Peter Singer, Ira W. De Camp professor of bioethics in the Centre for Human Values at Princeton University and Laureate professor at University of Melbourne, has been standing at the forefront of debates about our ethical obligations and approaching global poverty, euthanasia, abortions and animal rights for more than three decades.
 

The Animal Liberation (1975) book is widely considered as a bible of modern animal rights movement, therefore it is not a surprise, that The New Yorker labeled Peter Singer as „the most influential living philosopher“ and in 2005 Time magazine included him amogst 100 most influential people in the world“. From the other publications we should mention e.g.: The expanding circle: ethics and sociobiology (1981), Practical Ethics (1979), A Companion to Ethics (1991), Rethinking life & death: the collapse of our traditional ethics (1994), A Companion to Bioethics (1998), One World: The Ethics of Globalization (2006), The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter (2006), and The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty (2009).

While attending his lecture „Animal Liberation: Retrospect and Prospect“ at the University of Melbourne, Peter Singer agreed to provide an exclusive interview to Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization, interview by Petr Pribyla.

Within political philosophy you have been standing at the forefront of utilititarianistic perspective towards global poverty, saying we have the same moral obligation to help someone who is standing right next to us as someone being thousands miles away from us. Can you explain your utilitarianistic approach?

What I am criticising is the argument that distance morally makes a difference. In the past distance has made the difference because it has not really been possible to help people in a distance, but today it is.

Some specific group of authors within political philosophy have been defending argument that human beings have only negative obligation, e.g. don’t cause a pain, do not let anyone suffer etc. Therefore anything that goes above our negative obligation, as a positive obligation to help someone in need, is simply a secondary matter.

That is why I started an article I wrote already in the 1970s with the example about rescuing a child drowning in a pond right in front of you. Virtually everybody would agree that you do have a moral obligation towards that child. If you are passing by a pond and see a small child drowning and you can save the child’s life but there is something crossing your mind like ruining a nice pair of shoes, people would think, that it would be wrong to walk on and say I do not want to ruin my shoes and I have no obligation to save that child. So the view, which you suggested, is far outside the mainstream. That alone does not say it would not be defensible. But you start with a burden of proving that there is no obligation to rescue not even the child, which is so easily rescued. There is a kind of libertarian view that you mentioned represented by people like Robert Nozick, who are saying that there is no obligation, but I am simply on the grounds of thinking that everybody’s in­terest matters and you can’t give thousands and thousands times more weight to your own interest than you give to those strangers. That is obviously what you are doing if you reject the idea that you have no obligation to help somebody else.

According to the UN statistics more than 1.2 billion people—one in every five on Earth—survive on less than $1 a day and on the other hand the top 1% of the world’s richest people earn as much as the poorest 57%. Is it morally justifiable to have such a wealth?

The problem is not whether the wealth is morally justifiable but the problem is that those who are having the wealth are doing nothing to help the poor. This is not justifiable and that’s what I object to. It is fine if people have wealth because it is not a zero-sum game. It is not that if some people have wealth it means that others are poor, but the thing is, if they are not helping the poor and they are not doing the things that they could do. Then there is a problem in justifying the wealth.

Within the last decades, a most of discussions about global justice and solving global poverty have tightened themselves with a concept of existing universal human rights. Where does your approach of practical ethics stand towards the concept of universalism in human rights?

The concept of practical ethics is based on moral obligations that do not have to go through arguments about human rights, that is true.
 

“The discussion about Asian values does not do justice to Asian tradition.”

However, even there we have to face questions dealing with objectivism and particularism. There have been lively discussions about an existence of so-called Asian values concerning human rights, which is implying relativism in minimal standards of human rights as consequences of specific differences between western and eastern traditional values. Thus, if we step up into the discussion of global justice through concept of practical ethics, are we than able to reach any objectivism in moral questions? I.e. Aren’t the ethics and ethical question, at the end, a purely subjective matter, for individuals to choose, or perhaps relative to the culture of the society in which one lives?

Yes, I do think that some objectivism in ethics exists and that there are values that by careful reflection and consideration people from any culture can reach. The discussion about Asian values does not do justice to Asian tradition. Certainly, what we have been discussing you can find in work of Asian philosophers like Mencius who thinks there is an obligation of wealthy and powerful to help the poor. Thus, I do not see any fundamental difference between western and eastern traditional values on ethical questions.

International organizations and international systems as such are usually blamed from a political utilitarianistic position for its ineffectiveness, illegitimacy and being responsible for the situation of global poverty. Should we not to be more concern, at the end, to solving the ineffective international system than donating through charity? We can quite often come across an argument saying, that individual direct donations relief just a short-term solution and simply delays additional problems.

I am not interested in short-term solutions. There is all kinds of assistance that we can get and those which are providing short term solutions are not as good as the ones that are providing a long term sustainable solutions. But the question is what is a long-term sustainable solution? And I think that we have to give, from the wealth that we have available, to those most effective organizations providing long-term solutions. There is a huge number of different aid organizations following different strategies and we, as responsible donors, our obliged to find those who are doing it. Fortunately, there are organizations that are examining that. I have mentioned some in my book The Life You Can Save and I talked about organizations like GiveWell who are trying to find out which organizations are the most effective.

For example Brian Barry, well-known political philosopher saying, that natural resources provide a relatively straightforward application of the idea that what nobody can make any special claim on everybody has an equal claim on. In this view, citizens of countries as United Arab Emirates flourishing through having access to the oil under their surface, having no more rights to drill for them than citizens of some of the no resource-rich countries. Thus, Brian Berry defending argument, that there should be an international income tax on countries above some certain amount of GND and where the money would go to poor countries.

That would be fine if countries would do that. That is a sort of social welfare’s theme on a global level rather than on a national level. The money would have to be used effectively and it is not that we want to get money to every government no matter how effective it is in helping its people. What we want to do is to raise the money as we just said and providing long-term solutions. That’s what we have to do and if governments would tax their citizens for this purpose, that would be fine, but since they do not, it is up to us as individuals to do that job.

If we look at the ongoing economical crisis, is it too naive to expect any reassessment of our moral obligations towards poor?

When the global financial crisis started, there were only few people who said that we have to reassess what is important. I do not really see that a lot reassessment is going on. Unfortunately, the global financial crisis affected that some nations give less than otherwise they would give. That is a pity, because people all of a sudden felt that they are not so wealthy. But all together I do not see that it is a huge impact. People are gradually starting donating again and I hope it will continue.
 

Euthanasia

You have been also extensively covering the euthanasia issues within last decades. If we look at Europe, since Netherlands started allowing euthanasia, few other european countries as Belgium, Switzerland and recently Luxemburg joined in. How do you see those changes in European societies and how do you approach the euthanasia questions in general?

I suppose that people should be able to decide to end their lives, if they are incurably ill and they do not wish to go on living. I do not see that it is in the interest of state or anyone else to force them to live in conditions which they regard as unacceptable. The way in which the laws work in Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg and other countries you mentioned generaly shows that euthanasia is something people want. I have to admit that I am surprise that it spreads only slowly. But I do think it is spreading.

Let’s think of a situation of someone being in a coma, for many years, no chances to get out of that condition and thus is not able to decide if wants to go on living. Than, are we allowed to make that decision instead him?

I think that patients should be able to decide whether they want to go on living or not, once they are fully informed about their condition. Of course, when they are in a coma they cannot decide, but maybe they will sign a declaration beforehand that they would like to end their life in some situation or maybe they have given power to some friend or relative to make that decision for them. I believe that in these cases the decision should be respected.

If we stay with the autonomy of a person, lets say there is an adult, who wants to commit a suicide, is fully aware of the consequences and is rationally thinking. Is it morally justifiable to commit a suicide?

It can be morally justifiable, especially as you say, if they are fully aware of the consequences and in a rational frame of mind, then it can be morally justifiable. Especially if people are incurably ill, than, it is clearly justifiable. So, the problem is to simply make sure that people are not temporarily depressed by something that has happened and when there is nothing seriously wrong with them. Abortion

If we step out of euthanasia, you have been also extensively writing about abortions, which you have been defending. But if we look at the debates about abortion in general, the discussions are circulating about one side defending an individual right of a mother to decide what to do with her body and on the other side stands interest in protecting prenatal life. How should we deal with those conflicting rights?

First, you have to decide what the moral status of fetus is. I do not think that either of this side, as you mentioned, are right on their own terms. The crucial question really is whether the fetus has a right to live. I argue that a fetus is not the kind of being that has absolute right to live, it does not have any conscious of awareness of its own life, and therefore it is not wrong to end its life before it properly begins. Thus, I do not see a problem in ending a life of a fetus.

However, usually the decisions of highest and supreme courts are mainly focused on finding answer to a question: when the fetus is becoming a human being? In Europe abortion is usually allowed within first 12 weeks of pregnancy, however the threshold varying from country to country. Thus, is the question “when“ really the right sort of question we should be finding answer for?

I do not think you can answer the question of when, unless you ask a question of what is wrong with killing a human being. That is the basic question and that is what you have to ask first. And if you are asking that question, the answer really is that killing a being becomes most serious when the being has some self-conception, some self-awareness of its own life, and of living over time. A fetus never has that, therefore I do not see any problem with killing a fetus if that is what the mother wants. And my view also implies that it is less serious to end the life of a newborn infant than of an older child.

So if we stay with the newborn baby, we can think of a situation where a child is born and diagnosed with an incurrable decease with no perspective of a decent life as such, and his parents do not want to go on in his living and better letting him to die?

Yes, I think that it can be justifiable. It will depend on the condition of child and if other people would want to care of that child and how much that child would suffer, but I certainly think that the child has not any kind of absolute right to life which would makes it wrong to kill that child at the early stage, speaking still about newborn infants.
 

Animal Liberation

“ What gives a being rights and what makes it wrong to treat being in a certain way is not what species it belongs to but what capacities it has. And the most fundamental of those capacities is to suffer or to enjoy life.”

For more than four decades you have stood at the forefront of advocating of animal rights. Your book Animal Liberation from 70’s has become a bible of various animal liberation movements. On which presumptions do you conclude that animals are having the same rights as human beings?

We have to ask the fundamental question, which is why we think that there are human rights in a sense of rights that all members of the species homo sapiens have but no members of any other species have? When you start thinking about that than it becomes rather peculiar. Because why should membership of a certain species give you rights? If there were beings from another planet who could suffer in exactly the same way that we can, would it be right to say that because they are from another species we do not need to care about their suffering, and can treat them as we treat animals today just because they are not members of our species? I think that the answer is clearly not, it would not be right. What gives a being rights and what makes it wrong to treat being in a certain way is not what species it belongs to but what capacities it has. And the most fundamental of those capacities is to suffer or to enjoy life. Since there are many billions of non-human animals that can suffer or enjoy life than we do wrong if we ignore their interests in not suffering or enjoying life simply because they happened not to be a member of our species of homo sapiens.

Recently, the British house of Commons passed a motion directing the government to impose a ban on the use of wild animals in circuses. At the same time, the lower house of the Dutch parliament passed a law giving the Jewish and Islamic communities a year to provide evidence that animals slaughtered by traditional methods do not experience greater pain than those that are stunned before they are killed. How do you see the progress which has been done in protecting animal rights within last decades?

I think that they are actually very small ones. What you should have mentioned and is million times more important than those things in fact are in farming. On the 1st of January next year across the entire European union the standard of conventional battery cages becomes illegal. That will be affecting hundreds of millions of animals, not the very small number of animals that will be affected by the two peaces of legislation you mentioned. And in a year and a half, in January 2013 it will be illegal to keep pregnant sows in individual crates, as they are standardly kept now. This is actually an enormous progress as compared how things were twenty or thirty years ago since I have started writing about those issues. But at the same time I would like to obviously go a lot further because these reforms, important as they are, do not stop widespread cruelties at the farms and cruelties to rise for food, to rise for fur as many other animals are facing. So, we still have a long way to go but there is an encouraging progress being made.

Thank you for the interview.
 

Petr Pribyla is a student of European Master’s Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation in Venice and an intern at the Czech Centre of Human Rights and Democratization of Masaryk University.

Pane Šedivý, můžete pro naše čtenáře zrekapitulovat svým pohledem české působení v NATO od vstupu do Aliance v roce 1999?

Česká republika se dokázala poměrně rychle začlenit do NATO, a to jak politicky, tak vojensky. Patříme k těm politicky aktivnějším a proreformně naladěným spojencům. Přišli jsme s řadou vlastních iniciativ, např. v oblasti obranného plánování, logistiky, organizace vrtulníkových schopností. Stále patříme k nejlepším v ochraně proti zbraním hromadného ničení. Naše armáda prošla poměrně záhy transformací a profesionalizací – tedy ve srovnání s ostatními členy z post-komunistické Evropy, a v současné době patří – co do kvality a schopnosti společného nasazení v operacích – k těm v kontextu celé Aliance nadprůměrným. A naše působení v operacích tomu odpovídá jak rozsahem zapojení, tak jeho kvalitou.

Nicméně vzhledem k rozpočtovým škrtům posledních let začínáme již nyní žít takříkajíc z podstaty. Naši těžce vydobytou pozici, nebo lépe řečeno prestiž spolehlivého spojence, který do společného obranného potenciálu NATO náležitě přispívá, můžeme poměrně rychle pozbýt, a to zejména v souvislosti s dalším předpokládaným snižováním našeho rozpočtu. Podle momentálního vládního výhledu má obrana v letech 2013 – 14 ztratit dalších přibližně 20% ve srovnání s dneškem. Klesneme k 0.8% HDP (oproti Aliancí doporučeným 2%) a budeme v zásadě bojovat o přežití ve smyslu zajištění těch nejzákladnějších, absolutně nezbytných a povinných funkcí našich ozbrojených sil. O nějakém rozvoji pak nemůže být ani řeči. Staneme se záhy tzv. černými pasažéry NATO – tedy těmi, kdo berou více bezpečnosti a obrany než přidávají. Naše politická váha a vliv v Alianci tím podstatně klesnou.

Na podzim loňského roku byla v Lisabonu schválena nová Strategie NATO, připravená týmem Madeleine Albrightové. Tato koncepce nepočítala s intervencí v Libyi. Můžeme se vžít do role analytika a bývalého insidera a zkusit odpovědět na otázku, zdali se NATO bude i nadále angažovat ve vojenských intervencích v zemích, kde probíhá tzv. arabské jaro – aktuálně tedy v Sýrii?

Především nutno říci, že smyslem koncepčních dokumentů a strategií není předpovídat konkrétní situace v konkrétním místě a čase. Měly by však být schopny předvídat obecné scénáře a způsoby použití prostředků Aliance pro její cíle. V tomto smyslu operace na podporu bezletové zóny nad Libyí nijak zásadně nevybočuje z aliančního repertoáru plánovacích situací, od nichž se v NATO odvíjí plánování a rozvoj vojenských schopností. Vzhledem k tomu, že NATO paralelně s Libyí operuje na několika dalších místech – a zejména v Afghánistánu, jsou kapacity Aliance natolik vytíženy, že si lze jen stěží představit otevření další vojenské operace v regionu.

Tolik z hlediska kapacity Aliance. Ale především každému nasazení sil předchází politická debata o vážnosti situace v té které zemi či regionu, o hloubce a případných dopadech problému na bezpečnost a zájmy spojenců, atp. Veškerá rozhodnutí o nasazení sil a prostředků Aliance pak podléhají souhlasu všech spojenců. V neposlední řadě je pak žádoucí disponovat mandátem Rady bezpečnosti OSN. Vzhledem k těmto faktorům se prozatím jeví možnost intervence v Sýrii velmi nepravděpodobná. Na druhé straně nelze pominout fakt, že Sýrie sousedí s Tureckem – tedy přímo hraničí s územím NATO. Případnému zvažování společného zásahu NATO by musela předcházet eskalace situace v Sýrii do rozměrů a vážnosti, které by znamenaly přímé ohrožení Turecka.

Když se dnes, v polovině července 2011, podívám do Libye – můžete komentovat, jaká ponaučení přinesla Alianci bezletová zóna nad Libyí?

Odhlédneme-li od složitosti politických debat v Alianci ohledně charakteru zapojení NATO do řešení libyjské krize, základní lekce spočívá v praktickém poznání skutečnosti, že závislost spojenců NATO na USA je v oblasti vojenských schopností je naprosto fatální. Každým škrtem v obranných rozpočtech evropských spojenců – včetně naší země – se tato závislost zvyšuje a propast mezi vojenskými potenciály Evropy a USA se rozšiřuje. Američané zajišťují v Libyi většinu systémů velení a řízení, jsou naprosto nepostradatelní pro informační a zpravodajskou dominanci, poskytují bezpilotní letouny, doplňují Evropským účastníkům jejich rychle se tenčící zásoby přesné munice, atp. S prohlubující se propastí mezi Evropou a USA roste americká frustrace z lehkovážného přístupu většiny evropských států k obraně. Nabízí se otázka, zda se NATO již nyní nevzdaluje od schopnosti naplnit tzv. úroveň ambicí, definovanou v lisabonském strategickém konceptu – tedy požadavek či cíl dosáhnout souboru sil a prostředků, které umožní v případě potřeby vést nejméně dvě větší, případně několik dalších menších vojenských operací současně.

V souvislosti s majoritním zapojením americké armády do operace v Libyi a 75% rozpočtu NATO financovaném USA pronesl americký ministr obrany Robert Gates kritický projev k ministrům obrany členských zemí Aliance, v němž se nechal slyšet, že si nedovede představit, že by USA i nadále financovaly obranu evropských zemí. Působil jste jako ministr obrany ČR i jako náměstek generálního tajemníka NATO. Můžete komentovat tento trend týkající se amerického a evropského zapojení?

K tomu připočtěme fakt, že ještě před několika lety byl poměr sdílení nákladů na obranu mezi USA a zbytkem aliance 50 na 50. Dnes je tento poměr již 75% USA, 25% evropští spojenci. Tedy tempo rozevírání nůžek mezi námi a USA je nebezpečně vysoké. Ještě horší obrázek poskytuje struktura výdajů. Američané investují pětkrát více na jednoho vojáka v oblasti výzkumu a vývoje a třikrát více co do celkových nákladů, než je evropský průměr. Tento dramatický nepoměr se nevyhnutelně projevuje v rozdílné kvalitě – zejména co do úrovně výstroje, výzbroje, informatizace, v podstatě tedy celkové technologické podpory a zajištění amerických a evropských sil.

