Week 1: Development in an Era of Crisis Flashcards
What does “Big D” development refer to?
planned, structured initiatives by governments, international agencies, and NGOs aimed at fostering social and economic progress, particularly in developing countries
What does “little D” development describe?
organic socio-economic changes that result from capitalist processes, is not planned but instead emerges through market expansion, often creating both winners and losers due to unequal economic impacts
Why does “Big D/little d” distinction face challenges when applied to real-world scenarios?
lines between planned interventions and organic development are often blurred
When did quest for economic development in Africa start and what has driven it?
with its encounter with the West (pursuit of development is not a result of external impositions but rather a response to the challenges it has and does face (e.g. colonialism, slavery)), driven by desire to “catch up” with more advanced economies
What does the phrase “Running While Others Walk” underscore?
underscores the urgency for Africa to accelerate its development efforts, as it is lagging behind in economic growth, technological advancement, social progress (cannot afford to follow the slow and steady pace of others, and must innovate and implement radical changes to catch up)
What does “catching up” entail?
learning ideas from abroad but also about one’s capacities and weaknesses (sets the “initial conditions” for any future progress)
What is the issue of “catching up”?
Not that of simply taking on every wretched instrument used by their pioneers to get what they have (wars, slave labour, child labour, Gulags), but of finding more efficacious and morally acceptable ways of improving the life chances of millions of people
What is the anti-education bias in Africa?
devaluation of tertiary education in Africa, particularly during structural adjustment programs of the 1980s and 1990s, when the World Bank promoted policies that deprioritised higher education in favour of primary education (due to higher social returns)
What impact does the anti-education bias in Africa have?
has hampered Africa’s ability to generate the knowledge necessary for development and left Africa dependent on external expertise
What is a major critique of international aid?
Much of aid-driven development discourse has been shaped by foreign experts who impose standardised solutions without regard for local contexts (frequently promote models that have little relevance), criticism is the idea that the North was entrusted with the task of developing the South in its image
How can human capabilities be built?
through education and technological advancement
What is the role of the African Intellectual Community?
African scholars and researchers must play a leading role in formulating strategies and policies that reflect local realities, rather than relying on imported solutions
What happened due to the anti-elitist bias?
resulted in a neglect of the important role that intellectual elites, including academics and technocrats, play in shaping national development agendas (development discourse in 1980s and 1990s, exhibited a strong disdain for local elites)
What was the Truman doctrine after WW2?
foreign policy established in 1947 that pledged American support for democratic nations facing authoritarian threats intended to foster a climate to recreate the conditions of more developed economies (industrialisation, urbanisation, technology in agriculture etc.)
What were both Polanyi and Hayek responding to?
the crises of the early 20th century, e.g. the Great Depression and fascism
What is Polanyi’s definition of freedom?
is collective because it is a social matter that involves bearing responsibility for one’s choices (responsibility is an important component, strongly relating to the roles of social, moral, and ethical values in the marketplace)
Is positive, involving the active role of the state in providing the right conditions
Material conditions like poverty and lack of access to basic resources limit true freedom
What is positive freedom?
the ability to pursue personal development and self-realisation
Who is Hayek?
one of the most important promoters of the modern market economy, often regarded as “the father of neoliberalism”
What is Hayek’s definition of freedom?
Has two components (negative freedom and economic freedom)
Focused on individual freedom, primarily as the absence of coercion and the ability to make economic choices in a free market without interference
Believed that any attempt to realise common goals and ends through state intervention was a form of coercion that would eventually jeopardise freedom
Regarded positive freedom as the “most dangerous” concept to the achievement of freedom, because it can eventually engender totalitarian regimes
What is negative freedom?
“The absence of coercion” on the part of other people, organisations, or agents (coercion occurs whenever the decisions that individuals made within their private spheres were not determined by their own will, but through the imposition of the will of an external authority)
What is economic freedom?
