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Knowledge,
Power and Development
Jan Neverdeen Pieterse, University of Illinois*
Jan
Nederveen Pieterse, Professor of Sociology at the University of
Illinois, shares his thinking on the state of the social sciences
and development studies at a new era with the superpower at war
and multilateralism being given a pounding. To reconcile this
Realpolitik statement with development objectives suggests that
these fields of research should become more interdisciplinary.
leading question in this special issue is what have the social
sciences brought to the development debate and how have they influenced
the understanding of development? Framing the question in this
way and thus establishing social science and development as two
separate fields, overlooks that they are codependent in the first
place. Both social science and development studies centre on progress
and the dislocations it brings. Social science, taking shape in
the nineteenth century, examines the problems generated by industrialization,
urbanization, and so forth, and in doing so establishes the framework
of what, in time, becomes the problematic of development. This
includes the awareness of social problems, the development of
diagnostics (such as 'statistics') and forms of social intervention
(such as economic policies, social policy, urban and regional
planning) to engineer progress and remedy social problems.
Development,
then, is first a discourse internal to the nineteenth century
industrializing countries of Europe, which is later applied to
Europe's lagging regions and colonial dependencies.1
Still later, after the Second World War, it becomes a field in
its own right, as modern development studies.
All
along, social science and development studies meet and mingle
under the wide umbrella of modernity. Social sciences study the
problems of modernity and development studies, put simply, they
are concerned with how to modernize. Hence the classics of political
economy and social science (Marx, Durkheim, Weber, etc.) are also
the classics of development thinking2
and ongoing changes in social science reverberate in development
studies, if only because development studies are applied social
science, with the global South as their domain of application.
Structural functionalism was operationalized in modernization
theory; Keynesianism was reworked in Latin American structuralism;
neo-Marxism echoes in dependency theory; post-structuralism echoes
in post-development, and so forth. As a field in its own right
development studies, in time, feedback into social science and
occasionally influence social science. Thus, dependency theory
(originally based on a social science import) also shaped thinking
in the West. Experiences in East Asia shaped thinking in the West;
the 'Celtic Tiger' to discuss developments in Ireland is a case
in point.
Knowledge/Power
Let's ask a simple question. The advantages of development for
developing countries are plain enough (though it begs the question
what kind of development), but what precisely is the advantage
of the development of developing countries for the advanced societies?
A cliché in international studies is that the international domain
is an unruly, Hobbesian arena that is fraught with danger and
therefore national interest must guide international policy. If
this is at least half true, why then, shifting gear to development
studies, should we suddenly assume that the international domain
is in fact a domain of good Samaritans and Florence Nightingales?
Why should the advanced societies empower the developing countries,
particularly if this opens the prospect of future competition?
It would be logical then to assume that the advanced societies
share their bounty with the less privileged societies at a price
- the price of accepting, more or less, what happens to be the
prevailing orthodoxy in advanced countries about what constitutes
development and how to achieve it, and accepting the advanced
countries' answer to the question how can we combine development
assistance with maintaining strategic advantage?
During
the Cold War, the advantage of development cooperation was clear
and strategic; part of the contest between capitalism and communism
was the ability to demonstrate that capitalism confers benefits
and brings social development. Development cooperation was a component
of domino politics. With the end of the Cold War, this benefit
subsided; the development of developing countries was still desirable
but no longer strategically necessary.
The
assumption of 'mutual interest' that guided the numerous North-South
reports (development is in the mutual interest of developed and
developing countries) was, at minimum, interpreted differently.
With
the Cold War waning, the Reagan/Thatcher revolution unbridled
capitalism in advanced countries while the Washington consensus
unleashed capitalism in developing countries. As a consequence,
social inequality within and between countries rose sharply. This
rupture in policy and paradigm has been summed up as the 'counter-revolution
in development'. The new regime of no-nonsense capitalism did
away with the idea that developing countries represent a 'special
case' and thus eliminated the foundation of development economics.
IMF conditionalities and World Bank structural adjustment transformed
development into a discipline of conformity with Anglo-American
capitalism. The Keynesian orthodoxy of the post-war decades gave
way to the neoliberal orthodoxy. In this paradigm shift, Keynesian
and State-led development knowledge was overruled; instead, development
was to be market-led. It is a truism that after five development
decades many developing countries still face declining incomes
and global inequality keeps rising. Yet the actual picture is
a bit different. During the first post-war development decades
world economic growth increased and the income gap within and
between countries decreased and many developing countries saw
their conditions improve. This pattern changed sharply since the
adoption of structural reform policies.
Now
a major dispute rages about whether the past decades have seen
increased or decreased global inequality. There is some agreement
that the aggregate statistics of world development show overall
improvement, and secondly, that this is mainly due to developments
in East Asia and particularly in China and India, which together
represent 40 per cent of the world population. But there is no
agreement about what this means. Some argue that this demonstrates
the virtues of 'globalization' and others claim that it shows
the benefits of the 'free market', liberalization and export-oriented
development - in short, the Washington policies.3
But irony has it that the countries that do show significant economic
growth were typically not countries that followed Washington orthodoxies,
while the countries that did - the indebted countries in Africa
and Latin America, many of which had no choice but to swallow
IMF medicine because of their debt burden - failed to achieve
development or experienced negative growth.4
A
review of these experiences suggests that the core problem is
not development knowledge per se. The larger dynamics suggest
that the main issue is macroeconomic conditions and international
policies. The core problem is not knowledge but policies, and
the adoption of macroeconomic policies that are not conducive
to development but use 'development' to achieve different aims.