Robert Gates varoval před zaostáváním evropských spojenců a růstem rozdílů v oblasti vojenských schopností mezi USA a Evropou snad na každém ministerském zasedání během svého pětiletého působení ve funkci ministra obrany. Do svého posledního projevu na půdě NATO shrnul vše, co ho v posledních letech doslova štvalo. Ale tuto frustraci slyšíme i z mnoha dalších stran amerického bezpečnostního establishmentu, ať se jedná o politiky nebo experty. Pokud se tento trend nezmění, čemuž zatím nic nenaznačuje, Aliance se stane pouhým politickým klubem. Postupně totiž zmizí to, co ji činí unikátní – integrované vojenské struktury a společný rozvoj vzájemně se podporujících vojenských sil a prostředků. Především však nelze donekonečna spoléhat na americkou trpělivost a ochotu držet NATO nad vodou. Čili ty státy, včetně našeho, které škrtají v rozpočtech a snižují své vojenské schopnosti spoléhajíce se přitom na obrannou garanci NATO, která ovšem v zásadě stojí a padá s USA, tuto garanci paradoxně oslabují a podkopávají jak v politickém, tak vojenském smyslu.

A ještě jedna poznámka: vývoj světové geostrategické rovnováhy jde neúprosně proti nám. A tak zatímco Západ fakticky odzbrojuje, v jiných částech světa vidíme přesně opačné trendy. Podle odhadů Jane´s Defence Weekly klesne v roce 2015 podíl USA na celosvětových zbrojních výdajích ze současných 51 na 42 procent, čínský stoupne ve stejném období ze současných 5 na 15 procent, čímž se Číňané dostanou na úroveň součtu obranných rozpočtů evropských zemí! Zatímco Evropané škrtnou v tomto období nějakých 20 „obranných“ miliard USD státy skupiny BRIC (Brazílie, Rusko, Indie, Čína) navýší odhadem o nejméně 140 miliard.

Po nástupu prezidenta Obamy do úřadu byla odvolána iniciativa amerického radaru v českých Brdech, do projektu protiraketového deštníku bylo na zmíněném lisabonském summitu přizváno Rusko. Jak jako bezpečnostní expert vnímáte tento politický tah?

Rozhodnutí o změně koncepce protiraketové obrany bylo podmíněno řadou technických, vojenských a strategických faktorů a jsme přesvědčen, že současná logika vytváření pružného a adaptivního systému, je správná. Svědčí o tom i skutečnost, že v lisabonské koncepci se k ní spojenci nejen přihlásili, ale zároveň zařadili protiraketovou obranu do rámce kolektivní obrany podle článku 5 Washingtonské smlouvy. Předchozí záměr, jehož součástí měly být stálé základny na našem a polském území, byl v tomto smyslu téměř neprůchodný.

Ono jak říkáte „přizvání Ruska“ do projektu nepřeceňujme. Možnost určité spolupráce s Rusy, tedy spíše než přizvání přímo do projektu, zmiňují od Bukurešťského summitu na jaře 2007 všechny alianční dokumenty k protiraketové obraně. Navíc reakce Ruska na otevření možnosti této spolupráce nebyly a nejsou příliš konstruktivní. Prezident Medveděv přednesl na summitu v Lisabonu několik podmínek, z nichž některé jsou pro Alianci prostě nepřijatelné. Takže v tomto ohledu nás čekají ještě dlouhé debaty. Je otázka, zda má Rusko v současné době, i vzhledem k tomu, že tento projekt prezentují ruští politici jako nepřátelsky zaměřený proti jejich zemi, vůbec o nějakou podstatnou a funkční spolupráci zájem.

Jste čistokrevným zástupcem civilních bezpečnostních analytiků – studoval jste na King’s College v Londýně, na Karlově univerzitě jste získal doktorát, vedl jste Ústav mezinárodních vztahů. Vnímáte rozdíly v myšlení či přístupech u analytiků, kteří pocházejí z prostředí vojenských univerzit? Lze vidět rozdíl mezi vojenským mezinárodně-bezpečnostním vzděláním a civilními programy?

Jakékoliv zobecňování by bylo k této otázce zavádějící. Vojensky zaměření absolventi mají zpravidla a přirozené blíže k technologii vojenství, rozumějí lépe „nástrojům a postupům války“ a operačnímu umění. Civilní experti by naproti tomu měli být schopni pojmout širší strategický rámec obrany a bezpečnosti, zasadit jej do dlouhodobější analýzy a vnímat větší spektrum faktorů, které spoluvytvářejí mezinárodní bezpečnostní prostředí. Tedy nejen vojenských, ale též politických, hospodářských a společenských. To však neznamená, že mezi vojenskými experty nepotkávám řadu velmi široce vzdělaných lidí s mimořádným rozhledem a schopností myslet koncepčně. Teď ovšem hovořím spíše o anglosaském světě nebo francouzských vojenských elitách. V našich končinách je bohužel univerzitní vojenské vzdělávání v tomto ohledu, mám na mysli kupříkladu kultivaci strategického a koncepčního myšlení, znalosti válečné historie, apod. značně zanedbané a naprosto nedostatečné.

Děkuji za rozhovor.

Autor pracuje v nevládní organizaci ADRA Česká republika, je spolupracovník Respekt Institutu, Amnesty International, European Values Network a Konzervativních lis­tů

The interview was conducted in June 2011
 

The issue of Islam and human rights seems to be quite far from your original training in methodology and comparative politics. How did you come to this topic?

It is not far. Comparative politics encompasses all of that – political theories, philosophies, different political systems and political cultures. Together with the methodology, it is the heart of political science. So this training enables you to specialize in some area and have more profound theoretical and methodological grounding.

In 2007 I was involved in establishment of the Human Rights and Human Development Department at the University of Jordan. The reason was that Jordan wanted to improve its public policies on human rights and connected issues, so we started a joint English master programme with Pavia, Padova and Lund universities under the umbrella of HDCA (Human Development and Capability Association) founded and led by the great economist Amartya Sen. The challenge of our department is to bridge human rights and human development. They may seem unbridgeable, but thinking of Amartya Sen and others paved the way for us. I particulary wanted to research some topics about Islam and human rights. So my main research interest is the connection between Islamic thought, human rights and human development. These topics I see as foundational for human behaviour.

During our course you spoke a lot about the current situation in the Arab world and you explained it as a „revolution of dignity“. Could you elaborate on this term?

I must say, I am surprised and happy about what is happening, because I am a person who highly values freedom and justice. I was sad about the conditions in which the Arab states were for so long. That is also why I developed my own theory of democratization and wrote my thesis about the alternative path to Arab democracy.

Regarding the concept „revolution of dignity“ – after I gathered information from various sources I came to the conclusion that the major motivation for revolution was all about dignity. People’s dignity has been challenged by authoritarian regimes that were humilitating and degrading them. So I think, deep inside the motivations of people, there was cry for restoring their dignity.

Recently, Global Politics held an online symposium about the Arab Spring. One of the questions was about the most overlooked factors in recent events which are of the utmost importance for future development. We’ve got various answers ranging from activities on a community level to the global context. What would be your answer to this question?

I am personally focusing on contextualizing the revolutions and bridging the gap between micro and macro explanations. My understanding of the way how to explain these events is to combine the nature of existing regimes and their impact on the individuals, their psychology, political orientations and rational calculations. Precisely, we need to find the links between the outcomes of regime policies, psychological developments of individuals and how they together paved the way to overcome the politics of fear practised by Arab regimes.

The situation in Libya, or Syria, is still pretty serious. Do you think the international community will also intervene also in other countries? Assad’s regime doesn’t seem to be giving up its position that easily…

I think the international community is mishandling the Syrian case. We, I mean the international community, tend to exaggerate the complexity of the situation in Syria. I think this is due to the lack of understanding of what is happening in that country. I guess the international community is as puzzled as the Arab regimes themselves, and it doesn’t know what to do. But the people on the streets know exactly what they want. They want to liberate themselves and they know the only way to do it is by being together and collectively pushing the regime out.

So you think the people in Syria will finally succeed?

I have no doubt, and it is not out of optimism, but out of political analysis. As I mentioned, in different places the rational of the regime has collapsed, so the change is a matter of time now. I am not saying it will happen tommorow, nor I am saying it will be at a low cost. But the regime in Syria cannot restore itself as it used to be. At the least, there has to be significant reforms. I am not saying all the Arab countries will have to go the same path as Egypt or Tunisia, but I am saying the regimes will be changed. This change could be by overcoming the regime, ousting the regime, kicking out the regime or reforming the regime. The specific form of change then depends on the sociocultural foundation of each country.

In Libya, it was quite obvious that the regime is massively violating human rights of its citizens, and the army largely switched to the rebels side. But in Syria the army seems to be more or less supporting the regime so far…

Libya has no army, the official army went against Gaddafi and now he is relying on daily-paid mercenaries. In Syria it is the opposite, so far. The security forces, army and other, and not the political regime are handling the situation. What happened in Libya in terms of foreign involvment is another story. Europeans wanted to do something about the events in Tunisia and Egypt, so they placed their bets and picked Libya. Now they struggle with the situation and don’t know what to do. Libya could have been for Europe what Iraq is for Americans, and in fact, it still could be.

So what would be your policy if you were in the position of European leaders?

First, I have to say I don’t want to be in their position. But I would try to be consistent and combine realism with constructivism in order to conduct my foreign policy. So realism tells me to protect my interests, and constructivism tells me that I have to understand the diverse motivations of people and different realities in various countries. We have to know what Arabs stand for. European policy was, in my opinion, based so far on total ignorance. How could the EU at the same time promote human rights and democratization and align itself with Ben Ali or Mubarak?

Recent polls have shown that even the USA, despite its support for revolutions, is still perceived by the Arab world in a negative way. Do you think this image will change in the future?

Attitudes are not very solid ground for political analysis, because by majority they are changing at very fast rates. If you ask Arabs what they think about the USA after the killing of Osama bin Laden and after Obama’s speech on the Egyptian revolution, you’ll get completly different answers. So attitudes could only be indicative of politics, unless they are stable for a long time. Then they become opinions instead of attitudes. I think the negative image of America will stay unless two crucial problems are solved. First, the Arab – Israeli conflict and second, the stereotyped image of Arabs and Muslims. If these two things stay the same, this negative image will continue.

Speaking of stereotyping Arabs and Islam, there seems to be rising level of islamophobia in Europe within last ten or fifteen years. How is this issue viewed from the Muslim perspective?

In my opinion, the islamophobia is dead. Muslims and Europeans have recently come very near to each other’s positions, and the fault lines between Huntington’s ci­vilisations are diminishing. So this islamophobia exists only in the mindset of small conservative circles, while at mainstream level the sense of commonality has risen. Europe doesn’t fear Islam any more. It is a media-made myth. While talking to people I see some problems, but I think they could be overcome in a liberal and humanistic fashion. So we should focus more on how we can reconcile the differences between our positions than on the differences as such.

But this – as you say – myth has some serious implications. Far-right political parties are gaining votes from their hard position on Islam and immigration…

My point is that this is more just general xenophobia, than a specific fear of Islam. Furthermore, their criticism of Islam is often based on pure ignorace of facts and lack of understanding what Islam is really about. For example the issue of honor killings, which are in fact violations of true Islamic principles. This xenophobic view of Islam is more about politics than about reality.

Recently some European politicians have said that multiculturalism is dead, and we should find some new way to deal with immigration. Where do you think we should go after multiculturalism?

Multiculturalism cannot be declared dead because of these statements. However, it certainly has its own challenges. The old model of multiculturalism doesn’t work anymore, and it needs some innovations. But the basis provided by a multiculturalist approach is still valid, and that is the ethics of recognition, tolerance and respect. These are ethical principles that cannot be declared dead just by saying so. But multiculturalism is also a theoretical model that must be developed over a time and I think there is some very good work done in this manner, mainly by Will Kymlicka and Charles Taylor.

But I am afraid the idea of multiculturalism has become quite hard to sell to general public, and on the other hand, the rhetoric of identity and otherness has became a vote-winner.

I am not sure this is a valid argument. Public opinion is shaped by politicians, and they work heavily to exploit it for their own purposes. But I think if we tackle the identity fear-mongering from the humanistic and open point of view, the fear will go away. Hopefully.

You came to Brno to teach an interesting course about Islam and human rights. How is it to teach about religion and human rights in one of the most atheist European states? What do you think about Czech students?

It is a challenge in one way, but I am really impresed. First, by the number of students who came to class, and then by the quality of them. I assumed the students wouldn’t know much about Islam, wouldn’t be much interested in it and maybe there would also be some language problems. What surprised and positively impressed me is the awarness and mind-set of interest. The people in the class actually want to learn something. I am also impressed by the discipline. I work with American students, and we have to teach them how to behave to professors from foreign cultures. In the USA, my students call me Zaid, but if they did this to Jordanian professor, it would be regarded as a strong insult. On the other hand, I think the class lacked the broader knowledge of political theories and theories of human rights. You can’t study international relations and human rights without knowing the fundamental political theories, such as works by Rawls, Habermas, etc.

How is it to teach human rights in Jordan? We still regard it as a sort of authoritarian regime that surpresses some human rights. Could you compare it to, for example, your teaching experience in USA?

I have to say that I consider myself lucky for being able to teach in various countries and cultures. This experience confirmed one thing for me – the common humanity. It will maybe surprise you, but I found the most enthusiastic students of human rights in Jordan. Not only because they lacked them, they don’t in fact, but because they are aware of human rights and human rights movements worldwide. Also, regardless of political freedoms, Jordan is, according to international standards, scoring on one of the highest levels in human rights, particulary in civil rights and human development. Among the Arab states it is absolutely number one. However, there is lack of especially political freedoms, but as I said, the human rights movement is on the rise and making its demands. So teaching there is enjoyable and not risky at all. Moreover our human rights programme has the support of the queen, so that tells you that even the people in power try to push human rights agenda.

During the class you mentioned the project you are working on, which you have called The Muslim Enlightement. Could you please say more about it?

I am really glad you are asking me about this, because it is actually my personal intellectual and scholarly project. Islam has been victimized for so long due to the dominance of conservative and traditionalist understanding of Islam and the lack of opportunities for liberal minded Muslims to promote their ideas. To my mind, the recent philosophical and theoretical development related to the concept of postsecularism is only a confirmation of Islamic enlightement thought.

This intellectual movement could sound really new, but in fact, it goes back to the early days of Islam and its rational aspect, that has been for long time neglected and marginalised. So we are trying to restore Islamic tradition that adhere to reason. Various scholars paved the way for us, such as earliest Islamic modernism and liberalism in late 19th century, followed by Nasr Abu Zayd, Mohammed Arkoun and others. Also, my course on Islam and human rights is theoreticaly based in this approach.

You say „we“. So there is some kind of network?

Yes, it is a network, and I cooperate with some other scholars, some of them are, for example, my teachers – but there are also others. Lots of them were working individually on this topic, and my contribution to the project was bringing them all together. The project should now lead to the series of books, workshops, conferences, seminars and articles.

Our last question is going back to the topic of recent Arab revolutions. How do you see future development? Do you think that we can still expect some important moments during the next few months?

Well, all options are out there, and the outcome is not decided yet. I refer you to the golden rule of politics, which is uncertainity. However, we see some trends and patterns of democratization in both Egypt and Tunisia, and this is very encouraging. We still feel people’s sentiments about their strength and power. They still believe they can change something. Unlike Fukuyama, I’m an optimist about future development. I hope for a new Arab age, where liberal and democratic thinking is in the heart of society and not limited to scholars and intellectuals.

Thank you very much for your time and for your interesting answers.

„The last 40 years can be called the age of development. This epoch is coming to an end. The time is to write its obituary… The idea stands like a ruin in the intellectual landscape. Nevertheless, the ruin stands there and still dominates the scenery like a landmark“ (Sachs 1992, 1). Wolfgang Sachs’ famous dictum has become the basis for what was later to be known as the post-development approach. He identified four founding premises that should have led to abandonment of this mindframe, which took hold of us long before Truman’s famous speech on 20 January 1949. First, the planet runs towards its ecological limits and the reproduction of the industrial (or imperial) mode of living is impossible. Secondly, with the end of the Cold war, ‘development’ lost its political impetus. As we may see today the East-West confrontation has disappeared, but ‘development’ lost nothing of its attraction. Thirdly, the ever growing gap between the rich and poor defined in terms of monetary income makes the concept seem less persuasive. One look at the Millenium Development Goals shows how ‘development’ switched from modernization to poverty reduction. The neoliberal economic panacea ruling the world at least since the beginning of the 1980s remains nonetheless. Fourthly, the single ‘development’ track indeed seems to be obsolete in the postmodern age of cultural relativism.

Twenty years later, in the preface to the new edition of The Development Dictionary, Sachs did not change too much of his analysis. He admitted that the ‘development’ has been replaced by ‘globalisation’ and stressed how the pursuit of ‘development’ has become part of the desire for universal justice. It is the South today that is the staunchest defender of development.

Even if the ‘development’ agenda has been changing throughout the last 60 years in an ever accelerating pace, we still may agree with James Ferguson that “[i]t seems to us today almost non-sensical to deny that there is such a thing as ‘development,’ or to dismiss it as a meaningless concept, just as it must have been virtually impossible to reject the concept ‘civilization’ in the nineteenth century, or the concept ‘God’ in the twelfth” (Ferguson 1994, xiii). This “interpretive grid” (ibid) stays with us regardless of whether we speak of emerging markets, good governance or failed states.

Ferguson brings one more and much more serious insight into the usual evolutionary thinking of ‘development’ (Ferguson 2006, 176–193). The racist theories that culminated during the Second World War have been discredited by the horrors of Nazism. The cultural centrism that allowed for the colonial constellation of forces to continue after the war made other cultures capable of achieving the same status as those considered ‘developed’. The nodal point of the ‘development’ discourse changed from the white man to the nation of white men. Inferior cultures only needed to work hard enough like those Asians whom supposedly helped the Asian values, but these too were to become a problem as soon as the financial crisis in 1997 set in only to be the source of success for renewed growth. However, we are in a very different situation today than we were in the 1950s. The emerging markets are much unlike the so called fourth world and as globalization picks its enclaves full of resources or people with purchasing power, the rest is abandoned to its own fate of destitution. Culture does not play the role in the broken promise of ‘development’ anymore. We are back to good old racism (which we never really abandoned) with the hierarchical axis of modernity remaining and the temporal axis disappearing from the usual evolutionary diagram. There are people on this planet who are not ‘less developed’ anymore, they are just ‘less’. The difficult connection between racism and cultural centrism easily visible in an everyday practice of ‘development’, but the more difficult to decipher within the reports of the governmental and non-governmental ‘development’ institutions is replaced by an outright racism of the humanitarian zeal for those who naturally cannot catch up if they have not done so until now.

‘Development’ thus not only contains authoritarian implications as Cowen and Shenton have shown for the era long before Truman (Cowen and Shenton 1996), but its lack results in an equally if not more dangerous forms of disdain.

What is to be made of this ‘development’ era with all its transformations, (slowly) shifting power relations and human misery? While on the one hand, there are scholars such as David Simon or Stuart Corbridge who caution us against post-structuralist, postmodern and post-colonial disengagement from practising ‘development’ at all, on the other hand there are scholars such as James Ferguson, Lakshman Yapa and Gilbert Rist who do not dismiss any engagement entirely, but try to rethink thoroughly various concepts connected to ‘development’ (Matthews 2008). Ferguson warns that there might be no need for what we do or know.

