, 50 million acres was redistributed, landlessness was cut in half
- Twas fine until the 70s and 80s, when urbanization and growing population pressure partly ended food self-sufficiency
- After neoliberal reforms in the 90s to now: privatization of state-owned fertilizer companies and a 1992 law that created private property again results in a continuing dependency on food imports
Dependency Theory
- Occured in the 1970s
- Declining terms of trade: Price of exports fell in relation to manufactured imports
- Repatriation of capital: Profits went back to European, North American, and Northeast Asian capitals, “core” and “periphery” (expand)
- Class Structures: Internally divided societies especially along lines of land
Classical Political Economy
- Rooted in the radical idea of freedom and individual liberty
- Reconciling individual selfishness with the public good
- Classical Economists took the idea of work producing value and the labour theory of valu and turned it into the abstract realm of economic theory
Classical Political Economy- John Locke, Value and Property Rooted in Individual Labour
Freedom and Individual Liberty
- Began by accepting the medieval Christian view that God originally gave the Earth and its products to all people equally
- Said individuals had the right to preserve their own lives and therefore had a right to food and drink that came from the earth
- Natural rights: People have a right to provide food for themselves through the earth
- Extended property rights to include commodities that were produced from natural materials
- Labour is the individuals property, with employers entitled to appropriate the product of the workers
- This argument on private property earned through work was important in the founding of “free land” in the US
- The value of a property comes from the work people put into it and products they take out of it (labour invested)
Classical Political Economy- David Hume, Benefits of Greed
- He saw human beings as compelled by greed for goods and possessions in a way that was directly distructive to society
- The greater interest of the self interested person is the preservation of society
- Self interestendness and social responsibility could be fixed through the middle class
- Middle class workers would want to produce good wares and be productive in order to satisfy their selfishness
Classical Political Economy- Adam Smith
- All humans share certain characteristics, either innate or resulting from the way people were raised
- He argued that humans all had an inherent urge to trade and are inherently self interested, so you shouldn’t expect people to be naturally good or kind, and should instead use the others “self love” to help the others self interest
- Self Regulating markets are an invisible hand, which organize the economy efficiently while also transforming private self interest into public virtue
- Essentiallly using our inherent urge to trade and stuff to organize competition in the market
Radicalism of Classical Liberalism
- Private property as the natual embodiment of the individual liberty, as opposed to colonialism, primitive accumulation, and the divine right of kings
- The benefits of trade
- Comparative advantage: specialization of national economies
Origins of Political Economy
- First developed within the philisophical tradition of Western scientific rationalism
- Developed as a symbolic representation of real events in early capitalism
- None of this was scientifically neutral, so modern economics was constructed negatively against the rulers of the previous precapitalist state
- Economics was a theoretical part of their revolutionary effort to distance themselves from precapitalism
- As the new class came to dominance and became weathly, economics became standard, but probably should’ve continued to change to help the poor rather than the rich
Modern Economics vs. Old medieval order
God and economy
- Modern economics contradicted the old medieval beliefs, specifically that communal economic justice reflected Gods will
- Augustinian Christianity defined work as punishment because of Adam disobeying God by lusting for Eve
- Work became the payment humans had to make for Adams sin, and God would be pleased if you worked hard
- Working hard and pursuing your talents went from being seen as selfish and sinful to being a service to the community because of the Protestants
- Them and their craftspeople realized that work produced value and more time = more value
- That’s the labour theory of value
Classical economics vs. Mercantilism
- Classical economics developed in conflict with this theory
- A system of ideas, institutions, politics, and economic practices that supported the all powerful state, monarchy, and aristrocratic classes of the early capitalist theories.
