Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Third World Setting
Inquiry (historical, social scientific, or policy oriented) into the state of the Third World or Less Developed Countries (LDC) tends to assume the enduring realities of disadvantage. While there may be a number of empirical indexes that reveal the yawning gap between the "West" and the "Rest" so much of the scholarship has narrowed in either on the sins of western imperialism or at times the benchmark of western development. Neither of these foci account sufficiently for the complexity of global/local interactions. They have failed to imagine a world where the "West" while hegemonic never settled into every nook and cranny and never became the only stick by which human beings measured their daily lives. Even more importantly they have not sufficiently grappled with the real and emerging shift-- what Alice Amsden has called "the Rise of the Rest." The reorganization in economic relations between the core and the periphery now underway will not only change our collective futures, it will begin to readjust the way we understand the global past. The portrait of the subaltern--once framed by the mercator projection--is certain to acquire new characteristics along with this emerging economic and hence political geography. Making sense of new conditions will require nascent paradigms, not necessarily better or worse, just different. I encourage you to pursue the rest of the readings for this course with this in mind. For more information on the economic shift eastward, this is a very useful piece in the Economist (forwarded to me by my friend Dr. Guy Laron of Hebrew University) http://www.economist.com/node/16329442?story_id=16329442
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I couldn't stop thinking of Mike Davis' Planet of Slums when I was reading both your blog Dr. Biltoft and the Economist piece too. With regards to your post, just about everything I have read from a western perspective with regards to the Third World or LDC has vilified the west as bullies and the rest as willing accomplices to oppression. A wide brush is used to paint a picture that requires much more nuanced strokes. I have the feeling that writing in such a manner, somewhat apologetic, is a tool to make the west feel better! Sure, this is a noble cause, but in the end it hides the complexity of how things really are, and thus becomes a whole new body of knowledge that is in fact not very useful at all. Don't get me wrong, this manner of inquiry WAS an integral part of a process to establish a more equitable body of knowledge, but we must move on! Ok, I am rambling now!!! Lastly though, I liked the Economist piece, but I had one major, maybe two, issues with it. It too paints a picture with broad strokes. The economies of the BRIC nations for example may be growing extremely fast, but so is the gap between rich and poor. This is not to say that the gap between rich and poor in the west is non-existent, but from my experience of traveling both all over the west and the rest, the gap in places like Russia and Brazil can be indescribable! My second gripe is that the article hides the fact that the majority of the rest outside of BRIC are not driving growth on a global scale - again, this is the flaw of the 6 inch paint brush when a smaller brush could be used for the same work!
ReplyDeleteI agree Roy. This is a practical justification for the continued existence of humanistic and social scientific analysis. TO keep rounding out the simple and deterministic narratives with more nuance. I think one of the most important tasks is to highlight and contemplate contradictions rather than smoothing them over with acronymns and projections! BRIC is a ready made rebuttle to the rise of the West, but intellecually (and in terms of policy) it would be a mistake to bind it to the original binary west/east, north/south, core/periphery without deep and continued study and reflection on what shifting dynamics mean, have meant, will mean for the world. That is as much an empircal call to arms as it is a conceptual one.