It is strange that Sally Matthews stresses the intellectual work, we ‘the privileged’ can engage in and reserves only one sentence for the change of our consumer practices. But this is a very important part of the misery on a planet that makes our game to be zero-sum. While trying to highlight the importance of our consuming habits I try to engage in the intellectual work praised by Matthews as well. This is the case when I am teaching and this is the case when the students publish their papers.

The set of six texts written for the seminar Post-Development Theory and Practice are just a tiny bit of the intellectual solidarity with distant others here at home. The first paper by Katrin Köhler engages with the continuities between the colonial and ‘development’ discourses. It demonstrates how basic colonial concepts prevail despite changes at the rhetorical level.

The second paper by Eric Pfeifer deals with the discourse of ‘sustainable development’ and shows how the consumption in the North is excluded from the picture this discourse depicts. Additionally, only those solution that are “imaginable” in Žižekian sense, i.e. those de-politicized ones, are suggested preventing radical post-politics from taking place.

The third article by Andrea Visotchnig treats the practice of ‘development’ in the form of microfinance. While it is possible to criticize microfinance on its own merits, as well as from a discursive perspective, it is also possible to consider it to be part of an alternative, post-capitalist, diverse economy. The goal then should not be to call for its complete abolishment but to embed it in non-capitalist relations.

Post-development has been fiercely criticized from various perspectives. Christiane Löper tries to define what could be understood under the term and offers answers to the main points of the critique. In her concluding section she offers an interesting insight into her personal view on post-development which she considers to be a “summary of [her] whole study of International Development.”

The fifth paper by Josefine Bingemer tries to answer whether the Zapatista movement in Chiapas could be considered a case of post-development. Using secondary sources, concrete practices in politics, education, healthcare, truth and knowledge are analyzed in relation to the post-development body of theory.

Lastly, another personal encounter is presented by Alexandra Heis, a young mother, in relation to her study and experience with the vaccination here in Europe. Not part of ‘development’ at first sight, the article shows how the notions of citizenship, trust and knowledge are treated in a very similar way by the proponents and opponents of vaccination. The layman is thus excluded from this particular knowledge-power nexus, just as is so often the case in the ‘development’ practice.

These six articles may serve yet another purpose. Their quality puts the seminar papers of students in Brno into a different perspective. I can only hope that the readers of Global Politics will use the insights offered by these talented young authors to inform their own papers and consumer practices.

Bibliography

• Cowen, Michael P., and Robert W. Shenton. 1996. Doctrines of development. London and New York: Routledge.
• Ferguson, James. 2006. Global shadows: Africa in the neoliberal world order. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
• Ferguson, James. 1994. The anti-politics machine: “development,” depoliticization, and bureaucratic power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Matthews, Sally. 2008. “The Role of the Privileged in Responding to Poverty: perspectives emerging from the post-development debate.” Third World Quarterly 29(6): 1035–1049.
• Sachs, Wolfgang. 1992. “Introduction.” In The Development Dictionary, ed. Wolfgang Sachs. London and New Jersey: Zed Books, p. 1–5.

Tomáš Profant is a PhD student at the University of Vienna. His area of research includes international development and North-South relations.

Within the framework of this paper I explicate the basic elements of colonial as well as development discourse. Although we can identify an obvious rupture line between colonialism and the era of development, I demonstrate that the colonial heritage structures development discourse in various ways. While there have been some significant changes on the rhetoric level, basic colonial concepts still prevail such as a dichotomic and hierarchical worldview, the evolutionary paradigm with the West as its benchmark, the idea of ‘white’ expertise etc. These often racialised assumptions produce unequal power relations within the development industry and structure the very idea of development itself.

1. Introduction and Terminologies

The starting point for my research interest is the encouragement which the seminar on “Post-Development Theory and Practice” has given me to question the very idea of development. As many of the post-development authors we read during this semester explain, the “era of development” began in the 1940s during the process of decolonization and thus directly succeeded the era of colonialism. (cf. Esteva 1992) The relation between colonial power and colonized country has often been converted into a bilateral donor-recipient cooperation. (cf. Gomes 2006: 15) A glance at the current “Donor Aid Charts” available on the DAC Homepage (Development Assistance Comitee), confirms this thesis. (cf. DAC 2008) Former research which I did on the topic of racism in development aid has made me realize the striking parallels between colonial worldviews and the ideology of development. However, as Kotahri observes “Investigations of the links between colonialism and contemporary international development (…) emerged only recently” (Kothari 2005: 48) and “Attempting to understand and analyse this interconnectedness (…) is not a mainstream preoccupation within development studies.” (ibid: 50) Although I think the Institute for International Development at the University of Vienna is an exception here, the literature research I have been doing shows that there clearly is a need for further investigations. Thus, within the framework of this paper I would like to explore to what extent the colonial heritage shapes the present development discourse and the practice of development aid. I would like to work on the following questions: Has decolonization led to a significant rupture line between colonial discourse and development discourse? If so what has changed? To what extent can colonial continuities be detected in development discourse and practice?

I am aware of the fact that the very limited length of this paper makes it impossible to cover the topic in its whole complexity. However, I will try to give an outline of the colonial (dis-) continuities in development discourse and practice, focusing on the aspects that seem most important to me.

To begin with, I think it is necessary to define several terms and concepts that are essential for my following argument.

Discourse

As the title of my seminar paper anticipates, my analysis is based on Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘discourse’ with the basic idea that “Speaking means doing something”. (Foucault in Ziai 2006: 42, translation by author) Giving a very short (and of course very simplifying) definition: “For Foucault, the term ‚discourse‘ referred both to the historically contingent sets of practices […] which limit human actions and what may be thought, and to the theoretical concept which accounts for the fact that humans actually do act and think in line with these ‚regimes of truth‘ ”. (Fox 1998: 416) Thus, Discourse is about the production of knowledge through language, but is itself produced by a practice – the practice of producing meaning. (cf. Hall 1992: 292)

Racism

Out of the many different definitions of this term, I would like to employ the following one: “Racism can be described as “a way of thinking, which divides people into groups based on perceived physical or cultural features and ascribes different capabilities, competences or character features to these groups”. (Hund in Ziai 2008: 193, translation by author) Due to the scientific proof that human ‘races’ do not exist, the formerly prevalent ‘biological’ racism has increasingly been replaced by what can be called ‘cultural racism’ – this means discrimination legitimated by reference to cultural rather than to biological differences. In order to understand this form of racism and its occurrence in private and political discourses, we have to become aware of the fact that the ideas we have of ethnicity, nationality and ‘race’ are merging, overlapping and cannot be understood unconnectedly. Furthermore racism is a complex and multilayer phenomenon and racialized constraints will be felt differently in distinct social contexts and regions (cf. Rattansi 2007: 104 f.)

“The West”

Following Stuart Halls approach in “The West and the Rest” I would like to understand the West as a historical, not a geographical construct which refers to a type of society that describes itself as being developed, industrialised, urbanised, capitalist, secularised and modern. “The West” thus comprises Western Europe, the USA and recently also Japan. Being aware of the extreme simplifications that this implies, I still think that this concept proves to be useful for my following argument. (cf. Hall 1992)

2. From Colonial to Development Discourse

2.1. Colonial Discourse

As Osterhammel explains in his book “Kolonialismus. Gechichte – Formen – Folgen”, colonialism and colonial thinking cannot be understood as a concrete doctrine. Although all colonialisms have developed some kind of vindicatory paradigm or imperialist vision, he argues that it is not useful do search for one concrete colonial theory. In order to define the “colonial discourse” we should rather try to detect similarities and common ideological patterns, actions and images in sources such as missionary reports, administration papers, memoirs, travelogues, fictional literature, press, propaganda campaigns and scientific research e.g. in geography, ethnology and oriental studies. Being aware of the heterogeneity of colonial discourses, Osterhammel explains that it is possible to identify the following basic elements: the construction of “inferior otherness”, the “sense of mission” combined with the “duty of tutelage” and the utopia of non-politics (cf. Osterhammel 1995: 113 f.) or in other words: racism, missionary desire and universalism. (cf. Sonderegger 2008: 46)

The construction of the “inferior otherness”

Central to colonial thinking is the idea that inhabitants of non-European regions are fundamentally different from Europeans in terms of physical and intellectual endowment. This basic idea of difference as a matter of principle has been argued in different ways. Within a biological approach this difference is based on the idea of unchangeable “racial” features, theologically it is pagan depravity, determined by the environment it is the tropical climate which weakens the human being and makes it lazy, technologically it is the other’s minor capability to control nature and so forth. (cf. Osterhammel 1995: 115) Out of its Eurocentric perspective, colonial discourse sees the world as being divided in two parts: the inside vs. the outside, the core vs. the periphery, the self vs. the other. Using Stuart Hall’s idiom of ‘the west and the rest’, the ‘rest’ embodies Europe’s inferior counterpart. (cf. Kothari 2006: 11) Thus, “the colonizer’s model of the world” (Blaut 1993) is shaped by hierarchic dichotomies:

(cf. Blaut 1992: 17)

Further dichotomies can be detected:

Progressive	Unprogressive, backward
Civilized	Uncivilized
Enlightened	Barbaric

(cf. Ziai 2008: 196 ff.)

This dichotomous paradigm expresses “the otherness in the name of sameness, reduces the different to the already known, and thus fundamentally escapes the task of making sense of other worlds”. (Mudimbe in White 2002: 413) This process of constructing the inferior ‘other’ not only shaped how non-European societies came to be known, but also how Europe created its own identity as antipode to this other. (cf. Kothari 2006: 11 f.)

During the age of enlightenment new ideas of progress and human history evolved, resulting in a new cosmology which links geographical distance with chronological distance: the ‘other’ was now seen as a preliminary stage of the own development. The idea of one single universally valid way of social development with the Western society as its benchmark became dominant. Making this goal-oriented reference to Europe, it is clear that the ‘inferior’ culture would sooner or later have to vanish. Concluding, all non-European cultures, their worldviews and practices appeared as obstacles for the universal development of humankind. (cf. Melber 1992: 32 f.; Ziai 2008: 196 ff.)

The “sense of mission” and the “duty of tutelage”

As non-European societies were seen as minor and dependent, they obviously were in need of tutelage. Especially during the 19th and 20th century the justification for colonialism was the ‘liberation of tyranny’ and ‘intellectual darkness’. However, not only did colonizing countries see it as their duty to bring ‘western civilization’ to other parts of the world, but also to make use of the fallow resources for the common welfare of the world economy. According to colonial discourse tutelage was said to be needed in three areas:

• Politics: especially Africans ad Asians were seen not to be capable of self governance
• Economy: teaching ‘working morale’ and ‘economic rationality’
• Culture: to “free people of their superstitious and immoral world views” (Osterhammel 1995:115)

According to this perspective, the relation between the colonizer and the colonized was not exploitative but rather complementary – the colonizer had to fulfill his civilizing mission, “the white man’s burden”. (cf. Osterhammel 1995: 115 f.)

2.2. Development Discourse

The notion of “development” became especially popular, when Harry S. Truman declared the Southern hemisphere as “underdeveloped areas” in his inauguration speech in 1949. Against the background of the Cold War, the promise of “development” was an instrument to establish the dominant position of the USA after 1945. In this context “development” has always been a justification for the international intervention of the North in the name of higher goals. Although the geopolitical circumstances have changed considerably, “development” still is a very dominant term, used not only by international institutions, but also by conservative groups as well as revolutionary or grassroots movements. (cf. Sachs 1995: 1 ff.) An actual definition of “development” is hard to find. Esteva traces the roots of this term back to biological theories, where it was first used to describe the transformation of the seed into the plant which can be interpreted as the “appropriate form of being”. With the evolutionary theory, “development” became the “…transformation that moves towards an ever more perfect form.” (Esteva 1992: 8) By the end of the 18th century the concept of this process of transformation in nature was taken over to explain historical development. Especially Hegel and Marx emphasised the necessary character of the historical process and the inherent natural laws causing it. Consequently the idea of development implies a homogenous and linear evolution of the world and history becomes a programme that has to be absolved. (cf. Sachs 1995: 1 f.) Given this scale of development, some people (and places) can be graded as less developed than others. Planned development “requires identification of who is developed and who can legitimately bestow ideas about modernity, progress, morality and civility”. (Kothari 2006: 13)

Aram Ziai identifies the following theoretical basic assumptions that most development theories share despite their differences:

• the norm of state of development are the western industrial nations
• the norm of development as a process are the western industrialized nations
• the nations which have deficits in relation to this norm are in need of economic growth, social modernization and western technology in order to progress on the universal path of development and to reach the target state of a developed society (Ziai 138 ff., translation by author)

I am aware of the fact that the idea of one single homogenous formation to be called ‘development discourse’ would be highly oversimplifying and ignoring the great diversity of concepts associated with ‘development’. However, I think that the basic elements depicted above can be identified in most development paradigms and can be congregated under the term ‘development discourse’. As Dubois wrote:

“Above the polemics and disagreements over policy, which appear to distinguish the sundry schools of thought in development, there exists a profound unity. The locus of this unity is to be found not in the perception of the causes of underdevelopment or the approaches to solving problems therein, but in the definition and identification of these problems of underdevelopment in the first place. Underdevelopment is defined as a lack – a lack that stands out in relief against the backdrop of a ‘complete’ Western society”. (…)The manifold critiques of development leave intact the illusion that development comprises a natural category”. (DuBois in Ziai 2004: 147)

2.3. Disconti­nuities

The most obvious break line between colonial and development discourse is the official rejection of colonial imperialism and explicit racism by developmentalists. Certain terms such as “race” and “civilization” have almost completely vanished after the end of the colonial era and have been replaced by different terms such as “underdeveloped” (cf. Ziai 2008: 200 ff.) “Overall, then, there has been a political imperative to distance the international aid industry from the colonial encounter so as to avoid tarnishing what is presented as a humanitarian project far removed from the […] exploitation of the colonial era”. (Kothari 2005: 51) As Kothari argues, this denial of the colonial heritage permitted the newly created development industry to work on and in so-called “Third Wold” countries without being scrutinized. (cf. Kothari 2005: 62) However, Brigg points out that development cannot simply be understood as an extension if colonialism, as some post-development authors claim. She argues that the mechanisms of power have considerably altered from a directly repressive form of sovereign power to what Foucault calls ‘biopower’ which mobilizes aspirations and interests of “Third World” subjects and states. (cf. Brigg 2002: 423 f.) Therefore, in contrast to colonial discourse, development discourse is to a much stronger degree aimed at forming identities in the South that would voluntarily support a world order in favour of the metropolises. (cf. Ziai 2006: 38 f.) This discursive and political change already took place during the last years of colonial rule when it became clear that the colonial empires could no longer be sustained by direct force: “colonial officials, along with anticolonial nationalist leaders, began to promote the welfare and benefit of the colonies.” (Brigg 2002: 423 f.) Thus, the newly created development discourse deviated in several ways from the old colonial paradigm: people living in from then on so called “development countries” were awarded the capability to govern themselves and hence peoples’ right of self-determination and human rights were unreservedly approved (at least on the discursive level.) However, Ziai points out that this new equality of people is limited: “Everybody is equal, only some are not yet as advanced as others on the universal development-path of humankind: They are “underdeveloped.”.” (Ziai 2006: 36 f., translation by author) Yet due to the delegitimization of biological racism, development discourse does not speak about “underdeveloped” peoples or persons, but rather about underdeveloped countries or regions. (cf. Ziai 2006: 37) ”‘Development’ was in this respect crucial in reconfiguring the global identity of ex-colonies in a way that was incorporative and universalistic yet still hierarchical”. (Power 2006: 29)

Nevertheless, it should not be denied that development discourse has become a very diverse field formed by different actors. “Clearly, individuals in development studies today are far more diverse in terms of gender, class and ethnicity than were the colonial officers, and this has necessarily meant an opening up of the field and the emergence of multiple strands of thought and practice”. (Kothari 2005: 63)

2.4. Continuities

In the following section I would like to focus on the various facets of colonial continuities in development discourse which can be detected in the basic discursive structure as well as in the socio-technical and the philosophical elements. The different aspects of colonial continuities are very complex and interweaved, but I will try to structure them in a comprehensive way.

2.4.1. Hierarchic Dichotomies

As I already explained above, the colonial vocabulary of ‘civilization’ and ‘race’ has vanished in the era of development. However, the dualistic structure of colonial discourse still prevails and now appears in new terms: development / underdevelopment, First / Third World, modernity / tradition, technology / handcraft, rationality / irrationality, etc. As Kothari argues by quoting Edward Said: “ …‘throughout the exchange between European’s and their “others” … the one idea that has scarcely varied is that there is an “us” and “them”, each quite settled, clear, unassailably self-evident’.” (Kothari 2006: 12) Although these binary distinctions have been partly dissolved, confounded and challenged, we can assert that the omnipresent advertisement and media constantly reproduce images of the white development expert and the helpless black children thus presenting people living in the ‘South’ as passive, incapable of action and depending on western donors. (cf. Ziai 2008: 200 ff.) Looking at contemporary history books used in schools, the basic assumption becomes evident that in the past Europe has shown much more progress than most other civilizations and therefore is fundamentally superior. (cf. Blaut 1993: 30) Derived from the colonial paradigm, development places the West “in hierarchical opposition to other areas of the globe which remained ‘traditional’ […] less scientific, less secular, less rational, less individualist, and less democratic.” (Manzo in Ziai 2004: 147) These regions (and the people living there) are solely defined by their relation to the West and are consequently constructed as one homogeneous underdeveloped Third World. “In much literature in development there is a tendency to homogenize other cultures; to see non-western cultures as fixed, incomprehensible, recessive and particularistic. […] While specific ethnographic studies have explored cultural habits and dispositions, these have often become utilized in constructing generalized accounts of cultures, which speak, for example, of a singular, and often immutable, ‘African culture’.“ (Kothari 2006: 18) Consequently, following the traditions of colonial discourse development expresses “…the otherness in the name of sameness, reduce[s] the different to the already known, and thus fundamentally escape[s] the task of making sense of other worlds”. (Mudimbe in White 2002: 413)

2.4.2. Evolutionary Paradigm

Despite the fact that today many development studies reject the social evolutionary idea that societies progress from more backward to more modern states, evolutionary classification such as ‘underdeveloped’ or ‘developing’ persist and “globalization is still seen, even by many academics, as a process of modernization whereby the more developed ‘third world’ countries become, the more they will become like the west.” (Crewe, Priyanthi 2006: 45) Hence, the deficits of the South can be amended by development which means capitalist economic growth and adopting western practices and norms. On the universal scale of development the West serves as the benchmark, the ideal norm. In order to progress developing countries are in need of knowledge transfer from the West, because they cannot develop on their own. (cf. Ziai 2008: 200 f.) In other words: the colonial ideal of the “European occidental civilization” has been replaced by the “liberal democratic market economy” as the goal of human development (cf. Melber 1994: 32) “International etiquette means that the crude modernisation view of ‘third world’ societies as backward, passive and tradition-bound, static and inert, awaiting the penetration of development from the West, is no longer ‘sayable’ in polite society. But it nevertheless lurks within the ‘discursive bricolage’ of development. And as such it can inform the framework within which intervention takes place”. (White 2002: 417 f.)