- Lasted from the 15th century to the mid-19th century
- Mercantilist political policy aimed at increasing national power
- A Mercantalist country was considered successful when it had a good balance of trade, so trade was controlled by the state and manufacturing was protected, regulated, and encouraged
- Classical economics maintained the rationalism of Mercantalism but favoured the interests of capitalists instead of the monarchy
Political Economic Philosophers and Their Role
- John Locke and David Hume
- Had to present political-economic ideas that could serve the new modern capitalist class in its struggle with feudalism
- Their philosophies supported the cause of the class of small producers
Neoliberalism
- An economic doctrine that argues that free markets are the most effective way of distributing resources and generating wealth within society
- Drawing from neoclassical economics, it assumes that a market consists of individuals meeting their needs and preferences through unfettered economic exchange
- Entailed a coordinated assault on the Keynesian consensus that had come to dominate development economics after the war
- Until recently, neoliberalism occupied the mainstream of development theory and development economics
- Born from crisis, it used neoclassical economics to justify the structural adjustment of social, economic, and development policy in the name of free trade
- Structural adjustment was very harmful economically to low income countries and decemated social sectors (i.e. health and education)
- Political forces are now moving away from neoliberalism into other forms of economic state intervention (ex. Tariffs, export bans)
Structural Adjustment and it in Practice (four categories)
- Changing the way in which an economy is organized in order to raise productive capacity. Reforms associated with structural adjustment can include liberalization of trade and investment policies and anti-competitive agricultural policies; removal of exchange and price controls; and reform of tax policies
- What conditions a country had to agree to/what they had to do in order to recieve a loan, such as from the IMF
- Types: Non-Compliance, Recidivism, Economic Hardship, Weakened State Capacity
Structural Adjustment Conditionality
- Prior actions: Policy actions which must be undertaken before a loan is approved
- Performance or Benchmark criteria: Policy actions which must be met to receive access to more credit
Structural Adjustment in Practice, Non-Compliance
- More common for more painful benchmark criteria such as public sector reforms (i.e. health or school)
Structural Adjustment in Practice, Recidivism
- Prolonged users (any countrythat remains under an IMF program for 7 out of 10 years
Structural Adjustment in Practice, Economic Hardship
- Lost wages and livelihoods due to trade liberalization
- Reduced spending power due to currency devaluation
- Divestment from health, education, and other human development sectors
Structural Adjustment in Practice, Weakened State Capacity
- Especially in relation to social, fiscal, monetary, trade, and employment policy
The War Against Developmentalism
Los Chicago Boys:
- Launched in 1956, the US state deparment and the Ford Foundation funded hundreds of Latin American graduate students to study neoclassical economics
The CIA
- Building on the “successful experiment” of crushing communism in Indonesia, the CIA turned its sights to Chile, assassinating the democratically elected president, ushering in the worlds first neoliberal experiment under the dictatorship of General Agosto Pinochet
The Berg Report
- Prepared by the World Bank’s Africa Strategy Group
- Concluded that poverty in Africa was the result of low economic growth, poor agricultural performance, and population growth
- Trade and exchange policies over protected domestic industry and disfavoured agriculture
- Coopreraties and state owned companies crowded out private sector investement
- Argued in favour of reducing the role of the state, building extractive industry and small scale agriculture as engines of export led development
The End of “The Gold Standard” and “The Oil Shocks” Timeline
- 50s and 60s: The rise of “offshore” money markets, European imports creating “euro-dollars,” strict currency controls
- 1971 to 1973: End of the gold standard in 1971, leading to floading exchange rates and currency speculation, the first oil shock of 1973 led to a flood of petro-dollars and heavy lending
- 1979: Second oil shock, causing a recession in the west, leading to the international debt crisis
Four Pillars of Structural Adjustment
- Fiscal Austerity
- Privatization
- Trade Liberalization
- Deregulation and public sector reternchment
Structural Adjustment Pillar- Fiscal Austerity
- Interest rates to curb inflation
- Cuts in public sector spending, including subsidies
- Higher taxes to improve government revenues
Structural Adjustment Pillar- Privatization
- Of finance
- Investment
- Labour Markets
- State Owned enterprises
Structural Adjustment Pillar- Trade Liberalization
- Of trade and capital
- Currency devaluation
Structural Adjustment Pillar- Deregulation and Public Sector retrenchment
- Reducing the size and role of SOEs
- Removing, reducing the size of marketing boards, co-ops, trade unions
- Laying off public sector employees