Freedom that allows individuals to voluntarily choose how to earn, spend, save, and invest their incomes based on their own values, skills, and knowledge, without external interference in the marketplace
Necessitates that individuals are able to freely enter into all occupations and willingly engage in any business enterprise
Requires the existence of a competitive free market, where voluntary cooperation and free choices on the part of individuals are necessary
What is development?
a complex, multi-dimensional and contentious set of ideas and processes
What did Adam Smith and Karl Marx development focus on and what has changed?
longstanding focus on economic transformation but today there is increased recognition of social, environmental and political dimensions of development
What does Amartya Sen focus on regarding development?
capabilities, improvement of the human condition through expanding people’s freedoms to do what they want to do, or be
What does immanent development mean?
development as a process
What does intentional development mean?
development as an activity
When did ‘Big D’ development emerge?
a post-second world war project of intervention in the ‘third world’ that emerged in the context of decolonisation and the Cold War (deliberate ‘projects of intervention’)
What does the ‘geographically uneven but spatially interconnected’ development of capitalism that produces both winners and losers from struggles around power and resources refer to?
‘little d’ development ( the development of capitalism, a geographically uneven, profoundly contradictory set of historical processes)
What do Chang and Mkandawire believe in regards to development?
decry lack of vision and believe we need big ideas, planning that guides transformation, coordination, collective action over long time
What is development studies?
‘development’ focus, inter-disciplinary approach and ‘normative’ orientation
What are the four DS traditions Sumner says exist?
1) an aid-dependence framed DS
2) a global DS
3) a critical DS
4) a post-aid, classical DS
(each has a different view of what development is, the conditions under which it is possible, which countries should be the focus of study, etc.)
What does the ‘White Gaze’ refer to?
silence on race assumes non-racialised environment (colonial legacies permeate development, “whiteness wields structural power)
According to Escobar, how does development relate to as a discourse of power?
discourse of development produced massive underdevelopment and impoverishment “invented” by the West
What does the Post-War “big push” relate to?
the purposeful transformation of production processes
How/Who do Neo-liberals believe resources should be allocated?
let markets allocate resources
According to Sen what is economic growth?
a means to an end with ends being “expanding substantive freedoms” through expansion of capabilities
According to Sen what is human life?
a set of “doings and beings” called “functionings” and capabilities allow these to be achieved
What does Sen focus on in relation to development?
focuses on freedom and capabilities of the individual
What is the relation to income and development according to Sen?
low income can cause deprivation of capabilities like illiteracy and ill health and hunger and better education and health capabilities can help to ensure higher incomes
According to Sen, can public policy promote capabilities
yes, public policy can promote capabilities and the exercise of “participatory capabilities” can influence public policy
What do Chang, Andreoni and Estava’s believe on Sen’s view on development?
to realise Sen’s “human capabilities’ it is necessary to restore the centrality of production and collective capabilities
What would development as “structural change” require?
process of pulling the economy’s resources from traditional low-productivity activities to modern high-productivity actives (where growth has been slowest, poverty is the worst and vice versa)
What does the commodification of public health refer to?
move away from public health as a public good
What does the marketisation of health care delivery create?
inequalities in rich and poor countries
What has the commodification of public health led to in developing countries?
fragility of public health systems, perverse globalised health market
What occurrence reinforced long-standing inequalities in the Middle East? (health)
COVID pandemic
What has Global Value Chains in Manufacturing led to?
left-behind blue collar and white collar workers in rich countries contributing to rise of right populist politics
fragile supply chains of strategic goods (medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, microprocessors)
burgeoning environmental externalities (scale, transport, GHG emissions)
extreme barriers of entry for poor countries.
economies over-reliant on services sector for basic livelihoods (crushing results in pandemic)
What has the globalisation and concentration of agricultural and food production led to?