2.4.3. White Expertise – Knowledge as Power

As I already explained above, development discourse underlines the necessity of western knowledge for the development process, thus implying development assistance and education of southern elites in the ‘North’. As White points out, development is closely linked with western education – clearly illustrated by the fact that development studies courses are mostly taught in ‘First World’ universities. (cf. White 2002: 410) Hence, the ‘North’ has and constantly produces knowledge about the ‘South’ and even teaches ‘Third World’ citizens about their own societies, whereas the idea that knowledge form the ‘South’ could be useful to solve problems of the ‘North’ still seems absurd to most people. (cf. Ziai 2008: 207) We can clearly recognize the analogies to colonial discourse: “[T]his relationship of tutelage extends far beyond the institutions of formal education. It is in fact a dominant idiom underlying much of what is said and done in development. And why is this so familiar? It is, of course, a classic way in which colonial racism imagined black–white relations”. (White 2002: 410) Therefore, it can be argued that terms such as “development expert”, “consultant” or “expatriate” are not neutral but racialized (and gendered) in the sense that they are primarily associated with white (and male) persons. Despite newer tendencies within a participatory approach to value experiences and knowledge of ‘local’ persons, it is still assumed that some kind of intervention by development organizations is necessary e.g. in the form of “facilitators” or “moderators”. (cf. Kothari 2006: 16) This means that although there has been a new rhetoric of respect for “indigenous” expertise with some NGOs even promoting knowledge exchange from ‘South to South’, knowledge is partly still ranked by its source instead of by its utility. (Crewe, Piyanthi 2006: 45)

Furthermore, expertise in development organizations (as in other businesses) is often associated with certain symbolic means: As Crewe and Priyanthi observe, development experts working abroad (expatriates) tend to display their expertise by “…quoting recent international publications and referring to their own work in other regions of the world”, using the latest technical equipment etc. For Southern experts the access to these symbols of expertise, contacts and information tends to be limited (due to visa restrictions and financial limits). (Crewe, Priyanthi 2006: 51) “This has leads to a failure to recognize the diverse world of ideologies and aspirations and the ability of ‘recipients’ of aid to manage resources on their own, as well as a tendency to ignore non-western conceptions of, for example, ‘freedom’, ‘justice’ or, indeed, ‘development’.” (Kothari 2006: 16)

Within the framework of the development industry people living in ‘Third World’ countries become objects of knowledge, interventions, management and research. Through the collection of a multitude of data about the ‘Third World’ subjects by western development agencies makes them visible in order to evaluate them against the norm of development. (cf. Brigg 2002: 430) It can be argued that the colonial idea of ‘trusteeship’ has been handed over from colonial officers to ‘development experts’. (cf. Ziai 2008: 207)

2.4.4. Racism

“[R]ather than indicating its irrelevance, the silence on race is a determining silence that both masks and marks its centrality to the development project.” (White 2002: 408)

As this quotation explains, the term ‘racism’ is not present in discussions about development and is generally perceived as contrary to the idea of development assistance. (cf. Ziai 2008: 91) Even the UN-sponsored World Conference against Racism (WCAR) identified racism as a problem within regions, “marking off-limits consideration of relations between North and South” (White 2002: 407, emphasis in original). Obviously the assumption prevails that “development takes place in non-racialized spaces and outside of racialized histories.” (Kothari 2006: 9) This opinion is fostered by the fact that development discourse has been more or less cleansed from the openly racist vocabulary and statements of the old colonial discourse. “[I]t is striking how quickly discussion of racial superiority was banned from colonial vocabularies in the 1940s”. (Cooper in Kothari 2006: 11) However, White argues that “certain terms in development discourse such as “tribalism”, “ethnicity”, “tradition”, “religion” and perhaps pre-eminently “culture” […] may do some work at some times, in standing in for race”. (White 2002: 407). This means that despite the new politically correct language of development discourse, racist ideas still lurk beneath the surface. Ideas about cultural difference substituted those based on racialized understandings, taking a similar form as earlier arguments about ‘race’. “The difference was that cultural change seemed open to the individual, but Africans who chose not to make the transition were seen as willfully obstructionist rather than quaintly backward.”(Cooper in Kothari 2006: 11). Racialized arguments appear where social problems are not explained by political or socio-economic factors, but are attributed to mentalities or cultures. (cf. Ziai 2008: 209) Understanding the origins of ‘underdevelopment’ as embedded within societies / cultures led to increasing studies on corruption, poor governance and interethnic conflict. (cf. Kothari 2006: 19) “Crewe and Harrison (1998) give examples of how development discourses often problematize ‘locals’: their characters (‘Nepalis are friendly but lazy’), their morals (generalizations about corruption in the South and blindness to its existence elsewhere), their traditions (‘Muslims are anti-women’) and their knowledge (‘locals lack know-how’)” (Crewe, Priyanthi 2006: 46) To give a more specific example: discussions about the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa have been increasingly racialized, describing Africans as promiscuous and irresponsible (in contrast to the western people). Obviously these depictions very much resemble colonial ideas about the uncontrolled sexuality of Africans. “The legacy of these representations of sexual practices arguably lies in colonial narratives of, for example, desire and the exotic”. (Kothari 2006: 19) Another example is the debate about ‘failed states’ in the ‘Third World’ which are characterized by corrupt and violent political culture – in contrast of course to non-corrupt Western politicians. (cf. Ziai 2008: 209) Altogether it is possible to identify a tendency to see donors as initiating, reliable and superior whereas recipients are considered to be more passive, unreliable and inadequate. (cf. Crewe, Priyanthi 2006: 46)

Some critical authors write about their personal experiences in the development industry and demonstrate how the whole framework is marked by racist structures. “What I was seeing went far beyond individual acts of prejudice or discrimination to a whole system in which advantage and disadvantage were patterned by race”. (White 2002: 409) Crewe and Priyanthi did interviews with several staff members of international development agencies and highlight how racist ideas shape the interactions within development projects. They quote a manager of European donor agency who said in 2004: “[W]e have to research programmes managed by organisations in the South and they are both a disaster. I mean, it is nothing racial, it is just that they don’t work at that analytical level. We need an expatriate for the conceptual thinking, then the local consultant can do more of the running around for you”. (Crewe, Priyanthi 2006: 45) Although this manager (who has been working in development for over 20 years) does not express explicit racism in terms of hostility, “his assumptions about analytical thinking, and his denial of the relevance of race, echo a prevailing preconception that Euro-Americans are capable of a higher level of abstraction” and thus show striking parallels with colonial concepts. (Crewe, Priyanthi 2006: 45) As White writes about her personal experience in development projects: “[M]y whiteness opened me doors, jumped me queues, filled me plates and invited me to speak”. (White 2002: 408). However, quoting a white development worker Kothari makes it clear that “…people don’t really believe that I am more intelligent and more knowledgeable because I am white, what they do believe is that I will have greater access to power, to decisionmakers and to those who can get things done”. (Kothari 2006: 16) Hence, racist ideas virtually reproduce themselves: people favour persons who are perceived as being white for important positions, not because they necessarily consider them to be more intelligent but rather because of the privileged positions of most ‘white’ persons. (cf. Kothari 2006: 12 ff.) Kothari also quotes a ‘black’ development worker talking about his experiences within an NGO in Zimbabwe: “If you want your organization’s plans to be approved quickly or you need to raise funds, you are better off appointing a white director”. (Kothari 1006b: 16) He explains that regardless of experience and expertise ‘white’ persons generally have better access to international funding, because they are part of the “expatriate community” and therefore can easily connect with certain groups, which is important for building contacts with “white power holders.” (Kothari 2006: 16) However, racist stereotypes often are even internalized by ‘black’ persons: “‘Local counterparts’ have been visibly disappointed when they realized that their expatriate consultant was not white. This is reflective of what Ngugi calls the ‘colonization of the mind’ (1986) whereby for some formerly colonized people, whiteness becomes associated with high cultural values and the west with modernity and progress”. (Kothari 1006b: 15 f.)

2.4.5. Unequal Power Relations

“Critically, it is this overwhelming depiction of beneficence (as it was for the missionaries of old) that obscures relationships of power more generally, and in particular ‘race’, while delimiting attempts to theorize concepts of ‘race’ in development praxis”. (Kothari 2006: 18)

As Kothari argues the idea of development aid as an utterly “good deed” conceals the unequal power relations (of which racism is but one aspect) within the development system. As I already mentioned above ‘expatriates’ who are mostly ‘white’ persons play an important role in development practice. Therefore donor organizations (and their countries of origin) have a strong presence and power to intervene in recipient countries. According to Crewe’s and Priyanthi’s ob­servations, organizational structures within most development organizations assure that critical decision-making processes remain in the hands of the aid-givers. (cf. Crewe, Priyanthi 2006 2006: 47 f.) „Rather than choosing beneficiaries and letting them pick their own priorities, they follow the opposite procedure, often using Euro-American consultants to justify their decisions. They also control reporting on success and failure and this mastery over history consolidates their power for the future”. (Crewe, Priyanthi 2006: 51) The unequal power relations partly rely on a degree of segregation between expatriates and ‘local’ staff members. (cf. Crewe, Priyanthi 2006: 47 f.) The most obvious separation is the fact that many Western expatriates live in disjoined or even gated communities and often also prefer to work and socialize in “enclavic environments”. (Kothari 2006: 17) The significance of private and social life should not be underestimated since social networks are a crucial “source of information about funding, employment opportunities, and potential for collaboration. When you consider how this context of social separation is reinforced by various rituals that regulate development encounters in the professional sphere – through language, timing, place, consultation rituals and symbols – the systems of exclusion can be better understood.” (Crewe, Priyanthi 2006: 49 f.)

As in many international networks, the dominant language in the development industry is English (or sometimes French or Spanish). When people of different nationalities are present, discussions are usually held in English even with English speakers being the minority. Within the development network certain technical terms as well as acronyms and jargon words which are used by ‘insiders’ become dominant in crucial moments. Being a native-speaker of the language used in meetings gives persons a more powerful position in debates. Of course this not only advantages persons from Europe and the US, but also people from Africa, Asia and Latin America who are fluent in English. (Crewe, Priyanthi 2006: 50)

Concerning the time and place of committee meetings, the fact that critical decision making processes often take place last minute in donor headquarters in the USA or Europe means that persons from ‘Third World’ countries often cannot be present at these meetings (either because they do not live close or because travel is not viable for them). (cf. Crewe, Priyanthi 2006: 51)

Regarding new organizational forms such as participatory approaches, Crewe and Priyanthi state that these “have allowed agencies to develop techniques for appearing democratic and accountable while retaining control over critical decision points”. (Crewe, Priyanthi 2006: 51) Informal structures and ritualised consultation processes function to silence the objections of mostly ‘non-white’ participants. As a matter of course, participatory approaches are still highly preferable to organizational forms that do not allow for any consultation at all. However, the authors argue that consultation rituals should be analysed with respect to informal power relations in order to ensure that voices of aid recipients are in the centre of attention rather than in the periphery.

“After all, development encounters are embedded within unequal power relationships between givers and receivers, and to pretend to treat unequals as if they are equals is a particularly effective way to perpetuate inequality”. (Mandal Commission, as quoted in Crewe, Priyanthi 2006: 51)

3. Bibliography

• Blaut, James M. (1993): The Colonizer’s Model of the World. Geographic Diffusionism and Eurocentric History. New York: Guildford Press
• Brigg, Morgan (2002): Post-development, Foucault and the colonisation metaphor. In: Third World Quarterly. Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 421–436
• Crewe, Emma; Fernando, Priyanthi (2006): The elephant in the room: racism in representations, relationships and rituals. In: Progress in Development Studies 6, 1, pp. 40–54
• DAC (2008): Aid Statistics. Donor Aid Charts, available online.
• Esteva, G. (1992): Development. In: Sachs, W. (ed. 1992): The Development Dictionary. A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London: Zed Books, pp. 6–25
• Gomes, Bea (2006): Geber-Empfänger-Beziehungen: Partnerschaften und Hierarchien. In: Gomes, Bea; Maral-Hanak, Irmi; Schicho, Walter (Hg.): Entwicklungszu­sammenarbeit. Akteure, Handlungsmuster und Interessen. Wien: Mandelbaum Verlag
• Hall, Stuart (1992) “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power”, in Stuart Hall and Bram Gieben, (eds.): Formations of Modernity. Open University/Polity Press, pp. 275–331.
• Kothari, Uma (2005): From colonial administration to development studies: a post-colonial critique of the history of development studies. In: ibid. (ed.): A Radical History of Development Studies. Individuals, Institutions, Ideologies. London: Zed Books, pp. 47– 66
• Kothari, Uma (2006): An agenda for thinking about ‘race’ in development. In: Progress in Development Studies 2006 6: 9, pp. 9–23
• Melber, Henning (1992): Der Weißheit letzter Schluß. Rassismus und kolonialer Blick. Frankfurt: Brandes & Apsel Verlag
• Melber, Henning (1994): Rassismus und Eurozentrismus als Phänomene kolonialistischer Betrachtungsweise. In: Geiger, Klaus (1994): Rassismus und Ausländerfein­dlichkeit in Deutschland. Beiträge zu ihrer Erforschung. Kassel: Geshamthochschu­le Kassel
• Osterhammel, Jürgen (1995): Kolonialismus. Geschichte – Formen – Folgen. München: Verlag C. H. Beck
• Power, Marcus (2006): Anti-racism, deconstruction and ‘overdevelopment’. In: Progress in Development Studies 6, 1, pp. 24– 39
• Rattansi, Ali (2007): Racism. A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press
• Sachs, W. (1995): Introduction in: Sachs, W. (ed. 1995): The Development Dictionary. A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London: Zed Books, pp. 1–5
• Sonderegger, Arno (2008): Geschichte und Gedenken im Banne des Eurozentrismus. In: Gomes, Bea; Schicho, Walter;
• Sonderegger, Arno (2008): Rassismus. Beiträge zu einem vielschichtien Phänomen. 45–72
• White, Sarah (2002): Thinking race, thinking development. In: Third World Quarterly, Vol 23, No 3, pp 407 – 419
• Ziai, Aram (2004): Entwicklung als Ideologie? Das klassische Entwicklungspa­radigma und die Post-Development-Kritik. Ein Beitrag zur Analyse des Entwicklungsdis­kurses. Hamburg: Deutsches Übersee-Institut.
• Ziai, Aram (2006): Zwischen Global Governance und Post-Development. Entwicklungspolitik aus dirskursanaly­tischer Perspektive. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot
• Ziai, Aram (2008): Rassismus und Entwicklungszu­sammenarbeit. In: Gomes, Bea; Schicho, Walter; Sonderegger, Arno (2008): Rassismus. Beiträge zu einem vielschichtien Phänomen. 191–213

The author is a political science student at the University of Vienna.

The aim of this paper is to establish reasons for the inclusion of certain elements in the sustainable development discourse as well as its exclusionary systems making for the “blind spots”. The question to be answered is: What effects and implications does the order of the sustainable development discourse have on the political sphere? What perspectives open up for tackling environmental issues? Which perspectives fade away or disappear?

“It is a treacherously deceitful Nature that enters politics, one that is packaged, numbered, calculated, coded, modeled, and represented by those who claim to possess, know, understand, and speak for the “real Nature”.” (Swyngedouw 2007: 21)

1. Introduction

Reconciling Enemies

In his Nobel Lecture of the year 2007, Al Gore urges all of us:

“We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency – a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst – though not all – of its consequences […] We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war.” (Gore 2007)

Beginning with the Club of Rome Report of 1972 – The Limits to Growth – the thought has widely spread that the growing, progressing and industrializing society mistreats nature, which will ultimately (and quickly) result in catastrophe. Mankind uses more than Earth has to offer. The sustainable development discourse which emerged in the following decades bears the promise to dissolve this conflict between development and nature: “By adopting the concept of sustainable development, two old enemies, growth and environment, are reconciled” (Escobar 1995: 195).

The aim of this paper is to establish reasons for the inclusion of certain elements in the sustainable development discourse as well as its exclusionary systems making for the “blind spots”. The question to be answered is: What effects and implications does the order of the sustainable development discourse have on the political sphere? What perspectives open up for tackling environmental issues? Which perspectives fade away or disappear? I will base my research on the assumption that the sustainable development discourse relies on the same constitutive processes that Arturo Escobar (1995) has identified for the development discourse: 1) creation or discovery of the problem (problematization), 2) professionalization of knowledge, 3) institutionali­zation and 4) hierarchization of cultures. With “development” remaining its fundamental idea, I assume the sustainable development discourse to also rely on these four processes. In my analysis, due to restricted space, I will focus on these traits of the processes that carry political implications. Linking my results with Slavoj Žižek’s concept of post-politics and Erik Swyngedouws definition of environmental populism, then, I hope to show in a more nuanced way how these processes have been shaping a populist representation of the ecological problems which frames the possible solutions in a distinctly depoliticized management perspective.

2. The Sustainable Development Discourse

2.1 A Sketch of the Emergence of the Sustainable Development Discourse

Discontinuities in any discourse arise out of both difficulties within as well as circumstances outside of it (Sarasin 2005: 78). The discourse answers these certain historical conditions.

What were the internal difficulties of the development discourse that made for an inclusion of the environment? For Sachs (1995a), the awareness of ecological constraints has been one of the central reasons for the realization that Western style development cannot be a model for the whole world. The Club of Rome Report The Limits to Growth was the first widely absorbed account on the material impossibility of the Western development paradigm and global survival as a whole. The development paradigm came into a crisis. 15 years later, the influential Brundtland Report Our Common Future still rests on the assumption that global survival is threatened, but it also has the solution: planning and management to direct social change and thus save the planet under the flag of ecological modernization¹ and “sustainable development” which would become the leading concept in the years thereafter (cf. Escobar 1995: 192–194; Eblinghaus/Stickler 1998: 35).