The IMF (International Monetary Fund)
- Founded in 1945 to “foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote employment growth and reduce poverty globally”
- Short-term assistance for balance of payment problems
- Appraisals of member countries
- Technical assistance in fiscal and monetary policy
Models of State-Led Development (two)
Comand and Control
- Ex. China, Soviet Union, Cuba
- Full state ownership in agriculture and industry
- Central Planning (the government makes major desicions regarding production and distribution and stuff)
Mixed Economies
- Ex. India, Mexico, Ghana, Brazil
- Mix between central ownership and free markets
- Partial State ownership through nationalization
The Soviet Model- Models of State-Led Development
Command and Control
- Private property abolished after 1928- collectivization
- All land, industry and buisnesses (in theory) owned by “the people” but vested in the authority of the state
- All decisions made by the central beuraucracy
- Different planning sectors organized where labour and materials would go in the agriculture and heavy industries
- They determined all production desicions regarding industrial and consumer goods
Social democracy
- Enterprises were more than places of work
- Responsible for housing, healthcare, childcare, recreation, education, athletics
Soviet Union Economic Performance
- By the 80s, their share of global industrial production was up by 20% from 1913
- By 1990, its Human Development Index was 0.91
- Its real GDP per capita was higher than the best performing Latin American economies
- Its life expectancy at birth was 71, compared to 76 in the US
- Adult literacy was 99% and there were more women than men in University
Fall of the Soviet Empire
Western Agression
- Invaded by Britain, France, Japan, Canada and the US in 1918
- All economic and trade relations halted after 1917
- Formation of NATO, SEATO, and the Baghdad Pact for the Middle Eawst
- The arms race
Limits of central planning
- Managers unable to decide production goals and quotas
- Overproduction of industrial goods
- Supply shortages, leading to corruption and black markets for basic goods and services (housing, clothing, jobs, education)
Authoritarian rule
- Election of Mikhail Govachev in 1985 based on the promise of openness and economic resurection
- The fall of the Berlin Wall
Socialist States in the World System
- Argues that Command and Control Economies are actually forms of political capitalism that created conditions for capital formation and accumulation in the Global South
The Mixed Economy Modle: Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI)
Turkey’s early experimet (30s)
- Crisis response to the great depression
- Trade protection through tariffs and non-tariff barriers
- 7% growth
Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Brazil (30s to 70s)
- Modest land reform
- High tariffs and NTBs
- Nationalization of state-owned monopilies and enterprises
- 6.5% growth between 40s and 70s
India (1944 - 1991)
- Modest land reform, High tariffs, NTBs
- Regulation of essential commodities
- Central planning with an emphasis on infastructure and heavy industry
- 18% increase national incomes 1951 - 56
Longer-Term Structural Problems
- Urban Bias against agriculture: Marketing boards deflating “farm gate” prices
- Unplanned urbanization: Urban slums
- Underemployment: Islands of productivity
- Dependence on foreign capital and technology: Ballooning deficits and capital flight
- Inefficiency: Highlighting the limits of central planning
- Corruption: Ex. License raj
Industrial Policy: Infant Industrial Model (How is it similar and disimilar to
- Uses tariffs, non-tariff barriers, licenses, quotas to shelter domestic companies and industries
- Unlike ISI, orients production towards the export market through promoted exports, controlled imports through directed licensing, Limited FDI
The Developmental State
- Committed to human development
- Committed to private property and the capitalist free market
- A legacy of land reform and improvements in agricultural savings and accumulation
- Investment in “human capital”
- State autonomy from social pressure
- Strict market governance
Growing Pains in Regards to Globalization
- Regional disparities (Ex. Western China is owns more and is more prosperous than Northern India)
- Human rights violations: Accusations of genocide against Uighurs in China, crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, farmer suicides in India due to removal of subsidies and import restrictions
- Labour relations: Increasing pressure on wages and exchange rates in China increasingly dependent on seasonal or circular labour migration
- Loss of saftey nets such as access to healthcare and social welfare
Essential Features of Post-Structuralism
- Anti-Structuralist
- Post-Enlightenment
- Post-modernism
Anti-Structuralism
- Rejects the reductionist “teleology” of Marxism and structural-functionalism
- This is the “structuralism” of social theory, not of political economy (structuralism is an effort to treat human rationality scientifically)
Post-Enlightenment
- A rejection of universal truth in favour of a “represational truth” and a “socially and linguistically decentered fragmented subject with multiple identites
Post-Modernism
