The Africa/Asia/Latin America Scholarly Collaborative Program

International Workshop

Rethinking Development for the South: Prospects for Africa, Asia and Latin America

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 5-6 October, 2007

Call for Papers

The Asian Political and International Studies Association (APISA), the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), are convening an international workshop within the framework of the Africa/Asia/Latin America Scholarly Collaborative Program. The theme of the workshop is Rethinking Development Alternatives in the South: Prospects for Africa, Asia and Latin America. The workshop will be convened in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, from 5-6 October, 2007. The concept paper for the workshop and a tentative program are outlined below.

Application Procedure

Researchers on or from Africa, Asia and Latin America interested in participating in this workshop should submit an abstract and their curriculum vitae to the respective continental organizations, namely, CODESRIA, APISA and CLACSO. The full contact details for these organizations are reproduced below for the attention of all prospective applicants. The deadline for the receipt of applications is 15 September, 2007. An independent Selection Committee will screen all applications.

CLACSO

Callao 875, 3º (1023) Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA

Tel: (54 11) 4811-6588 / 4814-2301; Fax: (54 11) 4812-845

E-mail: [email][email protected]

Website: www.clacso.org

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APISA

Strategic Studies and International Relations Program

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, MALAYSIA

Tel: 603- 89213266; Fax: 603-89213332

E-Mail: [email][email protected]

Website: www.apisanet.com

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CODESRIA

BP 3304, CP 18524, Dakar, SENEGAL

Tel: (221) 825 9822: Fax: (221) 824 1289

E-mail: [email][email protected]

Website: www.codesria.org

Concept Paper

Rethinking Development for the South: Prospects for Africa, Asia and Latin America

An apt analogy for capturing the South’s experience of development is offered by the twinning of the concepts of colonialism and development. A historicized reflection on the key concerns that have animated mainstream development thinking, and a review of the experience of neoliberal structural adjustment programmes remind us of colonial discourses on and practices in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and the transfer of the fundamentals of those discourses and practices into the period after colonial rule. A number of scholars have invested time and resources into an identification and a description of the continuities and breaks between colonialism and development, tangentially or directly. Some of these efforts attribute current impediments to development in the South to the colonial experience. Mahoney, for example, finds that colonies peripheral to the Spanish empire are more developed than those territories considered as its centers. Underdevelopment, in this case, then becomes a legacy of direct and intensive Spanish colonial rule. Also, Engerman and Sokoloff observe that the efforts of European colonialism to alter the composition of populations in colonized areas contributed to extreme inequality between colonists and “natives” which, in turn, evolved institutions that restrict access to economic opportunities as well as discourage public investment in the infrastructures that are necessary for growth. Other researches, meanwhile, find links between colonial and developmental practices. Cooke , for example, asserts that contemporary development management owes to colonial administration, specifically to indirect rule, its recently adopted set of participatory methods that promotes “ownership” of development interventions. Cooke argues that achieving “empowerment” through participation was subject to the colonial sovereign power and the seeming autonomy it granted was a way of reproducing that power. Also, Kothari explores how the professionalisation of international development facilitates the expansion of a neoliberal agenda in development agencies, and how "alternative" approaches are co-opted into this agenda. In relation to this, she draws attention to development "experts" and their role in the reproduction of systems of expertise and forms of authority. Her research on former UK colonial officers who worked in the post-colonial development industry is then drawn upon to illustrate the continuities and divergences of the colonial to current discourses of development.

The colonialism/development interface suggests the existence of many more legacies, continuities, overlaps, shared rationale, and common practices than is readily recognized or acknowledged. As demonstrated by the above literature, it challenges us to adopt strategies that demand a re-thinking of development in ways that are much bolder than has been the case to date. Such a re-thinking requires that we deal with the underlying assumptions of development, its theories, concerns and processes. Re-thinking also takes us into the terrain of critique and alternatives to development. If years and voluminous documentations of critical development reflections have not displaced the hegemonic role of the Bretton Woods institutions and their development models, it is partly because much of development scholarship and policy continues on the assumption that the South will get to where the North is by following what the North does (or did). Also, such radical re-thinking as has happened has, for a variety of reasons, largely remained marginal, producing alternatives that never quite make it into actual development policies and practices.