These two reports, The Limits to Growth and Our Common Future, basically stand for both the crisis and rescue of development for ecological reasons: “While [the concept of environment] was originally advanced to put development politics under indictment, it is now raised like a banner to announce a new era of development” (Sachs 1995b: 26).²

The outer circumstances that fostered the discontinuities in the discourse relate mainly to problems of the standardized mass production system (Fordism), the most notable manifestation of which was the oil crisis in 1973 that marked the end of a period of post-war economic expansion (Woodhouse/Chimhowu 2005: 187). New leading technologies and more flexible forms of labor fundamentally changed the production system (now called post-Fordism) which would be increasingly dominated by transnational capital and worldwide sourcing, placing states and regions in a race for competitiveness with each other. In many ways, the change from development to sustainable development corresponds with the transformation from Fordism to post-Fordism (Eblinghaus/Stic­kler 1995:35).

Thus, I will regard the sustainable development discourse not as an entirely new discourse, but as the transformed and “updated” development discourse incorporating novel elements while retaining others – and merely abandoning any. Put slightly different, one could also regard the sustainable development discourse as the result of an inclusion of critical environmentalist accounts into the development mainstream (as done by Kothari/Minogue 2002: 11).

2.2 The Concept of “Sustainable Development”

Just like “development”, “sustainability” is a signifier that has taken a wide range of meanings, especially with its connection to the development paradigm. The popularity of the concept is evident: it will be hard to find anybody who is against sustainability (cf. Swyngedouw 2007: 20; Brand 2008: 141).³

The “roof of the concept” of sustainable development, meaning the central topics, consists of destruction of nature, poverty, inequality and overpopulation (Eblinghaus/Stic­kler 1998: 11; for the connection of poverty and environment see Sachs 1995b: 29) – two of which stem from the development discourse. Ultimately, on top of the roof, sustainable development refers to the “long-term socioenvironmental survival of (parts of) humanity” (Swyngedouw 2007). Below the roof there are numerous conflicting assumptions and guidelines for actions (Eblinghaus/Stic­kler 1998: 11). This explains the popularity of the concept: it is very vague and can be used for any interest, so that it is sustainability that can be described as an “umbrella term”, as Forsyth (2004, cited in Kobler 2009: 33) has done. Whichever “way” one accepts the sustainable development discourse, s/he also accepts the development framework that comes with it as well as the dominant economic worldview (cf. Escobar 1995: 196; Eblinghaus/Stickler 1998: 51).

Situating the discourse in the dispositive, meaning that I include power structures in my considerations as well (cf. Sarasin 2005: 103), sheds light on the fact that the discourse originates and continues to have its centers in economically powerful states and institutions of the global North. According to Foucault, in each society there are certain procedures that control, select, organize and canalize the production of the discourse to reduce its materializing consequences (Foucault 1991: 10). Thus, first, the global sustainable development discourse is shaped and constrained by social capitalist relations, and second, elements which pose a threat to these relations and their reproduction will be excluded much likelier than those preserving or strengthening the power relations of the dispositive. This is founded in the very unconscious selectivity of the discourse.

I will now look at the propositions and assertions of the discourse (rather than its linguistic aspects): what/how problems become visible to solve them in a certain way (Sarasin 2005: 100–101).

3. The Constitutive Processes

3.1.1 Problema­tization (I): Overpopulation and Scarcities

One of the most important assumptions underlying the sustainable development discourse is that we live on a planet of scarcities – an idea which became a keystone of neoclassical economics. The economic thought of scarcity since Adam Smith denotes that “man’s wants are great, not to say infinite, whereas his means are limited though improvable” (Esteva 1995: 19). The contradiction of the “nature of man” with expanding needs and the “nature of things” which are limited results in competition on the free market. The sustainable development discourse further relies on Malthus’s thought of overpopulation, brought forward in the eighteenth century: Malthus feared that the increase in production of food could not keep abreast of the increase of the rural population (cf. Woodhouse 2002: 142). Overpopulation conveys the determinist idea of humankind growing out of proportion to its supportive environmental system – up to a point when diseases and misery will reduce the number of people on Earth.

These two overlapping concepts, scarcity and overpopulation, have been of vital importance for the sustainable development discourse. Influential publications, first and foremost The Limits to Growth and Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968) draw scenarios that resemble Malthus⁴. The approach focusing on humankind’s com­petition for access to rare resources⁵ has been termed eco-scarcity. Eco-scarcity constitutes the dominant contemporary narrative of environmental change and, for it is portraying environmental crises as merely demographic problems, it is strictly apolitical – which of course means that it is implicitly political, holding serious implications for questions of distribution and control of resources (Robbins 2004: 7–9).

This becomes obvious in a classic article by Garett Hardin (1974) with the telling title Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor and Robert D. Kaplan’s The Coming Anarchy, published in 1994. Hardin (1974: 43) concludes his Neo-Malthusian article saying that we “cannot safely divide the wealth equitably among all peoples so long as people reproduce at different rates”, as “to do so would guarantee that our grandchildren and everyone else’s grandchil­dren, would have only a ruined world to inhabit.”⁶ The dilemma “justice vs. nature” is dissolved in favor of the latter, as is typical for the discourse (Eblinghaus/Stic­kler 1998: 116). Hardin’s call for a “true world government to control reproduction and the use of available resources” (ibid.) reverberates in the sustainable development discourse.

Kaplan, on the other hand, does not offer an actual solution. 20 years after Hardin’s article, he considers wars and conflicts in the Third World to be caused by overpopulation and resource scarcity, masking any historic-structural reasons very much connected to colonialism, capitalism and the development apparatus. Kaplan states that the environment is “the national-security issue of the early twenty-first century” (Kaplan 1994: 58), thereby implicitly justifying present material inequality and intervention for the control of resources. Tellingly, his article has been widely read and was sent to all US embassies.

In any way – world government or national security – the created visibility of scarcity and overpopulation as causes of ecological destruction is an invitation for planning and management⁷, providing the problematization that allows the development discourse to provide solutions. The visibility of environmental problems in the dominant view of eco-scarcity opens the door for the development business to tackle the problems with its particular operations (cf. Ferguson 2007: 68f.), while other solutions⁸ are omitted or at least pushed aside as unrealistic – precisely due to the formulation of the problem. The problematization of nature, among others, led to new mechanisms of intervention into the realm of the social, most visible in population control (cf. DuBois 1991).

3.1.2 Problema­tization (II): Saving the One World

The next particularity of the sustainable development discourse is its problematization of global survival, meaning the planet as a whole (cf. Escobar 1995: 194). Just like the concepts of (one) nature, scarcity, overpopulation or measuring, the “one world perspective” is deeply cultural, resulting from history and embedded in a certain system of social, economic and political relations. This is not to claim that there are no environmental problems that (potentially) affect the whole world. Rather, it is important to recognize that the one world perspective is a particular and rather novel way to regard these problems.

Along (predicted or real) natural disasters during the last decades, the environment has become part and parcel of national and international policy formulation. The proposed solutions are kept within narrow frames, the frames owing much to the cultural perspective. The survival of the whole planet (read: mankind) is at stake – the discourse speaks to each and every person on Earth, delivering a message of urgency⁹ to transform our behavior by adapting the whole system we live in to sustainability. “Oneworldism”, in this context, is a universalized account of problem and solution. “What is problematized, however, is not the sustainability of local cultures and realities but rather that of the global ecosystem. But again, the global is defined according to a perception of the world shared by those who rule it.” (Escobar 1995: 195) Escobar thus criticizes the one world perspective as having universalistic aspirations despite its cultural particularity, ignoring and even violating other realities or images of nature. Dietz and Brunnengräber (2008) similarly criticize the one world perspective, mainly for its absurdity in local contexts (ecological problems are always particular) as well as the masking of political and historicized explanations of environmental crises.

The survival of the whole planet is an excellent “wholesale justification for a new wave of state interventions in people’s lives all over the world” (Sachs 1995b: 33)¹⁰. Andrea Kobler, who has analyzed environmental discourses in development studies, finds that “a managerial aspect is nothing new in development (studies) but with the emergence of SD [sustainable development, E.P.] it reached global scale. The consensus that (global) management is necessary to overcome the crisis resulted in a multitude of environmental policies/ regulations/ assessments and other management strategies” (Kobler 2009: 78). With the need to intervene comes the need for institutionali­zation and professionalization of state action – processes development agencies are excellently set up for¹¹.

A global problem calls for global cooperation – such as the Climate Conference 2009 in Copenhagen. The UN Climate Change Conference 2009, as it is correctly called, does not only reflect the call for global cooperation, its failure has also reflected two important contradictions of the sustainable development discourse. These are, firstly, the difficulty of creating an alliance between “saving economic growth” and “saving nature” (cf. Swyngedouw, cited in Schlembach 2010) and secondly, the cooperation-competition paradox (Görg 2004: 98). What is paradox between cooperation and competition? Put shortly, the international pressure to counteract environmental problems stands in deep contradiction to the imperatives of the capitalist economy.

States, regions and sectors of the economy are placed into competition with each other via the global market and have to look for opportunities to become attractive for global capital. A decisive factor to increase profits, next to low wages and insufficient worker’s rights, is the disregard of environmental hazards caused by industrial production. Transnational capital from certain industries will thus flow where environmental standards are low or law is not strictly enforced.¹² The state’s capability to intervene in this dimension is dramatically diminished because of the imperatives of international competition (Eblinghaus/Stic­kler 1998: 156). The next chapter will shed more light on the question of how the sustainable development apparatus and the state are intertwined in a more direct way; and how the state becomes a pseudo-apolitical manager of the environment.

3.2 Instituti­onalization and Professionali­zation: The State and the “Green” World Bank

Concerning the environment, professionalization and institutionali­zation on an international and national level are heavily driven by the World Bank. Transformations on the level of ideas translate into the practical sphere of state action: “When a whole range of actors, from World Bank lawyers to international conservation scientists, are commissioned to rewrite national property rights law, redesign state agencies, and redefine localized production practices based on new global norms, they transform conventional forms of state power, agency, and sovereignty.” (Goldman 2004: 167) As the self-proclaimed “knowledge bank”, the World Bank has been very active in “constructing global truth and rights regimes on the environment and natural resource use” (Goldman 2004: 166) – a genuine machine for knowledge production. Adapting to the crisis of development mentioned earlier, the World Bank which has been heavily criticized for fostering ecological destruction has reinvented itself as the major proponent of sustainability with its new modus operandi of “environmentally sustainable development”, or green neoliberalism, as the critics like to call it. The new orientation has allowed the Bank to employ a range of new ideas and tools that are arranged around topics of conservation, preservation and sustainability (Goldman 2004: 166–167).

Taking Laos as a case study, Goldman shows that these practices have led to the emergence of a hegemonic form of rationality, new truth regimes on nature, new rights regimes on nature, and last, but not least new state authorities dealing with the environment. The legitimating technology for the interventions is scientific assessment work along the lines of economic rationality (Goldman 2004: 173, 183, 185; see also subsequent section on measuring in this paper).¹³

Merging the language of environmental concern and urgency with market-based solutions, experts proclaim that Laos has a future only if ecological destruction and human poverty are intervened upon quickest possible, at best with a large-capital project such as a hydro-dam – there is no alternative (TINA). (Goldman 2004: 173) The rewriting of laws, the restructuring of state agencies as well as the funding of large-scale infrastructure projects are all part of the World Bank’s strategy of becoming environmentally and socially pro-active. One main result of this commitment in environmental and social areas is that “the World Bank’s interven­tions have also become much more inclusive, authoritative, and disciplinary” (Goldman 2004: 174), thereby fueling the process of normalization in the relationship of human and nature (cf. Escobar 1995: 203)¹⁴.

Proponents of environmental politics usually mention biodiversity as an argument for the conservation of nature. With the discourse of biodiversity, which is intricately linked to sustainable development, nature becomes a source of value in itself; “not so much as resources but as reservoirs of value that research and knowledge, along with biotechnology, can release for capital and communities” (Escobar 1995: 203). Thus, nature remains subordinated to the capitalistic rationale. It continually stands in the context of appropriation and competition. (Görg 2004: 105; cf. Escobar 1998)

Following from the above, the strain of sustainable development discourse which can be subsumed under the term of green neoliberalism that has promoted scientization, governmentalization and capitalization of eco-zones – which means indeed a thorough reworking of the relationship between human and its surroundings. With the grading of Laos’ eco-zones into controlled use zones, protection zones etc., dwelling rights and access to land have been fundamentally transformed. The rights that used to be with the forest dwelling population¹⁵ are now largely with the energy, conservation and tourism industries. Nature has been capitalized, valuated and partly privatized. One central effect of capitalization has been exclusion, as evident in the shift of rights. (Goldman 2004: 183; Escobar 1995: 204; cf. Heynen/Robbin­s 2005)

A decisive mediator in the reworking of production conditions and the re-signification of nature and resources is the state. The state constitutes an “interface between capital and nature” (Escobar 1995: 200), as should have already become clear. Enclosure, meaning “the capture of common resources and exclusion of the communities to which they are linked” (Heynes/Robbins 2005: 5), as well as the valuation of ecosystems, making them prone for privatization, all have (increasing) state functions and bureaucratization as a significant precondition. The discourse delivers the rationality for these processes that are presented as technical, neutral and efficiency-oriented; however, as we have seen in the example of Laos, the emergence of new institutions and changes in legislations carry momentous sociopolitical implications.

3.3 Professio­nalization: Measuring Sustainability

Bureaucrats and environment experts need “hard facts” to legitimize their actions. Within the sustainable development discourse, to work professionally means to have certain tools to assess sustainability – tools that fit comfortably well the dominant neoclassical economic paradigm. As such, measuring as one of these tools is essential to make qualitatively different aspects comparable. It means describing the environment with economic tools, since “ecological values can be estimated with economic valuation methods which rely on the same theoretical background as microeconomics”, as the introduction to Environmental economics and policy making in developing countries states (da Motta 2001, cited in: Alexander 2005: 457).

The sustainable development discourse contains a range of refined tools of economic rationality to measure the impact of processes and interventions on the social and natural. The world’s leading environmental experts, many of them working for the World Bank, make use of environmental impact assessments (EIAs), green cost-benefit analyses (CBAs), life-cycle studies (LCI) or triple bottom line (3BL) assessments (Goldman 2004: 183; Alexander 2005: 460–467). I will not embark on a critique of the single methods here (which is carried through in Alexander 2005), but rather show and problematize their common traits and assumptions that have much in common with neoclassical economics and its central postulate that the economy can be seen as an entity detached from society and the environment.

The general critique levied against measuring is that it reduces sustainability to economistic, seemingly quantifiable elements and in that way drastically narrows the perspective, thereby excluding worldviews other than the capitalocentric. The methods mentioned above “implicitly and explicitly assign values to groups of people and parcels of environment”; whereby “these values get expressed in narrow economic terms, due to the urgent need to make them “commensurable” (Goldman 2004: 183), “bringing the environment and society into a balance sheet” (Alexander 2005: 456) and assuming that everything can be commoditized. The experts within the sustainable development discourse address environmental concerns with an “explicitly utilitarian approach that identifies the ‚services‘ delivered by nature” (Woodhouse 2002: 143), such as resources needed for production, waste disposal or the aesthetic pleasures of landscape.

Reductionism and standardization in these tools have severe political consequences: they typically treat society and/or the environment as a whole, not taking into account diverging interests. The room for human judgement is greatly diminished by resorting to a justification of policy resting on CBAs, which means a weakening of democracy through “professional” judgements (Alexander 2005: 461). The assessments form an important part of opening up new zones for investigation and intervention (Goldman 2004: 183). The form of nature that enters politics after these forms of measurements is “packaged, numbered, calculated, coded, modeled, and represented by those who claim to possess, know, understand, and speak for the “real Nature”.” (Swyngedouw 2007: 21) Hence, the process of professionalization is not technically neutral but carries deep political implications, as it is producing, reproducing, consolidating or strengthening power imbalances. Among the axes in which the imbalances can be made visible and described is the hierarchization of cultures.

3.4 Hierarchi­zation: “The Ecologically Noble Savage” and “Eco-Outlaws”

The sustainable development discourse clearly continues with the colonial tradition of hierarchizing cultures. The technique of measuring mentioned above is but one example for the hierarchizations of “developed” and “underdeveloped”, of “modern” and “traditional” kinds of socio-natural relations. In the closely related biodiversity discourse, communities become recognized as the owners of their territory – as long as they take care of the environment in a way that is in accordance with the guidelines of sustainable and rational use; or, in other words, a normalized and disciplined use. Rural communities are thus either seen as “stewards of nature” or as “eco-outlaws”, depending if they are living according to Western sustainability standards (whatever these may be) or use practices deemed backward such as slash-and-burn cultivation. (Escobar 1995: 203; Goldman 2004: 184)

This dichotomous construct obviously has its roots in colonial narratives circling around the noble and the primitive savage, becoming updated in forms of the ecologically noble or primitive savage.¹⁶ It is precisely these portrays that perpetuate the hierarchization of cultures, as Escobar has called it, or the neocolonial dichotomy between those doing the development and those being developed. Certain behavior towards the environment is judged as irrational, the actors blamed as guilty or innocent of ecological destruction (Goldman 2004: 180, 185).

Poverty was initially regarded unrelated to the destruction of the environment. Only with the rise of the sustainable development discourse, the poor/rural people have been identified as “agents of destruction” (Sachs 1995b: 29) responsible for deforestation and desertification on the globe. What ecosystem analysts (un)willingly overlooked was the embeddedness of these processes into socioeconomic and political circumstances, conditions that have in many instances been closely related to development interventions, forced migration as in the Indonesian transmigrasi programme being only the most easily visible tip of the iceberg (Sachs 1995b: 29; Escobar 1995: 195; on Indonesia’s tran­smigration see Hancock 1997).

Pointing the finger at the poor also had the effect of “shifting visibility away from the large industrial polluters in the North and South and from the predatory way of life fostered by capitalism” (Escobar 1995: 195). Nevertheless, the accounts of poor people engaging in irrational behavior degrading the environment resulted in education campaigns promoting environmental consciousness and led development experts to the conclusion that with more economic growth, environmental problems should disappear. (Sachs 1995b: 29)

This means, merging the problematization of the poor with the problematization of the environment opened up novel channels for interventions. The new gaze discredited local forms of knowledge and included a vast number of individuals into the realm of, using Foucault’s term, bio-power. Bio-power normalizes individuals and makes them subject to a certain instructabili­ty.¹⁷ One central outcome has been population control, with which the development state became able to treats its citizens as resources. (DuBois 1991)

We have thus come full circle, reaching the starting point of problematization. The processes of (1) problematizing the human-nature relationship, (2) emergence of institutions specializing in environmental issues, (3) professionalizing techniques with neoclassic rationality and (4) hierarchizing cultures are intertwined. They are constitutive of the sustainable development discourse and carry implications for the realm of the political. In the subsequent section of this paper, I will turn directly to the question of political dealings with ecological issues thereby and draw on the earlier findings.