- A loss of faith in “modern meta-narratives” like progress, emancipation (ex. Universal human rights) and Development
Material Experiences: Paris, 1968
- Thousands of university students in Paris protested the administration of courses at the Universtieis of Paris and Nanterre
- The French Communist Party and French trade unions told their members not to join or support the protests because they were contradictory to organized labour
- This caused students to think they had lost touch with the real needs and interests of society
Foucault
- Criticized Capitalism and its doctors, police, justice system, psychiatrists, etc
- His goal was to figure out how power worked, and to change to the direction of a modern Marxist utopia
- Decided to become a philisophical historian
- Argued against the way people with mental illness were treated
- Said that doctors look at patients as a set of organs, not as a person
- Said that the justice sytem now is bad (slay) because it looks nice but is actually terrible whereas in the past (hangings) it looked bad and was bad which justified uprisings
- No one can see and therefore resist modern state power
The Foucault Effect
- He argues that the treatment of madness in the seventeenth century transforms with the classification and clinical treatnment of what becomes a social and medical “problem”
- The pivotal break came at the same time as the establishment of a social and professional regime of observation, classification and treatment, in which the patient goes from being an outcast to the subject of medical treatment
The Foucault Effect- Bio-Power
- Describes the ability to decide not only the oral and technical terms on which life may be taken (ex. war, execution) but also the moral and technical terms on which it may be sustained
Foucault, The Study of Power
- He rejected the univeralism, resuctionism, and totality of Marxist theories, favouring local knowledge, the return of forgotten knowledge, the insurrection of subjugated basically peoples knowledge that hadn’t been certified as true by academics
- In trying to decentre the human subject, his genealogy tried to expose the historical power relations that create social identities
- For example, discipine “makes” individuals by training throught hierarchial observation, through normalizing judgment, by examination, and through documentation, all with help from social sciences
Post colonialism
- A political and philosphical orientation that uses psychoanalysis, literary deconstruction, and cultural criticism to challenge the myths and assumptions of European colonialism, history, and identity
Post-Colonialism- The Wretched of the Earth
- Frantz Fanon uses psychiatric and
psychological analysis to describe the
dehumanizing effects of colonialism on
personal and national identity
Post-Colonialism, Orientalism
- Edward Said uses Foucault and Gramsci to
expose the destructive and patronizing
attitudes of Western scholars (including Mill,
Hume, Marx, etc.) and administrators towards
Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African
societies whose cultures and histories are
essentialized as unchanging and
underdeveloped
Post-Colonialism, Can the Subaltern Speak
- Gayatri Spivak argues that any effort to let
the subaltern speak cannot possibly escape
the norms and practices of ethnocentrism
and inequality that shape the relationship
between (primarily) northern
researchers/academics and the ‘Third World
other.’
Post-Development
- A political and philosophical
orientation that uses elements of
post-modernism and post-
colonial theory to question the
dominant aims and assumptions of
development - Problematizes and associates the
“idea” of development with
“western” power, history and social
science
Post-Developmentalism, Radical Pluralism
- Resisting the “inhuman scale” of contemporary development institutions and
practices - Local autonomy is the only available antidote to the global project
Post-Developmentalism, Simple Living
- Recognizing and embracing the material and spiritual connections between human
beings and the living world - Drawing upon influences as wide and diverse as Gandhi, the Old Testament,
Indigenous cosmovisiones
Post-Developmentalism, Degrowth
- The “intentional downscaling of economic production and consumption to assure
that society’s resource use and waste disposal stay within safe ecological bounds
Post-Development Visions of Change
- Development, as it has imposed itself
on its ‘target populations’, was basically the
wrong answer to their true needs and
aspirations - The post-development era is in dire need of
a commitment from all good men and
women to the creation of an aesthetic world
order in which new forms of friendship and
solidarity will be able to interact in order to
stop the evil forces of the ‘global village’
destroying the last ‘good people’ struggling
to protect themselves from them - Fuck Capitalism, Resist the Powerful
Common Critiques of Post-Developmentalism
- It’s romantic: even Ghandi needed capitalism
- It’s relativist: how do we distinguish between good and bad discources
- It’s essentializing: The West vs. the rest
- It’s immoral: By rejecting the material gains of development (higher life expectancy, birth mortality rates) is it dooming noncapitalist societies to avoidable misery and suffering
- It’s apolitical
Where Does Post-Development Leave Us?
