Orientalism, Tropical Geographies & Development Flashcards
What are the origins of 17th century Enlightment?
- Adam Smith (1776)
- New ideas about relationship between humanity, society and nature
- Nature there to be conquered: human progress would exploit and tame nature
- Possibilities of science, rationality and progress over natural world
How is development described in relation to the Enlightment?
“The last and failed attempt to complete Enlightenment in Asia, Africa and Latin America”
Escobar (1995)
How did ideas of development shift around the 19th Century?
- Prior to 19thcentury development seen as natural, evolutional process without intent
- Post 19thcentury development as an intentional practice –> create order out of social disorder
- Birth of big D-development
- 19th Century, evolutionary theory become central to understanding social change
How are is the representation of the Myth of the ‘Dark Continent’ cast within development?
- Within discourse of economic development, such as construction of Kariba Dam on border between Zambia and Zimbabwe (Jarosz, 1992)
- How Western media interpretations of the dam’s construction created a regional human geography which rationalized and glorified Western technological dominance and conquest of nature and culture –> echoes the Enlightenment (Jarosz, 1992)
- Described as “the Zambezi River being brought under man’s control for the first time in history” (Jarosz, 1992)
How are representations of colonial landsapes created in development thinking?
- Wild, exotic, savage and barbaric
- Feminised landscapes (exploration and masculinity)
- Sexualisation and eroticism of landscapes led to ‘porno-tropics’ (McClintock, 1995) –> ready for penetration’
What does Andreasson (2005) show that Africa is framed in development representation?
- Reductive reduction diminishes the heterogeneous characteristics of Africa into a set of essential core deficiencies for which externally generated ‘solutions’ must be devised
- Set in development meta-narrative restricts search for other options in terms of what aspire to
Andreasson (2005)
What does post development thinking challenge?
- Standard a prior assumptions regarding rationality, linearity and modernity
- Allow Africans to have greater autonomy over how they are represented
- Construct own social and cultural models in ways not controlled by Western episteme and historicity
Andreasson (2005)
How do Scandinavian donor agents in Tanzania construct the idea of the ‘Other’?
- Scandinavian donor agents in Tanzania construct themselves in opposition an African ‘Other’ – open, organized and committed Danish development worker Self in opposition Tanzanian partner as unreliable and disorganized (Baaz, 2005)
- These identities are fluid however, Other as romantic but often seen as derogatory
- Hybridity where simple mimetic process occurs whereby powerless ‘receivers’ adopt Northern values (McEwan, 2009)
What does the production of discourse by the West serve to do?
Production of discourses by Western countries as a means of dominating the Third World
Escobar (1984)
How is development deployed?
- Progressive incorporation of problems
- Professionalization of development
- Institutionalization of development
Escobar (1984)
What is the progressive incorporation of problems?
Creation of “abnormalities” such as “underdeveloped”, “malnourished” and “illiterate” which would it would later treat and reform
Escobar (1984)
What is the professionalization of development?
- Remove from political realm and reacts them into more neutral realm of science – anti-politics machine (Ferguson, 1994)
- Field of control of knowledge that produces a regime of truth and norms about development
Escobar (1984)
What is the institutionalization of development?
- Institutions as agents of deployment of development
- Form network of new sites of power, which constitute the development dispositif
Escobar (1984)