4. De-politicizing the Environment

4.1 Possible Solutions: Saving the Planet with Technology & Market Mechanisms

What, then, are the central axioms of the dominant approach for problem solving in the sustainable development discourse – “ecological modernization”? Firstly, there is certainty that the ecological crisis can be resolved by introducing better control, gaining new scientific insights, applying measurement methods that are sensitive to environmental and social and concerns, and of course developing progressive technology; in a nutshell, learning from industrializa­tion’s mistakes. This process includes a partial internalization of ecological costs (Eblinghaus/Stic­kler 1998: 116, 156–159).

By preferring technological and market-based solutions (e.g., cap-and-trade), the industrialized countries of the capitalist centre and especially the more powerful multi-national corporations can effectively affirm their leading role in the dichotomy of developed and underdeveloped countries/eco­nomies¹⁸ and keep on doing business as usual without tackling issues such as the reworking of socio-natural relations and the capitalist system or individual lifestyle and consumption¹⁹. The last aspect is a central assumption of the sustainable development discourse: consumption becomes completely ecological without any reduction of material prosperity.

The new, green path of technological development includes two promises. Environmentally sustainable growth, it is hoped, can delink the positive (qualitative) aspects of industrial production from the negative (quantitative) aspects through the more efficient use of resources and nearly infinite recycling (Paech 2009). “Over the longer term,” Wolfgang Sachs (1997: 297) writes, “saving effects are invariably swallowed up by the quantity effects involved, if the overall dynamics of growth are not slowed down.” This phenomenon is known as the rebound effect. Ultimately, efficiency alone is not enough, it has to be accompanied by sufficiency (ibid.).

Furthermore, Paech warns that new technologies and innovations within the context of (ecological) modernization always cause unanticipated and momentous side effects, as evident for instance in biofuels (which were seen as a major cause for food shortages) or contamination of fields with genetically modified organisms. This warning is opposed to the paradigm of growth and development, for which the fate of humankind can be saved only by massive investment into technological progress – a technology that lies still in the future. This trust in the things to come is typical of the development discourse as a whole: consistently avoiding “the messy and problematic present” (Kothari/Minogue 2002: 12), there remains a “pathos of modernity” and the “everlasting hope that the future will redeem the present” (Vattimo, cited in ibid.). This is further illustrated in the continued use of finite resources: the trust in future technologies is solid enough to perpetuate the dependency on fossil fuels (Eblingshaus/Stic­kler 1998: 44), with renewable energies not replacing but complementing oil, gas etc. Innovation initially always works as an addition, not as a replacement (Paech 2010: 13). As such, the hope for new and better technologies and the trust in scientific progress that characterize the mainstream discourse avoid the political present because they point to an apolitical future with a better world for all, simply skipping today’s social issues.

4.2 The Order of the Discourse: Marginalization of the Political

Critical accounts such as the one by Niko Paech mentioned in the previous section do, however, have some presence in the sustainable development discourse. Since discourses are not homogeneous but include contradictory positions, it is important to look at how the elements are classified, grouped and put into relation with each other. Eblinghaus and Stickler (1998: 100–114) have done this in a detailed way and drawn conclusion that might be similarly deduced from the aspects I have shown so far.

An instrumentalistic understanding of nature and technocratic solutions dominate the discourse. Techniques of measurement and quantification create inevitable, global objectivities under economistic premises and fabricate the possibility to liken elements with each other that are fundamentally different, though connected, speaking for instance of nature/culture or ecology/economy. These spheres appear separated from each other, due to the logocentrism and capitalocentric rationale underlying the discourse (cf. Eblinghaus/Stickler 1998: 116)

A massive marginalization of critical issues has taken place while the discourse was still in its initial state; the end of which I would see with the consolidation of the concept of sustainability owned to the Brundtland Report 1987. Especially during the 1970s – the time of the first crisis of post-WW II capitalism and the heyday of the non-aligned movement – there was a wide questioning of prosperity, growth and technology, including calls for a new world order and self-reliance.²⁰ There was a range of environmentalist visions that were utterly political because they challenged the economic system, they challenged consumption and demanded political reorientations.

Not so the influential Brundtland Report from 1987. This report, according to Adams (1990, cited in Kobler: 80), “is based on an economic and not on an environmentalist vision. It uses some of the language of 1970s environmentalism, but not the questioning of growth or technology.” The sustainable development discourse has become increasingly ahistoric, even though ahistoric elements have been constitutive of the discourse before. Problematic experiences with development interventions in the Third World – especially the World Bank’s large-capital projects – find almost no explicit expressions in the discourse. The same is true for a critical account of science, or structural and historic causes of inequality and ecological problems. Political issues are clearly marginalized; the discourse has built up an inherent immunity against the political. With Kothari and Minogue (2002: 11), we can contain that the critical discourse of environmentalism has been watered down in its challenges and political implications as it became included into the development mainstream and policy formulations.

4.3 Environmental Post-Politics

Following from the above, it can be established that the sustainable development discourse serves as an excellent example for the condition that has been termed post-politics by Slavoj Žižek, among others. In post-politics, the political is not only marginalized and contained, it is being effectively excluded. Within post-politics, conflict is solved through cooperation instead of confrontation between the ideological positions; as well as collaboration with enlightened technocrats. So-called stakeholders promote their interests in negotiations at the end of which stands a compromise, something like a general consensus. A precondition for an acceptable political intervention is that the idea might actually work under existing conditions and in the given capitalist framework.

In contrast to this form of post-politics, the actual political act, according to Žižek, consists of ideas and interventions that do change the scope of what is deemed possible. As such, true politics is not consensus but dissension. True politics is “the art of the impossible” (Žižek 2010: 274). If the dimension of the impossible is excluded, politics excludes segments of society – and those members excluded cannot “politicise” (Žižek 2010: 274) their exclusion, as the democratic-political confrontation has become reduced to a post-political procedure of negotiations. (Žižek 2010: 272–282). Sustainability has been precisely identified as such a “powerful tool for consensus”²¹, cutting “across most previous intellectual and political boundaries” (Lélé 1991, cited in Eblinghaus/Stickler 1998: 39) and creating a kind of environmental populism. With Erik Swyngedouw environmental populism can be described as follows.

First, “populism invokes The Environment and The people (if not humanity as a whole) in a material and philosophical manner” (Swyngedouw 2007: 32), thus leveling the differences between human and non-human natures. This is (second) possible by alluding to a common threat to both nature and humanity which is (third) supported by seemingly neutral scientific technocracy and (fourth) formulated in such a way that it invokes apocalyptic futures if immediate action is not taken. Fifth, the problem is caused by an externalized outsider, a vague and standardized enemy that is ultimately empty, such as CO2. Sixth, the action against the enemy is not carried through by a certain privileged subject of change, instead there is the need for humanity-wide action which (seventh) is not about the changing of elites. Eighth, the concrete demands of populism “remain particular and foreclose universalization as a positive socioenvironmental project” (Swyngedouw 2007: 34) – f.ex. “reduce CO2 emissions”. Altogether, populism aims for a situation in which “the target of concern can be managed through a consensual dialogical politics, and, consequently, demands become depoliticized.” (The reader may want to have a glance at the nobel lecture of Al Gore to see what this theorization might look like in practice.) (Swyngedouw 2007: 32–35)

5. Conclusion: The Third World and Post-Politics

Old Acquaintances, New Perspectives?

The concept of post-politics was initially thought to describe the situation of neoliberal multiculturalism in Europe and the United States and not the Third World. I would argue that actually, the post-political situation is not new to the global South at all. Indeed, it has an even longer tradition there, owing much to the workings of the development apparatus. James Ferguson has convincingly shown how in Lesotho the “state itself, meanwhile, tends to appear as a machine for implementing “development programs”, an apolitical tool for delivering social services and agricultural inputs and engineering economic growth” (Ferguson 2007: 65).

The developmentalist state of the Third World as well as the development agencies have had the agenda of “development first, democracy next” – an agenda that has only recently been challenged through the good governance discourse. The sustainable development discourse lifts all these notions of “development” and good governance from the national level to the even more abstract one world perspective, for environmental issues escape national sovereignty (cf. Sachs 1995b: 27). New ways of intervention, management and the dealing with nature have found their way into the development apparatus. But, as I hope to have made clear, the way environmental issues are dealt with – their political framing – is inherently postpolitical and postdemocratic (Swyngedouw 2007: 13–14). The sustainable development discourse de-politicizes the issue of socio-natural relations through the mechanisms of problematization, institutionali­zation, professionalization and hierarchization. The development discourse selects for representations that allow development agencies to intervene, and the same remains valid for the sustainable development discourse. The state, using the de-politicized space that has been created through development intervention, has widened its range of action to include the environment and human interaction with it (cf. Ferguson 2007: 65).

Despite their supposed neutrality, the effects of environmental policies are deeply political and have momentous consequences for both the global North and South. As policies on the environment become more visible, they start forming an essential part of political struggles. Especially in the global South, the normalization of the relationship between human and nature is resisted and very often, this has meant resisting the authoritarian (and seemingly apolitical) developmentalist state (cf. Shiva 2000: 117–123; Escobar 1998; critical overviews: Robbins 2004: 187–201; McMichael 2008).

This paper has benefitted from helpful comments by Tomáš Profant, as well as my colleagues Magdalena Haglmüller, Katrin Köhler, Abigail Sattlberger and Falko Wolfsgruber.

Bibliography

• Abrahamsen, Rita (2004): The Power of partnerships in global governance. In: Third World Quarterly 25 (8), pp. 1453–1467.
• Alexander, Catherine (2005): Value: economic valuations and environmental policy. In: Carrier, james (ed.): A Handbook of Economic Anthropology. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 455–471.
• Belsey, Catherine (2002): Poststructuralism. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: University Press.
• Brand, Ulrich (2008): “Umwelt” in der neoliberal-imperialen Politik: Sozial-ökologische Perspektiven demokratischer Gesellschaftspo­litik. In: Widerspruch 54, pp. 139–148.
• Dietz, Kristina/Brun­nengräber, Achim (2008): Das Klima in den Nord-Süd-Beziehungen. In: Peripherie 112 (28), pp. 400–428.
• DuBois, Marc (1991): The Governance of the Third World: A Foucauldian Perspective on Power Relations in Development. In: Alternative 16, pp. 1–30.
• Eblinghaus, Helga/Stickler, Armin (1998): Nachhaltigkeit und Macht: zur Kritik von Sustainable Development. Mit einer Dokumentation der Debatte um die Studie “Zukunftsfähiges Deutschland”. Frankfurt a.M.: IKO.
• Ehrlich, Paul (1968): The Population Bomb. New York: Ballantine.
• Eriksson Baaz, Maria (2005): The Paternalism of Partnership. A Postcolonial Reading of Identity in Development Aid. London/New York: Zed Books.
• Escobar, Arturo (1995): Encountering Development. The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: University Press.
• Escobar, Arturo (1998): Whose Knowledge, Whose Nature? Biodiversity, Conservation and the Political Ecology of Social Movements. In: Journal of Political Ecology 5, pp. 53–82.
• Escobar, Arturo (1999): After Nature. Steps to an Antiessentialist Political Ecology. In: Current Anthropology 40 (1), pp. 1–30.
• Esteva, Gustavo (1995): Development. In: Sachs, Wolfgang (ed.): The Development Dictionary. A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London: Zed Books, pp. 6–25.
• Esteva, Gustavo/Prakash, Madhu Suri (1997): From Global Thinking to Local Thinking. In: Rahnema, Majid (ed.): The Post-Development Reader. London: Zed Books, pp. 277–289.
• Ferguson, James (2007): The Anti-Politics Machine. “Development”, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Foucault, Michel (1991): Die Ordnung des Diskurses. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.
• Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2006) A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.
• Goldman, Michael (2004): Eco-governmentality and other transnational practices of a “green” World Bank. In: Peet, Richard/Watts, Michael (ed.): Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements. London/New York: Routledge (166–192).
• Gore, Albert Arnold (2007): Nobel Lecture. Available online.
• Görg, Christoph (2004): Ökologischer Imperialismus. In: Widerspruch 47, pp. 95–107.
• Hames, Raymond (2007): The Ecologically Noble Savage Debate. In: Annual Review of Anthropology 36, pp. 177–190.
• Hardin, Garrett (1974): Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor. In: Psychology Today 8, pp. 38–43.
• Hancock, Graham (1997): Transmigration in Indonesia: How Millions Are Uprooted. In: Rahnema, Majid (ed.): The Post-Development Reader. London: Zed Books, pp. 234–243.
• Heynen, Nik/Robbins, Paul (2005): The Neoliberalization of Nature: Governance, Privatisation, Enclosure and Valuation. In: Capitalism Nature Socialism 16 (1), pp. 5–8.
• Kaplan, Robert D. (1994): The Coming Anarchy. In: Atlantic Monthly 273 (2), pp. 44–63.
• Kobler, Andrea (2009): Environmental Discourses in Development Studies. A critical Analysis from 1970 until 2008. Diplomarbeit Universität Wien.
• Kothari, Uma/Minogue, Martin (2002): Critical Perspectives On Development: An Introduction. In: Kothari, Uma (ed.): Development Theory and Practice. Critical Perspectives, pp. 1–15.
• McMichael, Philip (2008): Peasants Make Their Own History, But Not Just as They Please. In: Journal of Agrarian Change 8(2), pp. 205–228.
• N’dione, Emmanuel Seni et al. (1997): Reinventing the Present: The Chodak Experience in Senegal. In: Rahnema, Majid (ed.): The Post-Development Reader. London: Zed Books, pp. 364–376.
• Paech, Niko (2009): Die Postwachstumsöko­nomie als Vorraussetzung für eine nachhaltige Entwicklung. In: Hinterberger, Friedrich et al. (ed.): Welches Wachstum ist nachhaltig? Wien: Mandelbaum, pp. 215–223.
• Paech, Niko (2010): Die Legende vom nachhaltigen Wachstum. Ein Plädoyer für den Verzicht. In: Le Monde Diplomatique (German Edition), September 2010, pp. 12–13.
• Rahnema, Majid (1997): Towards Post-Development: Searching for Signposts, a New Language and New Paradigms. In: Rahnema, – Majid (ed.): The Post-Development Reader. London: Zed Books, pp. 377–403.
• Robbins, Paul (2004): Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction. Malden: Blackwell.
• Sachs, Wolfgang (1995a): Introduction. In: Sachs, Wolfgang (ed.): The Development Dictionary. A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London: Zed Books, pp. 1–5.
• Sachs, Wolfgang (1995b): Environment. In: Sachs, Wolfgang (ed.): The Development Dictionary. A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London: Zed Books, pp. 26–37.
• Sachs, Wolfgang (1997): The Need for the Home Perspective. In: Rahnema, Majid (ed.): The Post-Development Reader. London: Zed Books, pp. 290–300.
• Sahlins, Marshall (1997): The Original Affluent Society. In: Rahnema, Majid (ed.): The Post-Development Reader. London: Zed Books, pp. 3–21.
• Sarasin, Philipp (2005): Michel Foucault zur Einführung. Frankfurt am Main: Junius.
• Schlembach, Rafael (2010): An Interview with Erik Swyngedouw. In: Shift Magazine 8. Available online.
• Swyngedouw, Erik (2007): Impossible “Sustainability” and the Postpolitical Condition. In: Krueger, Rob/Gibbs, David (ed.): The Sustainable Development Paradox: Urban Political economy in the United States and Europe. New York: Guildford Press, pp. 13–40.
• Williams, Gavin (1995): Modernizing Malthus. The World Bank, population control and the African environment. In: Crush, Jonathan (ed.): The Power of Development. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 158–175.
• Woodhouse, Philip (2002): Development Policies and Environmental Agendas. In: Kothari, Uma (ed.): Development Theory and Practice. Critical Perspectives, pp. 136–156.
• Woodhouse, Philip/Chimhowu, Admos (2005): Development Studies, Nature and Natural Resources: Changing Narratives and Discursive Practices. In: Kothari, Uma (ed.): A Radical History of Development Studies. Individuals, Institutions and Ideologies. London/New York: Zed Books, pp. 180–199.
• World Bank (2010): Rising Interest in Global Farmland. Can It Yield Sustainable and Equitable Results? Available online.
• Žižek, Slavoj (2010): Die Tücke des Subjekts. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

The author is a political science student at the University of Vienna.

Microcredits – and microfinance in general – have recently been hyped as a means to overcome poverty. However, the actual outcomes of this instrument often differ from the intended ones. Moreover, the concept is a highly problematic one when looked at it from a post-development perspective. Some of its shortcomings, though, could be overcome by hybridizing microfinance with the post-development concept of a language of a diverse economy.

Introduction

Starting in the 1970s microcredit became an element of the so-called poverty reduction measures (Elahi/Rahman 2006: 478). In 1976, the economist Muhammad Yunus started to conduct a series of experiments lending tiny amounts of money to poor people. Successful as these tests were the Grameen Bank was founded in 1983 – a bank specialized in microcredit. In order to be allowed to take out a small loan people do not have to present any collateral. Instead the mechanism of group lending is applied which allows borrowers to guarantee each other’s repay­ments¹. This approach has been replicated in dozens of countries and microcredit has been spreading for the past decades (Armendáriz de Aghion/Morduch 2005: 11 f.).

At the end of the past millennium the term microfinance was introduced into the development discourse. Microfinance as a “development approach” (Elahi/Rahman 2006: 477) goes beyond microcredit (Elahi/Rahman 2006: 477): It is “a collection of banking practices built around providing small loans […] and accepting tiny savings deposits” (Armendáriz de Aghion/Morduch 2005: 1) as well as providing insurance (Armendáriz de Aghion/Morduch 2005: 14). There is a big hype when it comes to microfinance (Dichter 2006). By now 1,880 Microfinance Institutions have been reported to exist serving 90.7 million borrowers with an average loan balance of USD 523.7 per person (Mixmarket 2010). Microfinance seems to have “emerged as the main development model” (Moodie 2008: 454). There have been microcredit summits taking place (Armendáriz de Aghion/Morduch 2005: 16), the year 2005 was the “International Year of Microcredit” (see online-text) and with the UNCDF (United Nations Capital Development Fund) there even exists a UN-Organization focusing on microfinance.

However, despite the spreading of microfinance there is also a lot of skepticism involved when it comes to this instrument. Researchers and activists alike are raising concerns over its concept and outcomes (Moodie 2008: 454). Even more do so post-development authors: evidently, microfinance is anchored within the discourse of development (Brigg 2001: 240) – itself a highly problematic concept. Taking into account the various concerns raised by actors coming from different areas, ought microfinance as an instrument to be disapproved of instead of hyped? Or – and this is the main research question of the paper at hand –

is microfinance a viable mean for enabling people to conduct a good life if constructed in a different way than it is by now? How would that difference look like?