- As a field, post development recognizes and gives voice to those undervalued, underrecognized, and compartmentalized and has influenced work on gender, sexuality, and intersectionality
- As a theory of action, it kinda fails. It fails to articulate its agenda with clarity or purpose, and doesn’t show how their methodology or politics would move beyond the failures of development
First Wave of Feminism
- Late 19th century to early 20th century
- Emerging from European urbanization, industrialization, and socialism
- Focused primarily on universal sufferage, property rights, and legal status
- Reflected the social fisruption of industrial capitalism
Second Wave of Feminism
- 1960 - 1980
- Emerging out of civil rights, environmental, and anti-Vietnam war protests
- Focused primarily on the patriarchy through womens liberation and established interest groups
- Criticized for centering white womens experiences, needs, and political demands
Third Wave of Feminism
- 1990s onward
- Influenced by post-structuralist thinking about fiversity, identity and difference
- Rejected gender binaries and stereotypes of upper middle class white western women
- Embraced new forms of identity that emphasized lived experiences and micro realities over macro political forces and systemic change
We Haven’t Gone Far Enough With Feminism
- Over half of male responses to a survey said that they think feminism has gone to far and men are the real victims, most common in young men
Diffusion of Global Feminism
- New techologies and opportunities in the industrialized world, such as household refrigeration, contraception, and access to higher education for women
- New modes of production, such as women entiering the workforce, globalization, and international migration, which eroded the concept of nuclear families
- International norms and discources about things such as contraceptives and womens reproductive rights
Neoclassical Gender Theory
- Household labour is a factor of production that influences micro and macro economic consumption powers
- Consumptio and distribution remain largely untouched by womens rights
Marxist Gender Theory
- Engels said the central role of the household is the production and reproduction of immediate life
- The production of the means of existence, i.e. food, water, clothes
- The production of human beings themselves
- industrialization and capitalism lead to a sexual division of labour, dividing the public and private sphere
Feminist theory
- Households are unevenly divided along gender lines
- Gender roles are influenced by cultural norms affecting access to resouces and public life
- Understanding gender roles and relations entails examining intra-household conflicts, womens choices, and empowerment
Women in Development
- Argued that development was inherently biased against women, promoting institutions that improve equity and inclusion
- Remained largely silent on the sexual division of labour, sexual violence, and reproductive rights
Vison of Change
- Liberal modernization through welfare, equity, efficiency, and empowerment
Women and Development
- Influenced by Marxist political economy
- focused on the material conditions of production and reproduction, highlighting the historical separation of male and female gender roles, the commodification of cheal female labour, and the male domination of public space
Vision of Change
- Radical transformation of patriarchy through resistance to capitalism, creating a new “conception of time” that reintergrates work, enjoyment, lesuire, and rest
Gender and Development
- Influenced by the work of feminist scholars at IDS Sussex, put gender relations as a whole as opposed to “women” at the heart of the analysus, opening new empirical space for examining historical process of male patriarchy, social mobilization (especially empowerment) and public policy
Vision of Change
- Imancipation through social mobilization, anti-racism, and public policy
Women, Environment and Development
- Highlighted the partiarchal underpinnings of western, Cartesian science, the violence of modernization processes and the need for grassroots resistance
- Ctiticized for advancing a romantic image of women living in harmony with nature, opening more critical strands of scholarship on the socio-historical factors, making women dependent on resources and ecosystem services
Vision of Change
- Challenging and dismantling western science, embracing alternative world views and knowledges
Post-Modernism and Development
- Building on postcolonial feminists, criticized Women in Development and Women and Development for “othering” womens experiences in the Global South and using images of women as victims, sex objects, and cloistered beings
Vision of Change
- Advancing diversity and difference through representation and discource
Feminsit Critiques of Development