cheap food in rich countries (capital intensive and subsidy-ridden farming systems, dependent on cheap migrant labour, emptying rural communities of people who might develop the skills and earn a decent livelihood in agniculture)
concentration of production and distribution (shortages of food despite supply, soil pollution at a massive scale)
marketisation of food security
What did financialisation of capitalism and extreme inequality lead to?
increased inequality
in both rich and poor countries business models favouring shareholders over investment, new skills and new technology
capital flight from poor countries in times of crises
huge chasms between the ‘real economy’ and ‘financial sector’
What has the environmental crisis led to?
proliferation of zoonotic diseases
GHG emissions pushing temperature rises threatening human settlements and production systems
environmental externalities of manufacturing and food production, trade and consumption not captured by prices
What has inter-state and intra-state warfare led to?
massive destruction of human life and productive and collective capabilities.
destruction of feed producing areas, of built manufacturing capacity, of public goods, of trading routes is a huge development setback
propelling the movement of refugees and migrants towards the rich countries
What development in a time of overlapping crisis in the global system led to? (6)
1) commodification of public health
2) Global Value Chains in manufacturing
3) globalisation and concentration of agricultural and food production
4) financialisation of capitalism and extreme inequality
5) environmental crises
6) inter.state and intra-state warfare
What does the Human Capabilities Approach (HCA) highlight?
the role of human agency based on the values that individuals hold
What does the HCA define development as?
a process of expanding people’s individual freedoms and capabilities
What are productive capabilities? (HCA)
human or technical abilities (to make goods and services) that are individually or collectively held, but always collectively constructed and deployed
What are collective productive capabilities? (HCA)
productive capabilities that cannot be held by individuals and can only be held by groups (e.g. productive organisations, cooperatives, social groups)
Why are commodities valuable under the HCA?
valuable only because they allow people to achieve valued ‘beings’ and ‘doings’
What are the personal factors under HCA?
physical and psychological characteristics
What are the systemic factors under HCA?
the complex interactions among social, cultural, environmental features of each context in which individuals are embedded
What are social capabilities? (HCA)
those sets of beings and doings that can only be achieved as a result of social interaction, they reflect properties of social structures and systemic level outcomes (e.g. justice)
What is the augmented HCA?
advocate that collectives, groups, social communities are seen as key enablers in the expansion of individual human capabilities and irreducible systemic properties are included in the human development
that define the “functioning of the whole society” evaluative space
What are arguments against the HCA?
does not consider how individuals and societies come to value certain beings and doings
there is interplay between changes in technologies, institutions and ideologies in the social process of discovering the beings and doing that human society might end up valuing (individual capabilities and freedoms that societies value do not exist independently of their societies)
the theoretical limitations of the HCA regarding productive capabilities have real world consequences (policies that have proved essential for the development of productive capabilities are either largely absent or even discouraged)
HCA restricts its attention to a limited range of capabilities (‘individual’ human capabilities), contextual factors are not fully factored in the framework
What is the Capability theory of the Firm (CTF)?
the execution of different technological and organisational functions and productive activities of the firm requires a set of ‘appropriate’ and ‘collective’ productive capabilities
What is the Technological capabilities Approach (TCA)?
has developed the understanding of micro-learning- dynamics at the sites of production on how firms and workers in developing countries absorb and adapt new technologies
What does capability refer to in the HCA?
reflects a person’s freedom to choose between different ways of living
What is the Utilitarian Nation of Value and why is it not reliable?
sees value only in individual utility, which is defined as some mental condition (e.g. pleasure, happiness, desire ful-filment)
may fail to reflect a person’s real deprivation
What is the means to freedom and what are expressions of freedoms under HCA?
primary goods are means to freedom
capabilities are expressions of freedoms
What is the instrumental view (HCA)?
the capability set is valued only for the sake of the best alternative available for choice (this way of evaluating a capability set by the value of one distinguished element in it is called ‘elementary evaluation’)
What is the intrinsic view (HCA)?
elementary evaluation is inadequate since the opportunity to choose other alternatives is of significance of its own