Taking the colonialism/development analogy further: What can decolonization and the after-colonial teach us about an after development that is dominated/determined by the supposed wealth and knowledge of Northern experience? How do we remedy the structural impediments to development in the South? How do we free ourselves from IMF-World Bank development models and commit ourselves to the wealth of development re-thinking that is available to us? Or is it really available to us as possible practices? What are the impediments to translating these alternatives into actual development strategies, plans, and policies? It is these questions that motivate this South-South workshop on (re)thinking our development re-thinking. The workshop aims to re-think critical development thinking and inquire into the how and why of its marginal or peripheral location vis-à-vis a development mainstream rooted in the neoliberal agenda and neoclassical economic assumptions. The workshop is organized around four broad sub-themes that are recurrent to development re-thinking: (1) The Challenge of theDevelopmental State; (2) The Technologies that Promote Development as a Means of Dominating the South; (3) The Possibility of Development without the North; and (4) The Political Economy of the Production and Reproduction of Poverty.

(Re)thinking Development Re-thinkings: Critical Perspectives and Alternatives in/to Development

The workshop’s main theme will evaluate the critical perspectives that have been deployed over the years against the development mainstream. The primary question to be answered is: How come mainstream development theory and practice remain unaffected by critiques from inside and outside? The same question must be asked of development alternatives, whether these are directed towards other ways of thinking about development or doing away entirely with the concept of development. What prevents the adoption or practice of these alternatives? Dominant thinking on development is underpinned by the assumptions and methods of neoclassical economic theory. Many of the efforts at re-thinking development do not sufficiently tackle these underlying assumptions and methods. Indeed, in some circles, the crises of development that has been observed has only served as a basis for arguing that the connection between neoclassical theory and development should be strengthened. Thus, the widespread perception that development has failed or is in an impasse, for example, prompted Krugman to call for renewing and strengthening its links with neoclassical economics.

Schuurman has attributed the impasse in development to two sources: The increasing levels of poverty, inequality and exclusion in the South and the crisis in development thinking, with mainstream theories losing their hegemony. According to him, the development impasse was also abetted by advances in critical development thinking, with feminism, post modernism and postcolonialism eroding the domination of mainstream theories, which further clears more space for their critical efforts. Yet these critical efforts remain marginal. The neoliberal agenda and neoclassical economic roots of development thinking continue to hold influence in national developmental strategies, as well as in development interventions supported by the IMF and World Bank. Pieterse offers a different fate to development alternatives. He suggests that alternatives can be argued to be successful and points to their adoption and integration into the orthodoxy as evidence. Alternatives such as sustainable development, gender and development, participatory practices, poverty alleviation as development goal, human development, among others, have entered the mainstream of development thinking. Such adoption and co-optation have, however, not left us with any viable alternatives and led to a watering down of the political and social contexts that necessitated them. The development impasse then seems to have been overtaken by renewed efforts to re-present mainstream development thinking as the only workable and relevant option to developmental problems such as poverty, and by the co-optation of alternatives and their integration into the orthodoxy. Jeffrey Sachs’ recent effort that promises the end of poverty is an example: all we need is to couple the neoliberal agenda with compassion and commitment and we are good to go.

Workshop Sub-Themes

1. RETHINKING THE DEVELOPMENTAL STATE

Current thinking on governance tacitly accepts the narrowing role of the state in directing society. Civil society organizations, thus, have taken on tasks traditionally within the scope of the state’s mandate. This, in addition to the neoliberal claim that development can be secured through a market that is largely left alone, contributes to the concept of development exceeding the horizon of the state’s developmental responsibilities. Yet, the developmental state is asserted to be still relevant. This comes from both mainstream and marginal development thinking. Two Nobel Prize recipients, for example, highlight the need for state interventions in the market. Sen goes against the Pareto principle and advocates some form of wealth reallocation to produce equity in the development of human capabilities. Stiglitz, meanwhile, blames the IMF and its rigid structural adjustment conditionalities that erode the role of the state for the negative experiences of developing countries and their people with globalization. In consideration of the foregoing, the more obvious question is: How is the state relevant in development interventions given its diminishing role, both domestic and global? A more subtle approach to the problem is achieved via the questions: What constitutes the basis for our continued belief in the developmental state? What alternatives are available beyond the triad of choices: state, market and civil society?