On Modernization
- Questioned the dichotomy between the “rational” male-dominated, public sphere of political economic life and the feminized, traditional private-oriented sphere
On Marxism and dependency
- Questioned the idea that social and economic life could be reduced to a mode of production that focuses only or primarily on class conflict and the domination of nature, leading to eco feminism
On Neoliberalism
- Highlughted the gendered impacts of neoliberalsim, for example structural adjustment, on women and gender relations more generally
Contemporary Paradox of Gender and Development
- Globalization has led to increased female labour participation, which as led to real development gains, but this is based on dangerous, demeaning, and precarious work
- There’s also unequal access to productive assets, meaning production, household finances, access to land, and access to property
- There’s issues with sexual violence and reproductive rights, and laws regarding equity
The Future of Post-Feminism
- Domestic violence in the private sphere is still an issue, financial stress, abusive behaviour, and impacts of the patriarchy
- Cultural violence in the public sphere, normalizing violence against people violating traditional gender roles of heteronormativity
- Systemic misogyny, more than random acts of violence
- Legislation has been developed, defining and prosecuting acts of violence against women
- Social Movements such as Me Too have been developed
- Forms of education have been implemented
Sustainable Development
- The ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs
- Metting essential needs requires a new era of economic growth for poorer nations, but also an assurance that those poor get a fair share of required resources
- No absolute limits, but there are limitations imposed by the present state of technology and social organization on the environmental resources and by the ability of the biosophere to absorb the effects of human activities
From Opposition to Orthodoxy (Before Rio, After Rio)
Before Rio
- Radical
- Redistribution
- Rejection of Economic growth (steady state and throughput)
- Alternative vision of NGOs, social movements, appropriate technology
After Rio
- Poverty alleviation goals, poverty was recognized as a cause of environmental degradation, foreign aid and technoloy transfer as a solution
- Trade and the environment took a focus, Liberalization equals sustainable development
- Technological fixes were Promethean (they were creative and showed ingenuity)
Paris Climate Agreement
- Aimed to achive a universal commitment to reduce Greenhouse Gasses and to limit the global temperature increases to 2 degrees and 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels
- Countries agreed to voluntary commitments
- Rich countries agreed to provide funding for poorer countries to aid productivity
Global Resources Outlook
- Resource extraction has more than tripled since 1970
- By 2060, global material use could double to 190 billion tonnes, while greenhouse gas emissions could increase by 43%
- The extraction and processing of materials, fuels and food contribute to half of total global greenhouse gas emissions and over 90% of biodiversity and water stress
Role of Renewable Energies
- Meeting the Paris Climate Agreement goal requires an increased use of renewable energy
- Nonrenewable energy account for most of the world’s energy consumption, but renewable energy now represents the fastest growing energy sector
- But wind, solar, and lithium-ion batteries consist of materials whose embodied processes entail significant extraction and emissions of GHGs
Elusive Promise of Green Growth
- Green growth is growth that’s efficient in its use of natural resources, clean in the sense that it minimizes pollution and environmental impacts, and resilient in the way that it accounts for natural hazards and the role of environmental managment and preventing physical disasters
- As the global economy grows into planetary boundaires, we need to use green energy
Relative Decoupling From Non-Renewable Energy
- Resource consumption and pllution continue to increase, but at a slower rate than GDP growth
Absolute Decoupling from Non-Renewable Energy
- Consumption needs to fall steadily and dramatically in absolute terms, and people must still be able to consume resources to meet their demands
Domestic Material Consumption
- The total weight of raw materials (biomass, minerals, metals and fossil fuels) extracted from
the domestic territory, plus all physical imports minus all physical exports
Empirical Analysis
- Countries such as the US, Japan, and the UK have achieved relative decoupling of GDP from DMC, their material footprint has been rising at a rate equal to or greater than GDP, rendering their decoupling useless
Why Isn’t Decoupling Working?