ReplyDeleteWell, let me just say that I would very much like to post my own blog entry, but it seems that I haven't figured out how that works at the moment, so instead I'll follow the subaltern path that's open to me: I can post comments. Yay! Without the top-down power to initiate discussion, I can at least react to others.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Mark Beger's opening article, he is basically calling out the concept of the "Third World" as one that has outlived its usefulness. When Beger states that "I take the view that the notion of the third world...is conceptually bankrupt...and...has already lost any legitimacy and relevance it once had" (Beger, 31), he may be a bit harsh. However, I do agree that the idea was formed in reaction to the aftermath of WWII, which saw two major geopolitical realignments: the division of much of the world into capitalist and communist camps, and the beginnings of the end of colonialism, with nations such as India, Pakistan, and Indonesia securing independence in the late 1940s. With the emergence of new, non-Western nation-states, the existence of independence movements in the majority of colonies that had not secured nominal independence, and the attempts, post WWII, by the USA and the USSR to secure allegiances through post-war funding of state and economic infrastructures and/or guerilla movements to contest power in regions such as Vietnam and Cuba, it's no surprise that one reaction to the "first-world/second world" dichotomy would be to advocate for a "third world" way, also known as the non-aligned movement (NAM). In theory, as espoused by the launch of the Third-World movement at the Bandung conference in Indonesia in 1955, the idea did not yet carry with it the negative connotations of "underdevelopment and poverty" and in some ways could be viewed as agency, or independence of action and thought on the part of the conferees. That the initial conference sought to condemn all forms of "colonialism," including explicit criticism of formal colonialism and implicit criticism of the Soviet spheres of influence and American neo-colonial (informal) colonialism, suggested a good start to a "third way" approach. However, this idea was likely doomed, not simply due to the diversity of the members and disputes between members (such as between India and China) but also because the intensity of the Cold War and the reality of the either/or binary made it much more feasible and plausible for different nations (or leaders of those nations) to, instead of maintaining neutrality, favor either the U.S. or the USSR. In fact, the second generation of "Third World" leaders in the 1960s swung to the left, becoming more aligned ideologically with the USSR (thus the inclusion of Cuba as a member) while still denying the headship of the USSR. Whatever relative distance maintained between them and the "second" world, the concept played out with the ending of the Cold War circa 1991 and the subsequent US push for neoliberal globalization. Ultimately, the term may have lost its usefulness precisely because it is defined in terms of an "other," rather than being a proactive, self-defining term (for example, "China" means "middle kingdom" or "central state", a view that places China at the very center of its worldview). However, the term still carries with it the negative connotations of "underdeveloped" world, and much presumption of economic and political theorists in the West have focused on "developing" the "Third World" in such ways that many parts of the region remain economic colonies of the West. Even the most-successful of these nations, China, also serves as a major source of cheap labor for the production of goods shipped to the "First World." Thus, if the term is now defunct in political relevance, it retains economic significance.
From a practical standpoint, I would very much like to be posting my own blog entries. However, I haven't been able to start my own blog entries but I have been able to post comments. So, I will take the "sub-altern" route and respond from below to those who have the power to initiate conversation. One other note, NEVER attempt to post a long comment without copying/pasting a backup copy first!
ReplyDeleteRegarding Mark Beger's article on the Third World, the concept emerged as a response to the aftermath of World War II, which saw two major geopolitical shifts: one, the division of the world into two major economic camps (capitalist versus communist) with associated political backing (the USA versus the USSR); and two, the sudden independence of former colonies such as India, Pakistan, and Indonesia. Given a dichotomous split of the world into two polarizing extremes, it is no surprise that a reaction to this situation would suggest the emergence of a "third way" or "third world." While the term "non-aligned movement" means much the same thing, "third-world" more explicitly carries the connotation of defining itself in terms of an "other". In this way, the term becomes self-limiting and thus, following the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, politically irrelevant.
However, the term, although originally one focused on politics, has instead become one of economics. The negative connotation of the "third" world as economically underdeveloped informed much of the West's dialogue with the "third" world. For too many in the West, "third-world" meant "third-rate," whereas for many in the Third World, such as India or China, governments saw their nation as leaders of the largest bloc of nations on Earth, and something to be proud of, not ashamed of. Beger is right that the term itself is problematic. Some asssociate it with modernization theory, the idea of the need of development and civilization. However, I am reminded of Gandhi's response to the question of Western civilization:
Reporter: “Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of Western civilization?”
Gandhi: “I think it would be a good idea!”
Too often, the West has sought to impose its values, top-down, on non-Western societies, but as Gandhi's quote makes clear, opinions differ on whether the West itself is "civilized."
In short, the "Third World" idea as an economic construct also places the "third world" in a box, defined in relation to the West, assumed to be poor and underdeveloped and in need of Western development. Of course, recent neoliberal globalization has pushed the concept of "free trade" with the "Third World," which has had the effect of extracting resources and labor from the "Third World" at a bargain, while concentrating the accumulation of wealth primarily in the hands of the West. For the few "Third World" nations that have proven "successful,"much of that success has been concentrated in the hands of the few (Singapore is really just a city-state that benefits through trade). China and India has sufficiently large populations to support a major overclass, but it should be noted that trade between China and the U.S. has the effect of supplying cheap goods through cheap labor.
Of course, nations that is not the case for nations that have turned away from the U.S. economic engine, including Cuba and Venezuela. For nations such as these, the idea of the "third world" survives politically, and is even flourishing; it just needs a new name, one that would free the discussion from the tired shackles of "Cold War" politics and economic modernization theory.
OK I just realized these comments went through, even when the system said "too long to process." Whew! I thought I wrote all that for nothing.
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