Obviously, this question cannot be answered completely within this short text. Microfinance is a very broad and complex issue. However, the attempt is conducted to at least give an idea about the subject matter of microfinance and the difficulties involved as well as one possible way of overcoming its shortcomings. The text starts with an analysis of the prevailing nature of microfinance and of some of the problems it causes. The skepticism vis-à-vis microcredit and microfinance respectively is presented. Reasoning starts by asking whether this instrument – the way it is constructed – is able to meet its goals. Subsequently, microfinance is analyzed taking into consideration the points raised by post-development authors. Not approving that microfinance ought to be opposed to at all costs the third chapter is discussing a possibility of making use of microfinance outside the boundaries of the development discourse (Sachs 1992: 4). The paper ends with a concluding section.

The idea of this paper – besides simply criticizing microcredit/mi­crofinance from a post-development perspective – is to offer an outlook of how to use this instrument in a way more sensitive to the clients’ needs and less forcing on them the values/thinking of the “West”. It is relevant to deal with this question since microfinance has developed to a real industry generating lots of profits for the various institutions and since it is, therefore, unrealistic to believe that due to its partly disadvantageous impacts on people’s lives microfinance will be abolished. Moreover, there are people who want to take out loans and benefit from other financial services. Who are we, to deny this request? Especially if the wish does not really stand for free will but rather it is a kind of survival strategy in a world dominated by capitalism. For these two reasons it is relevant to identify a possibility of overcoming that dilemma. One way would be to change some of the mechanisms of microfinance, supplement it by other means and by doing so make it work in a way that enables the clients of microfinance institutions to a good life and saves them from negative impacts. All the results presented in the following sections are based on a detailed literature research as well as on the inputs received at Tomas Profant’s class “Post-Development” at the University of Vienna.

Microfinance as a problematic instrument

There is a huge hype prevailing when it comes to microfinance. It seems to have a huge potential for development. Looking beyond this hype is the goal of this chapter. First, microfinance and its outcomes are critically analyzed without, however, scrutinizing the concept of development in general. Only the second part of this section discusses microfinance from a post-development perspective which implies criticizing the whole concept of development.

Indicators of failure

Staying within the “particular cast of mind” (Sachs 1992: 1) which development is allows an analysis of microfinance based on the aims institutions – which are actively involved in that area – officially want to achieve. Measured by these goals microfinance cannot be clearly considered operating successfully. Sometimes microfinance initiatives have “problematic and […] violent outcomes” (Moodie 2008: 454) as will be shown in the following paragraphs. However, generally speaking it is rather difficult to measure and evaluate the impact of microfinance. Can the often mentioned high rate of repayment for example really be considered as an indication of its success? Which impact does microfinance have on gender relations (Fernando 2006a: 20)? What has been happening to the existing local, informal credit systems after the appearance of formal institutions offering microcredits (Dichter 2006)? These – and lots of questions more – need to be paid attention to when evaluating microfinance and the hype around it. Only few of these questions can be answered by applying statistics and calculating indicators. Nevertheless researchers are trying to do so by inventing concepts like “social efficiency” (Gutiérrez-Nieto/Serrano-Cinca/Molinero 2009: 104 ff.).

A lot of microfinance institutions focus their activities on women. They claim to do so in order to empower them. Moreover, researchers speak of a “significant and positive relationship between efficiency in supporting women and efficiency in fighting poverty” (Gutiérrez-Nieto/Serrano-Cinca/Molinero 2009: 115). One must not forget, though, that female clients turned out to be more reliable than male customers. Obviously, they are amenable to the disciplinary imperatives banks like Grameen are using (Brigg 2001: 243). Lending to the former, thus, reduces the financial risk for microcredit institutions (Armendáriz de Aghion/Morduch 2005: 13 f.). However, the money still often ends in the hands of the borrowers’ male relatives (Moodie 2008: 454).

Besides the question whether women in the end are really holders of the credit money, other gender-related aspects need to be considered: The strict repayment schedule for example produces a strong pressure on women which often forces them to informally borrow money from lenders who are charging extremely high interest rates and who might react in an aggressive way if repayments are due and not done (Moodie 2008: 454 f.). Often borrowers are forced to sell their basic food reserves in order to receive money for the loan repayments (Fernando 2006a: 24). Moreover, if the other members of the household resist any shift of power, higher income for females will not actually empower them (Bebbington/Gómez 2006: 110).

Since the private sector cares for the poor responsibility for doing so is taken off the state – a process which seems to be a global trend (Fernando 2006a: 5). This is a dilemma all NGOs and social businesses face when engaging in their activities which are supposed to entail development – a very problematic concept itself as is shown in the following chapter. But leaving aside these concerns at this point, one can identify microfinance as one way of privatizing and depoliticizing (Brigg 2001: 242) poverty. This instrument puts the burden of escaping the poverty gap on the shoulders of the poor and makes it seem like they are responsible for their situation (Brigg 2001: 242). Individualization and production of hominesoeconomici are the consequence which is highly problematic as the following chapter points out. While privatizing the responsibility for the own welfare on the one hand, the entire household becomes “framed as public domain and placed under the control of the entire community, local government officials and the NGOs” (Fernando 2006b: 194) by the processes involved in the group lending mechanism on the other hand. Leaving aside the ideological implications of that process it also needs to be considered that not each person has “entrepreneurial” skills. The majority of the people living in the global North do not have their own businesses. Therefore, the assumption that people in the global South are all entrepreneurs who are only lacking access to credit money seems to be inaccurate (Dichter 2006).²

Last but not least, the underlying principle of microfinance is that development is brought about by economic growth which includes “extending markets” (Armendáriz de Aghion/Morduch 2005: 3). Basically, microfinance institutions consider economic growth and the advancement of a free market ideology as the equivalents of development – an idea which has widely been criticized even from within the development discourse and even more so by post-development authors. As the reason for the failure of development so far proponents of this understanding of development identify the inability of theorists and practitioners to really “reach the poor, understand their environments, and to recognize their potential to be active participants in the economy” (Fernando 2006a: 7) as well as – more generally speaking – market potentials which lack realization so far (Weber 2006: 44). All these are tasks which microfinance promises to fulfill.

A discursive critique of microfinance

What the former paragraphs were supposed to show is that according to its “official” goals the story of microfinance is not convincingly a successful one when looked into it in detail. Being part of the concept of development microfinance kind of automatically “connotes the best of intentions” (Sachs 1992: 4) – like lots of other development instruments do. However, authors of post-development argue that these intentions are not merely “noble” and “selfless” per se but have rather to be seen as being part of the development discourse – a discourse completely shaped by the “Western perception of reality” (Sachs 1992: 5). When looking at microfinance from a post-development perspective, attention instantly is drawn to the

“[n]otions of individual initiative, determination, and provision of capital to improve people’s situations and increase economic growth [which] are a micro version of the dominant economistic development approach” (Brigg 2001: 240).

A hidden agenda appears: The way in which microfinance is constructed “crystallizes a set of tacit assumptions which reinforce the Occidental worldview” (Sachs 1992: 4 f.) and the vision of advocates of microfinance “is congruent with the framework of global capitalism” (Vakulabharanam/Mo­tiram 2007: 8). Measured by the aim of spreading capitalist values, microfinance – as one of the many instruments applied by actors of the development cooperation – actually is “successful”.

According to DuBois (1991: 21 ff.) there is a certain way the development discourse works. Using his concept for analyzing microfinance points out its anchor within this discourse: First visibility has to be created – a problem needs to be identified (DuBois 1991: 21). In the case of microfinance that would be poverty and the lack of collateral poor people suffer from since consequently they do not have access to loans which are supposed to be needed. In this context, that is the chosen category indicating poverty (Escobar 1995b: 41). Secondly, “’better’” and “’proven’ ways of doing things” (Du Bois 1991: 21) are introduced by “experts”: Poverty is supposed to be overcome by microcredit and other innovative financial services (Vakulabharanam/Mo­tiram 2007: 3) since that would enable people to start up their own businesses. Microfinance institutions are offering the “necessary” expertise which, thirdly, leads to “disciplinary power relations” (DuBois 1991: 21) which make poor women “manage their own welfare through active participation in the liberal economy” (Fernando 2006a: 6) and subordinates the clients of microfinance institutions. The result is a “hierarchization of cultures” (Du Bois 1991: 22).

One could argue that microfinance is different from other development instruments since it empowers people – especially women – by enabling them to start their own business and become independent from external aid. However, the way it is constructed

“microfinance embodies the vision of multilateral organizations (e.g. World Bank), aid agencies, and policy makers about development, although it entails the participation of the “subjects” of development. We can describe it as a strategy based on “civil society” to achieve development, albeit one conceived from above” (Vakulabharanam/Mo­tiram 2007: 3).

Although this statement obviously is not one made by post-development authors since development as a concept is not questioned here, the writers acknowledge that not the subjects decide what development is but certain “experts” do so. How the instrument of microfinance works is decided by people “from above” while only the implementation is done by the local civil society. Like that people at the basis might feel empowered and might believe that they are acting in a self-determined way while the fundamental decisions have been already made for them by some kind of elite.

Another argument often given by proponents of microfinance is that informal lending and saving services have been at work long before microcredit institutions appeared. Therefore, these financial services do not seem to be forced on communities from the outside. Moreover, compared to informal lending they “offer greater safety, higher rates of return, quicker access to funds, and greater anonymity” (Vonderlack/Schre­iner 2002: 604) which the clients benefit from. However, this argument has to be seen within a broader framework: The question is why informal lending institutions have been existing in the first place? It seems that people feel the need to take out loans. Why, though, they feel this need? They might suffer from a fundamental lack of money in order to live a good life which raises the question of why the state is not taking care of them. That brings along lots of other questions concerning the reasons for a gap between countries of the global North and countries of the global South as well as between the rich and the poor within a country – questions which cannot be replied here.³ The point which ought to be made is, though, that it is too shortsighted to legitimate the appearance of formal microfinance institutions with the previous existence of informal lending services.

Microfinance institutions which offer their services on a for-profit basis identified “integration into the market economy” as the way to reduce poverty (Vakulabharanam/Mo­tiram 2007: 4). As long as speaking of granting microcredit to people this is also true for NGOs. A “relationship between the prevailing popularity of microfinance and the consolidation of neoliberal economic ideology worldwide” (Fernando 2006a: 5) can be identified. However, referring to poverty reduction as the official goal “gives legitimacy to the movement in the eyes of policy makers, funding agencies, multilateral organizations and the general public”(Vakulab­haranam/Motiram 2007: 4). Since these institutions have this “noble” motive for doing business, they are not scrutinized. Social business is the buzzword in that context – an idea developed by Muhammad Yunus (Social Business Tour 2010):

“A successful social business combines the social commitment of charitable institutions financed by donations or taxes combined with the entrepreneurial vitality and economic viability of a well-managed conventional business” (Social Business Tour 2010).

The question of whether the idea of social business will be – or has already been – co-opted by the prevailing development discourse and whether it is only a new form of capitalist economic activity which arouse due to increasing awareness and scrutiny of the consumers, cannot be dealt with at this point. That Yunus’ idea is called a “social-consciousness-driven capitalism” (Elahi/Rahman 2006: 481) is, though, an indication that placing the word social in front of business does not necessarily bring about any change in ideology. What definitely needs to be pointed out is that a big load of microfinance institutions – 1,880 organizations worldwide (Mixmarket 2010) – are benefitting from granting loans and offering other financial services to poor people. Microfinance has become a huge business and has let banks as well as NGOs flourish “at a time when the effectiveness of foreign aid to ease the burdens of the world’s poor faces fundamental question” (Armendáriz de Aghion/Morduch 2005: 2). The existence of all these institutions who are involved in microfinance depends on poverty, its construction (Escobar 1995b: 21 ff.) and the victimization of people in the global South. NGOs and microfinance institutions, therefore, have a great interest in maintaining the development discourse and making use of it in a way that let them choose lack of access to credit as the category of poverty (Escobar 1995b: 41) while other categories are ignored.

Returning to the term social business it is interesting as well as alarming that the social values these institutions claim to cherish are only respected to a certain point: As soon as they harm profitability it seems that the letter is prioritized:

“There can be a contradiction between the imperative for high recovery rates and certain other values that microfinance aims to cherish (e.g. helping poor with dignity, reducing dependence upon informal moneylenders). In theory, this contradiction has not been resolved, yet in practice it has been resolved in favor of recovery” (Vakulabharanam/Mo­tiram 2007: 5).

Following the two strings of criticism just presented the question arises whether it is best to stop activities in the field of microfinance completely? Or is there a way it could contribute to enable people to conduct a good life? This is the question the next chapter deals with.

Microfinance as part of a diverse economy

Microfinance is caught within the specific “unconscious structures” (Sachs 1992: 4) of the development discourse which has been shown in the previous chapter. The last section is supposed to “contribute to the liberation of the discursive field so that the task of imagining alternatives can be commenced” (Escobar 1995a: 14): Thinking outside the boundaries of the development discourse, overcoming the constraints (Sachs 1992: 4) and still holding on to the instrument of microfinance might be a solution to the dilemma that despite all the legitimate skepticism people in countries of the global South ask for microcredit and other financial services on the micro level: “[…] all the women I knew in Debaliya wanted a loan” (Moodie 2008: 455).

Primarily, microfinance is about configuring and disciplining diverse economic activities in a way that channels them towards the major goal of capitalism – the creation of surplus value (Fernando 2006a: 10). The very language of microfinance itself is extremely productive for the expansion of capitalism: self-reliance, self-sufficiency and empowerment are the buzzwords (Fernando 2006a: 17), the production of hominesoeconomici the result. The hype around microcredit “demonstrates the remarkable capacity of capitalism to make use of the language and practices of its critics and opponents to secure conditions for its own reproduction” (Fernando 2006a: 31). Language transmits values and disciplines people as well as relations in a way to serve a certain interest (Fernando 2006a: 28) – which is the expansion of capitalism in the case of microfinance. Basically, an economy can be shaped in various ways – ways which are not visible under the current framework since the language of capitalism has invaded each and every kind of economic activities and thereby narrowed the possibilities of economic activities down to a small number. This disciplining can be broken by simply constructing and (re-)introducing a language of economic diversity⁴ – a concept developed by Gibson-Graham.

By drawing on Laclau’s and Mouffe’s theory of politics Gibson-Graham argue for the repoliticization of the discursive field of “the economy” which would, thereby, entail a destabilization of the hegemony of understanding economy as a capitalistic, manageable and governing system (Gibson-Graham 2006: 54 f.). By talking about economic activities in a certain way – in accordance to the hegemonic discourse – certain images are produced and reproduced again and again allowing only for certain kinds of actions and, therefore, for a certain kind of economic development. Changing that language and expanding it to one which is able to comprise the diversity of economic activity which actually exists in reality would result in a different understanding and, thus, different actions (Gibson-Graham 2006: 54 f.). Capitalism and its inherent concepts being the benchmark for any economic development need to be challenged (Gibson-Graham 2006: 56 f.) while cooptation of a challenging approach by the “hegemonic capitalocentric discourse” (Gibson-Graham 2006: 59) needs to be avoided at the same time.

Without any claim of completeness and by referring to it as a “weak theory” (Gibson-Graham 2006: 71) Gibson-Graham present such a challenge: a language of a diverse economy – derived by the method of “rereading for difference” (Gibson-Graham 2006: 71) – which allows for describing the various forms transactions, labor and enterprises can take. Analyses of these diverse forms are based on the following premises:

• “Economic sectors, enterprises, and subjects occupy multiple sites in the diverse economy.
• Each site has the potential to offer one or more economic identities (subject positions).
• Each economic relation offers different realms of economic freedom as well as opportunities for exploitation and oppression depending on circumstances.
• Economic dynamics are overdetermined and thus the relationship between activities in different sites cannot be predicted but is open to politics and other contingencies.
• Political struggles have the capability to diversify the economy and change relations between activities within in.
• Capitalist enterprise is as diverse as noncapitalist enterprise.” (Gibson-Graham 2006: 72)

Depending on the rules of commensurability transactions can be divided into nonmarket, market exchange and alternative market transactions. Labor might get paid a wage, alternatives or remain unpaid – which does not mean being completely uncompensated. An enterprise can be characterized as capitalistic, noncapitalistic or alternatively capitalistic (Gibson-Graham 2006: 60 ff.). Appealing visualization of the diverse economy (Gibson-Graham 2006: 68 ff.) as well as practicing the use of the new language by analyzing a sector, an enterprise or an individual according to it (Gibson-Graham 2006: 72 ff.) might provoke political effects in the sense of “economic transformation” and the “strengthening [of] the community economy” (Gibson-Graham 2006: 77).

When producing the picture of a diverse economy different entrance points can be identified where microfinance could come into play. The most important insight is that microfinance and loans must not be equated with capitalistic enterprises only. By presenting the different shapes economic activities can assume microfinance can be linked to these diverse economies in various ways. The process of identifying the diversity of the economic system is one in which borrowers should actively be involved. Prior to granting loans and offering other financial services workshops ought to be held and a language of economic diversity developed.

Conclusion

The way microfinance is constructed by now it is not a viable means for enabling people to conduct a good life since it creates unintended side effects on the one hand, and is part of the concept of development – a highly problematic concept with hidden agendas involved – on the other hand. However, there might be a way of hybridization (Escobar 1995c: 217 ff.) of microfinance and the post-development concept of constructing a language of economic diversity which could overcome the shortcomings: A change in language when talking about the economy entails a change in focus which in turn changes actions and, more precisely, the way in which microfinance is used. However, how this hybridization would actually work in detail is still up for discussion. Moreover, it definitely would be a difficult task to convince microfinance institutions and NGOs which are giving out loans to construct a new language of economic diversity. How could that be achieved?