- Services require resource intensive inputs (Specifically Gen AI and crypto mining)
- Income from selling services is being used to purchase resource intensive consumer goods such as Electric Cars
- The resource intensity of primary and secondary sectors has outpaced any gains made by switching to services
- The Green Growth Theory in terms of resource usage lacks empirical support
Climate and Degrowth
- Degrowth is a planned reduction of energy and resource throughput designed to bring the economy back into balance with the livng world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human well-being
- Degrowth isn’t about redcuing GDP but rather reducing throughput
Throughput
- The flow of raw materials and energy from the global ecosystem’s sources of low entropy (finite resources such as mines, wells, fisheries) through the economy and back to the global ecosystem’s sinks for highly unstable wastes (atmosphere, oceans, dumps)
Theorizing Degrowth
- Degrowth seeks to scale down ecologically deestructive and socially less necessary production (production of SUVs and arms) while expanding socially important sectors like healthcare, education, care and conviviality
- Introduces policies to prevent unemployment and improve employment through things such as shortening the work week and living wages
- Seeks to reduce inequality and share national and global income more fairly
- Wants to expand universal public goods and services such as the health, education, transportation, and housing
- Wants to achieve a transition to renewable energy, restore soils, and biodiversity, and reverse ecological breakdown
Degrowth Implications for the Global South
- Happiness and wellbeing shouldn’t depend on meeting consumer demand in the global north
- Doing so is the equivalent of defending colonialism and exploitation
- People in the global south should receive a fair wage for their labour and a fair price on their resources
- Southern economies should shift away from exporting cheap labour and raw materials and focus instead on developmentalist reforms in the name of sovereignty, self sufficiency, and wellbeing
- We should go back to the prestructural era of the 60s and 70s by delinking national development priorities from the imperatives of Northern capital
Deep Ecology
- Rejection of anthroprocentric perspectives on modernity
- An environmental philosophy and social movement that connects shallow reformism and deep ecological principles
Shallow Reformisim Vs. Deep Ecological Change
- The short-term, shallow approach stops before the ultimate level of fundamental change, often promoting technological fixes based on the same consumption-oriented values and methods of the industrial economy
- The long range deep approach involves redesigning whole systems based on values and methods that truly preserve the environment
- Recognizing that no species, including the human species, is more important than another
Ecofeminism
- Domination is rooted in patriarchy
- A culture based on the devaluation of life and giving
- The interconnected roots of misogyny and nature hating
- Moves beyond the assumption that men embody gender roles that approximate culture and women embody nature
- Liberation rooted in the rejection of patriachy and domination in favour of diversity, democracy and appropriate technology based on ecological principles
Radical Pluralism
- An internal plurality of conceptions that can coexist and thrive without higherarchies
- In contrast to the classical liveral approach of tolerating difference through multiculturalism, Vivr requires dialogue and praxis (theory in action) that fosters mutual understanding and respect
- Rights of nature that extend rights and personhood to non-human lifeforms
Problems That Cause Alternatives to Development
Marxism
- Capiralism leads to and requires poverty, inequality, and environmental degredation
Poststructuralism
- Development is a form of knowledge and power
Feminism
- Gender relations are rooted in the patriarchy and misogyny
Ecological theory
- Capitalist development is inherently unsustainable
Solutions Alternatives Provide
Marxism
- Revolution, elimination of private property, collectivization, central planning, social democracy
Poststructuralism
- Obliterate developmentallism, creating new space for radical social movements
Feminism
- Rethink the meaning of development, or obliterate it entierly, from a critical gendered perspective
Ecological theory
- Decoupling, degrowth, and deep ecology
Critical Modernism
- Entails a critique of capitalist power systems in socialist terms of class ownership of productive resources
- In feminist terms of male dominance
- In poststructuralist terms of the hegemony of elite imaginaries and discourses
- Distrusts any elite
- Favours the views of oppressed people, but not believing everything they say blindly
Development Ethics
- Dumb people saying that people aren’t poor, they just need to look at what they have and they’ll see that they’re rich
- Victim blaming
- Post-Developmental advocacy is a cruel hoax. It tells people that they’re actually rich and should die with dignity instead of struggle for life
- Direct popular control over all the resources and institutions used an inhabited by people
- Situated knowledge
- Individual freedom
- Social responsibility
Reproductive Democracy
- The people involved in an institution, workplace, university, or family should collectively control that institution
- Collective ownership
- Democratic control
Liberal Democracy
- Defined in contrast to authoritarian regimes, where states use instruments of coercion (military, police) to narrow the political space
- At minimum, they uphold fundamental rights and values and economic rights in the form of private property rights that are essential to market capitalism