Blowing
in the Wind: Regime Change
At this point in time it is strange to discuss development and
keep a straight face. It's strange because of the accumulated
impact of twenty-five years of neoliberalism. It's strange because
of the breakdown of multilateralism. And it is strange because
of the turn to war - 'war on terrorism' and preventive war as
the United States' security doctrine. Can we discuss development
as if all this is business as usual? Current trends show, more
clearly than before, that development is not an international
priority.
First,
with regard to the record of neoliberal globalization, since the
neoliberal paradigm is dead, we must bury it. The process of reclaiming
development is well under way.5
What then remains of the legitimacy of the international institutions
that have ardently preached and consistently applied the neoliberal
orthodoxy? What remains of the legitimacy of the IMF after its
mishandling of the Asian crisis, after the Russian crisis and
the profound crisis of Argentina? In view of the dismal record
of structural adjustment and the World Bank's remarkably poor
record in poverty alleviation, how should we judge the Bank's
aspiration to be a 'knowledge bank'? Any policy involves data
and operational knowledge but what is really needed is critical
knowledge to contextualize and assess policy frameworks and paradigms,
and this is what is lacking in the World Bank. The World Bank
is a tunnel knowledge bank, even internally: the Bank's new culture
of outreach and listening (to 'the voices of the poor') does not
penetrate the Bank's internal decision-making culture.6
Critical knowledge is the missing Factor X in Washington, the
world capital of groupthink. This is not accidentally so but structurally
so and is not likely to change in the coming years.7
In the words of Joseph Stiglitz, 'It is difficult to deal with
a great power that is both schoolmaster and truant.'8
The
breakdown of multilateralism is sometimes described as a 'widening
of the Atlantic', as if European stubbornness is equally at fault.
But it is the United States that makes a habit of avoiding international
covenants (the non-proliferation treaty, the ban on landmines)
or scrapping them (the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal
Court). International development hinges on hegemonic compromise,
but where is the room for compromise in 'either with us or against
us'? International development requires multilateralism, but the
United States' habit of avoiding multilateralism takes the floor
from under international development cooperation. Its trade policies
- the adoption of steel tariffs and farm bill - fly in the face
of the World Trade Organization. Rather than working through the
WTO (a multilateral framework, for what it is worth), the United
States opts for bilateral free trade agreements. American military
spending was $500 billion in 2004 (and considerably more when
the cost of wars and other security spending are added), while
the United States spends $15 billion on foreign aid (most of which
goes to military favourites such as Israel or else comes riddled
with self-serving strings).
What
happens to the project of development in the din of war? War is
development in reverse. Warfare means a massive transfer of resources
and concentration of power. If peace and security are preconditions
for development, perpetual war on terrorism and preventive war
undermine the conditions for development. Development (or at least,
economic growth) could be part of neoliberal globalization by
some stretch of the imagination, but by no stretch of imagination
can it be part of empire.
War
does bring clarity. What remained hidden under hegemonic compromise
is revealed as compromise is breached. If neoliberal globalization
was a theatre of the absurd we have graduated to a theatre of
the grotesque. I refer to the new configuration as neoliberal
empire: an unstable and unsustainable formation that twins empire
with neoliberal practices, so the 'free market' is now extrapolated
worldwide by force of arms.9 Neoliberalism
is renamed 'freedom' and its icons are airbases and pipelines
(in addition to stock exchanges). Let's reduce world poverty.
But first we will liberate Afghanistan and Iraq.
Under
these circumstances it is difficult to see how the momentum of
the international development project can be resumed. The Millennium
Development Goals, the latest instalment of international development
policy, is likely to join all the other development targets that
remain or will be unmet - the UN foreign aid targets, the Social
Summit's 2020 goals, the promise to reduce global poverty by half
in 2015, and so forth. What the current juncture holds is a retreat
from world development to bilateral and regional cooperation.
For the time being, a likely trend is the regionalization of development
with stronger economic cooperation within Asia, clustered around
China, and possibly stronger South-South cooperation. For obvious
reasons this will not be guided by Washington orthodoxies.
At
this juncture, what development studies need, rather than new
inputs from social science (of which it has plenty), is fresh
cynicism and a clear perspective on the place of knowledge and
the space of power. What social science needs, in particular economics,
is to deprovincialize and to open its windows to developments
in the global South. But rather than just a rearrangement of knowledge,
what is needed is a realignment of power. What development studies
need is civil disobedience in relation to the pretensions of the
Washington institutions. This is not likely to materialize as
long as research and policy remain clustered around or aligned
with Washington. International institutions and agencies in surplus
countries, particularly in Europe and Japan, should realize that
the neoliberal paradigm is dead, the Washington institutions are
bankrupt, and policy frameworks and funding flows need to be redirected.
Paradigms and power structures are about as agile as oil tankers,
but eventually, as the character of global hegemony changes, so
do the plays of power and politics of knowledge downstream. If
it has been possible to achieve broad agreement on the Kyoto Protocol
and the International Criminal Court, it may likewise be possible
to do for international economics and development what the Kyoto
Agreement seeks to do for the environment, what the ICC seeks
to do for international law. This means turning a new leaf
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74 - Social Sciences