2. TECHNOLOGIES OF DEVELOPMENT

Offhand, there are at least two meanings that can be derived from this theme: the technologies that make development possible and the know-how and tools that perpetuate development as a means to the domination/determination of the South. Usually the two meanings exist on different planes. A goal of the workshop is to juxtapose them and maybe derive something new from their disparity. Questions at their intersection are: How do technologies that support and make development possible, including NGOs, contribute to the maintenance of the continued domination of the South? How does the South’s dependence on the North, in terms of development know-how and tools, orient its development thinking and its visions of developed selves?

3. DEVELOPMENT WITHOUT/DESPITE THE NORTH: SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION TOWARDS DEVELOPMENT

A reality of development that is deemed normal by its practitioners is the necessary role of the North in the development of the South. This role should either be bigger or stronger but never really absent. Rationalizations for this include restitution, responsibility, and charity. It is the North’s obligation, whether dictated by compassion or its guilt, to assume part of the South’s development burden. In practical terms: Technology, expertise, financing are things we expect to get from the North’s involvement in our development efforts. The North’s involvement in Southern development is aptly captured by the North-South dialogues of the 1970s and the early 1980s, and is exemplified by the Brandt Commission. It highlights the necessary linkage between the North and the South in a world economy that is increasingly becoming interdependent. Such conceptualization defuses the more divisive and antagonistic roots of alternative terms such as (semi-)periphery and Third World. The concept of periphery lays the blame of the South’s underdevelopment on the North’s development. Third World, meanwhile, originally had the same connotation as the phrase Third Estate in pre-revolutionary France. The point is that what was originally a relation of estrangement and conflict after the postcolonial has been defused into dependence couched as cooperation. The paramount questions then are: What are the effects of Southern dependence on the North for South-South cooperation for development? Is it possible for the South to pursue development without or despite the North?

4. THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF POVERTY

Development’s supposed final goal is the eradication of poverty. Yet, like development, economic emancipation for the world’s poor remains elusive. In real terms, the number of people suffering poverty continues to increase in tandem with worsening destitution. This occurs with a parallel increase in the wealth of the world’s already wealthy. The Pareto optimality principle that underlies neoliberal and neoclassical development thinking all but eliminates the option of redistributing the world’s wealth in favor of the poor. Development that supposedly leaves no individual worse off is, thus, poverty’s holy grail. Yet there is no trickle down effect that should erode poverty as it reaches the bottom poor. What we get is economic growth that leaves more and more people in worse conditions. This leads us to the questions: How come/why poverty? What are the politics and economics involved in the persistence (maintenance) of poverty?

Workshop Schedule

1. Workshop Duration

The workshop timeframe is two days. Participants are advised to arrive on Thursday, the 4th of October 2007. The workshop proper will take two days. Participants will leave on Sunday 7th of October, 2007.

2. Tentative Schedule

October 4, 2007 Arrival of Participants

7:00 pm Dinner

October 5, 2007 Workshop

8:00 – 9:00 am Registration

9:00 – 10:00 am Welcome Remarks and Preliminaries

10:00 – 12:00 pm plenary: (Re) thinking Development Rethinkings

(Coffee will be served during Plenary)

12:30 pm Lunch

2:00 – 4:00 pm Session 1: Rethinking the Developmental State

4:30 – 6:30 pm Session 2: Technologies of Development

8:00 pm Dinner and Socials

October 6, 2007 Workshop

9:00 – 11:00 am Session 3: Development without/despite the North:

South-South cooperation towards development

12:00 pm Lunch

2:00 – 4:00 pm Session 4: The Politics Economy of Poverty

4:00 – 6:00 pm Closing Plenary: Concluding Guest Speaker, Closing Remarks and Ceremonies

8:00 pm Dinner and Socials

October 7, 2007 Departure of Participants