References

• Armendáriz de Aghion, Beatrix/Murdoch, Jonathan (2005): Rethinking Banking. In: Armendáriz de Aghion, Beatrix/Murdoch, Jonathan: The economics of microfinance. Cambridge: MIT, 1–24.
• Bebbington, Denise Humphreys/Gómez, Arelis (2006): Rebuilding social capital in post-conflict regions. Women’s village banking in – Ayacucho, Peru and in Highland Guatemala. In: Fernando, Jude L. (Edt.): Microfinance – Perils and prospects. Abingdon: Routledge, 97–114.
• Brigg, Morgan (2001): Empowering NGOs: The Microcredit Movement Through Foucault’s Notion of Dispositif. In: Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 26 (3), 233–258.
• Dichter, Thomas (2006): Hype and Hope: The Worrisome State of the Microcredit Movement, online-text.
• DuBois, Marc (1991): The Governance of the Third World: A Foucauldian Perspective on Power Relations in Development. In: Alternatives 16 (1), 1–30.
• Elahi, KhandakarQudrat-I/Rahman, M. Lutfor (2006): Micro-credit and micro-finance: functional and conceptual differences. In: Development in Practice 16 (5), 476–483.
• Escobar, Arturo (1995a): Introduction: Development and the anthropology of modernity. In: Ibid.:Encountering Development. The – Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 3–20.
• Escobar, Arturo (1995b): The problematization of poverty: The tale of three worlds and development. In: Ibid.:Encountering Development. The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 21–54.
• Escobar, Arturo (1995c): Conclusion: Imagining a postdevelopment era. In: Ibid.:Encountering Development. The Making and Unmaking of the Third World.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 212–226.
• Fernando, Jude L. (2006a): Introduction. Microcredit and empowerment of women: blurring the boundary between development and capitalism. In: Fernando, Jude L. (Edt.): Microfinance – Perils and prospects. Abingdon: Routledge, 1–36.
• Fernando, Jude L. (2006b): Microcredit and empowerment. Visibility without power. In: Fernando, Jude L. (Edt.): Microfinance – Perils and prospects. Abingdon: Routledge, 162–206.
• Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2006): Constructing a language of economic diversity. In: Ibid.:A Postca­pitalist Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minesota, 53–78.
• Gutiérrez-Nieto, B./Serrano-Cinca, C./Molinero, C. Mar (2009): Social efficiency in microfinance institutions. In: Journal of the Operational Research Society 60, 104–119.
• Mixmarket (2010): Financial Data and Social Performance Indicators of Microfinance,on­line-text.
• Moodie, Megan (2008): Enter microcredit: A new culture of women’s empowerment in Rajasthan? In: American Ethnologist 35 (3), 454–465.
• Sachs, Wolfgang (1992): Introduction. In: Sachs, Wolfgang (ed.): The Development Dictionary. A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London: Zed Books, 1–5.
• Social Business Tour (2010): Social Business Tour 2010,online-text.
• Vakulabharanam, Vamsi/Motiram, Sripad (2007): The Ethics of Microfinance and Cooperation. In: Ethics and Economics 5 (1), 1–19.
• Vonderlack, Rebecca M./Schreiner, Mark (2002): Women, microfinance, and savings: lessons and proposals. In: Development in Practice 12 (5), 602–612.
• Weber, Heloise (2006): The global political economy of microfinance and poverty reduction. Locating local ‘livelihoods’ in political analysis. In: Fernando, Jude L. (Edt.): Microfinance – Perils and prospects. Abingdon: Routledge, 37–54.

The author is a political science student at the University of Vienna.

In the last years as a student of International Development, my naive understanding of helping ‚the others‘ and my idea of the whole development business was completely disillusioned. To be critical about development and about what people mean when they use the term ‚development‘ became natural and unavoidable. Therefore the topic of Post-Development seems somehow to be a summary of my study. Everything deconstructed – but what next? It seems important to me to look deeper at Post Development and its critique.

1. Introduction

1.1 Motivation

In the last years as a student of International Development, my naive understanding of helping ‚the others‘ and my idea of the whole development business was completely disillusioned. To be critical about development and about what people mean when they speak of the term ‚development‘ became an unavoidable principle. Therefore the topic of Post-Development seems somehow to be a summary of my study. Dealing with the critique that was made on Post-Development approaches reminded me of myself. Everything deconstructed – but what next? Therefore it seems important to me to look deeper at Post-Development and its critique in concrete. 

1.2 Research Topic

In this seminar paper i will look at the different points of criticism on Post-Development that can be found in the relevant literature. Which criticism is relevant?

The method I use is hermeneutic text research. As I introduced in 1.1., my aim is to work theoretically and self-reflexive: as an author and researcher, I am not excluded of the research process. My own perspective influences my way of dealing with theory. Furthermore, I do not see theory as being without consequences: thought always has practical implications. As it would burst the length of this paper, I will concentrate on the theoretical work. Only the last chapter will take my personal reflective perspective into account.

1.3. Structure

First, what Post-Development intends and what it means, will be shortly introduced. To put Post-Development in a theoretical background, postmodernism and its relation to Post- Development will be explained. Second, the main points of criticism will be presented. In a next step, these points will be given an order and will be answered and analyzed in terms of finding out their relevance towards Post-Development. In my fourth step, parallels to myself in order of reflexivity will be drawn: what does post-development mean to me? How does theory influence my personal life? This is also supposed to be an outlook at the future.

2. Post-Development Theory

2.1 What is Post-Development Theory?

In this passage I will shortly present what can be understood by the term of Post-Development. This will be based on various texts as well as on discussions that took place during the seminar.

When it became obvious that the classical approaches to development had failed, as well as with the idea of Postmodernism, several authors began to discuss the ‚end of the development era‘ at the beginning of the nineties. One famous quotation is of Wolfgang Sachs, who in 1992 stated in his well-known book „The Development dictionary. A guide to knowledge as power“: „The idea of development stands like a ruin in the intellectual landscape. Delusion and disappointment, failures and crimes have been the steady companions of development and they tell a common story: it did not work“(Sachs 1992: 1).

Referring to Aram Ziai and his book „Zwischen Global Governance und Post-Development. Entwicklungspolitik aus diskursanalytischer Perspektive“, ‚development‘ is criticized in post-development theory on three levels: firstly, as a political project, secondly, as a intellectual structure and thirdly, as a term itself (Ziai 2007: 98). By ‚intellectual structure‘ Ziai means the reduction of possibilities in terms of human living systems. According to this thought, the Western-European and North-American industrial capitalism is of higher value than other forms of society or community. In consequence, the project of development is said to be imperialistic, the construct of development is attacked to be Euro-centric, the term itself is revealed to be empty. According to the classical modern development paradigm.¹

Summing up, so far Post-Development can be understood as a critique of development theory and development business in practice. But what are the marking elements of Post-Development? In what kind is it legitimate to speak of one Post-Development School?

Escobar, who is called to be one of the most important Post-Development authors, speaks of the following characteristics that mark Post-Development literature (Ziai 2007: 100):

• the interest in alternatives to development, not the interest of alternative development
• a fundamental rejection of the classical development paradigm
• an interest in local culture and local knowledge
• a critical perspective on established scientific discourses
• solidarity for pluralistic grassroots movements.

Regarding authors like Esteva, Escobar, Sachs, Rahnema, Rist and also Nandy, Appffel-Margin/Marglin, DuBois and Ferguson, to mention some of the mostly known authors of Post-Development theory, even if they differ in their theoretical perception and thought, they do have the mentioned marks in common. The theoretical tools in the discussion of postmodernism and Post-Development are Foucault and his discourse analysis. As the different perceptions of Foucault is not the topic of this paper, I want to cross-refer to Ziai and his analysis of the use of Foucault in Post-Development literature (Ziai 2007: 15ff).

Therefore, when speaking about Post-Development as a thought, keeping in mind the possible heterogeneity remains important.

2.2 Post-Development or the Postmodernisation of Development

Sven Engel calls post-development „Die Postmodernisierung der Entwicklungsthe­orie“² (Engel 2001: 63). To put Post-Development into a wider context concerning its philosophical and academic roots, I believe it is relevant to explain what postmodernism means. This explanation will be relevant to answer the criticism formulated on post-development in chapter 3 as well as to reflect on my own encounter with post-modernity and post-development.

Postmodernism can be seen as a critique of the modern age, based on the philosophical tradition which is based on the Enlightenment, the formation of a bourgeoisie and of a global capitalistic system.

The tradition of modern science, which is based on the believe in positivism and in objectivism says: the world consists of facts, which present the truth. As a critique of this claim of knowing and producing truth, and as a critique of the one big theory that leads to unification and continuities instead of dealing with discontinuities, contradictions and change, central to postmoderism is the respect of diversity, and the enhancement of subjective perceptions (Novy 2002: 22f).

According to Sven Engel, postmodernism can be understood a) as epistemological position and b) as a socio-cultural position. The first is a philosophical deconstruction of structuralism, known as poststructuralism (Foucalt, Derrida, Deleuze): „Modern thinking is superseded by the heterogeneity and fragmentation of postmodern thinking, which emphasizes different perspectives and differentiations and which questions rationality as a means to understanding“³ (Engel 2001: 50). Concerning the academic debate, Sven Engel refers to Post-Development as the „postmodernisation of development critique“ (Engel 2001: 65).

As we can see in chapter 3, the points of criticism formulated about Post-Development theory parallel with a critique towards postmodern thought in general. To look at Post-Development theory as one part of postmodern thought helps to understand its intentions and its background.

3. Critique of Post-Development

What are the points of criticism leveled on post-development theory? What are they based on? How can they be put into an order? What answers can be found? What remains after a critical approach towards development theory? What are the consequences in theory and what are the practical implications? How do I deal with ‚Development‘, ‚Post- Development‘ and ‚Post-Post Development‘? These questions cannot all be answered in this single paper. Nonetheless, I will now take a look at the various points of criticism that are being formulated on post-development by different authors. Afterwards I will try to find answers as well as their relevance and usefulness.

3.1 Points of Critique

Referring mainly to Tanya Jakinow (Jakinow 2008), and Aram Ziai (2007), the following points of critique formulated on Post-Development literature can be seen as core points of ‚the critique of the critique‘:

• Post-Development literature is highly influenced by Foucault and the method of discourse analysis: consequently, hegemony and power structures are being deconstructed. But what follows is the ignorance of how discourses can be transformed and resisted at the local level.
• The celebration of local knowledge and local resistance leads to a romatization and an unquestioned believe in tradition. ‚The Local‘ is set equally with authenticity and emancipation. But power structures are, especially in application of the work of Foucault, ever-present (Jakinow 2008: 313). Why then are grassroots movements guarantors for being inclusive, non-hierarchic and democratic? Local forms of oppression are overlooked (Engel 2001:140). Nederveen Pieterse comments: „while the shift towards cultural sensibilities that accompanies this perspective is a welcome move, the plea for ‚people‘s culture’, indigenous culture, local knowledge and culture, can lead if not to ethnochauvinism, to reification of both culture and locality or people. It also envices a one-dimensional view of globalization which is equated with homogenization“ (Nederveen Pieterse 1998: 366) .

Additionally, the exclusive validity of local knowledge precludes the view on multiple knowledge. In consequence…

• …the fundamental criticism on modernity and modern science implicates a rejection of the benefits: for example, the rights of the individual as well as the techniques of modern medicine are dismissed, although they brought health security and a higher life-expectancy (Ziai 2007: 102). Nederveen Pieterse even classifies Post- Development to belong „to the neo-traditionalist reaction to modernity“ (Nederveen Pieterse 1998: 366?). In his opinion, Post- Development is struck into a paradox: not showing any regard for progressive implications and dialectics of modernity but at the same time dealing with issues like anti-authoritarianism, democratization, emancipation, that all clearly arose out of the Enlightenment and the modern age, is highly inconsistent (ebd. 1998: 365).
• global structures of inequality are not taken into concern. Storey asks for example how local actors are supposed to find solutions at the global level (Storey 2000).
• in emphasizing cultural diversity and in rejecting universalism, Post- Development is criticized of being cultural-relativist. Therefore Post- Development stands in suspicion to accept oppression and violence and to be indifferent towards the violation of human rights.
• Post- Development is accused to feel an affinity for neoliberalism. According to Nederveen Pieterse, it is argued that both approaches reject state intervention and agree on state failure: Escobar is skeptical towards state planning, he questions social engineering and the faith in progress lead by the state. The neoliberal thinker Deepak Lal condemns state-centered development economies (Nedeveen Pieterse 1998: 364). Further, also advocates of a neoliberal capitalism favor a strong civil society and the liberty of all citizens to choose their possibilities.
• The final criticism is that Post-Development, instead of offering a solution, sticks on the classical development paradigm by being in position of permanent critique. According to Tanja Jakimow Post- Development is „in danger of having to constantly re-manoeuvre to retain its ‚alternative‘ status as elements of its critique are incorporated into the mainstream“ (Jakimow 2008: 313). There is no vision of how Post- Development can look like in practice: „Post- Development parallels postmodernism both in its acute institutions and in being directionless in the end, as a consequence of the refusal to, or lack of interest in translating critique into construction“ (Nederveen Pieterse: 361).

3.2 Finding Answers and Relevances

In the following part it is my intention to answer these criticisms in order to find out which comments can be relevant to a further adaption of Post- Development. I will not answer the critique in the same order as I presented them, but in an order that already shows their relevance and their usefulness.

1.) In my opinion, the most easiest point to answer is the one of drawing a parallel between post-development and neoliberalism. Nederveen Pieterse, who formulates this suspicion, already states in his article, that the reasons that lead to a skeptical attitude towards the state are totally different. Additionally, they both aim at a very contrasting world-view. While Post- Development emphasizes solidarity and the well-being of human beings in the first place, neoliberal thought focuses on the competition of individuals and the commercionalisation of community. Therefore, I do not think that both schools stand close to each other.

2.) Referring to Ziai, it cannot be assumed that Post- Development authors in general romanticize local communities (for example Escobar, Marglin, Nandy). Even Rahnema, whose perspective on vernacular societies definitively can be seen as romanticizing (we also discussed this in the seminar), does not favor a comeback or a return in a kind of ‚natural state‘ (Ziai 2007: 103). Marglin and Nandy speak up in favor of an encounter „of both Western and non-western cultures for a decolonization of the mind“ (Ziai 2007: 104). This argument leads to the comment on the rejection of modernity.

3.) Post-Development as a critique of mainstream development and alternative development stands in the tradition of poststructuralism and postmodernism. Therefore it definitively shows a skeptical attitude towards modern paradigms such as objectivism, postivism and the hierarchisation of culture and knowledge (as it is explained in chapter 2.2). Nonetheless, there is no complete rejection of all achievements of the modern age. Rist declares: „the idea, then, in spite of ‚development‘, is to organize and invent new ways of live – between modernization, with its sufferings but also some advantages, and a tradition from which people may derive inspiration while knowing it can never be revived“ (Rist 1997: 244 nach Ziai: 104). Following this point it becomes clear to be aware of the powerful mechanisms modern thinking brought, and to consider carefully the advantages that modern technique (for example the use of solar energy) can contribute. The same is valid for the dealings with globalization in its negative as well as positive effects.

4.) The suspicion of Post-Development thought being cultural relativist and consequently indifferent towards right violations, etc. is already more difficult to answer. Sven Engel states that without any normative categories, a positioning is impossible. His critical view on the postmodern development critique is based on a theoretical critique of Foucault’s dis­course analysis. He speaks of the dilemma of the equation of power and knowledge: „Because in postmodern development critique there is no subjective or objective criteria, that differs between power (illegitim) and knowledge (legitim) or between different forms of knowledge, to value anything a being negative, bad, evil, ugly, every negation is again only the expression of a certain power relation“⁴ (Engel 2001: 123).

Ziai finds a more constructive and reflective answer to this point of critique. The rejection of universalism is nonetheless based on the implicit right of self-determination. Human beings of one community should decide together about the rules of living together, without somebody external intervening in the name of universalist principles (Ziai 2007: 105). This does not mean cultural indifference, but includes the realization, that the western model of consumerism may not be generalized.

It is about the consensus that needs to be find and negotiated. In reference to Escobar, culture is never static, but a „transformed and transformational force“ (Ziai 2007: 104). Ziai puts it right in stating: „If culture in terms of constructivist manner is defined as the sum of (the changing) norms and practices of one specific group, deviating behavior is a sign, that some practices are no longer capable of belonging to the consensus“⁵ (Ziai 2007: 105).

5.) The problem of discourse analysis to focus on power structures and seeing individuals as vehicles of institutional power is articulated in Katherine McKinnons article about development projects in Northern Thailand. In her research she came to the conclusion, that a Foucauldian analysis limited what could be seen and said about professional subjects – and what could not be seen: „The focus, in other words, is on structure over agency – on the discourses that shape our becoming subjects, rather than how subjects might shape the discourses“ (McKinnon 2008: 287). In terms of a Foucauldian analysis, development workers could be seen as agents of governmentality, their role of acting like community advocates and their ambivalent role of realizing this role and being institutional agents at the same time, is not being observed. In reference to Judith Butler McKinnon states: „(…) we must presume that subjects are not only made of in the enactment of normative discourse through self-government, but that also, as Butler (1993) has argued, with each act of constituting ourselves as subjects, we not only repeat a normative model, but also alter and reinvent it“ (McKinnon 2008: 287). This argument leads me to the last point: does Post- Development has no vision? Is it only deconstructive?

6.) Nederveen Pieterse accuses Post-Development theory of only echoing „the ‚myth of development‘ rather than leaving it behind“ (Nederveen Pieterse 1998: 366). Post-Development authors would only deconstruct, but never try to find perspectives or visions for the future. Of course, as being at the first point a critique, the intention of Post- Development was and is to highlight the powerful mechanisms of development. If some authors do not offer a solution, this still does not discredit Post- Development: it is not the aim of post-development to offer a normative, new solution.

Nonetheless, with its solidarity for local movements, and its claim for authenticity it takes a stand.

Therefore, it is important to differ anti-development from Post-Development. Post-Development does not mean indifference towards poverty, neither should it stuck on using only Foucault. McKinnon offers a perspective in using both discourse analysis as well as Laclau’s and Mouffe’s concept of hegemony: „using the tools of post-modern and post-colonial analysis, the job of Post-Development then is to locate alternative ways of doing development that build upon critical histories of development, and seek new, post-development ways of doing development“ (McKinnon 2008: 289).

Deconstruction of so-called truths leads to new ways of seeing reality. In my opinion, therefor it definitely is constructive.

3.3 What Next?

Summing up, some points of the critique can contribute to a reflective, self-critique Post-Development. It is important that Post- Development thinkers are aware of their starting point. As I mentioned in chapter 2 it makes also sense to differentiate between the various authors that belong to Post-Development. If authoritarian and ethnocentric elements of development theory and politics should be avoided, it is not possible to define ‚development‘ as a normative model (as a state of ‘good society for example). Following the logic of postmoderism, these definition can only be made by affected persons in a democratic discussion (Ziai 2006).

Post-Development and Postmodernism consequently do not mean to be lost in diversity. Referring to Rapahel Daum, agency and its legitimation out of a postmodern perspective means in the first place to respect difference and diversity. From that a „small“ consensus can be worked out, which is not a new story of truth, but which can and should resume to the better aspects of modernity, its emancipatory force and human rights (Daum 2004).

The analysis of the criticism is important to proceed in the process of ‚decolonizing our minds‘ and searching for ‚new landscapes‘ Escobar speaks of.

One practical implication of Post- Development is the engagement of the local level. This proposition can be find in Sally Matthews article „Post-Development politics and practice“. In her opinion Post-Development „suggests that we ought to work to undermine the relations of power that cause injustice and oppression and that such work includes working within privileged societies.“ (Matthews year not known: 4). Practically spoken, she supports other Post-Development authors as Ferguson in their proposal for engaging in existing popular initiatives. Furthermore, and what seems to be the most relevant here, is her underlining of the work that can be done ‚at home‘: contributing to a counter-hegemonic discourse, by changing teaching schedules, in being engaged in transforming the public perspective, the public discourse. We „need to change the way in which the more privileged regard their own privilege and the poverty of others“ (Matthews 2008: 1045) is the central statement of Matthews.

4. My Personal Encounter With Post-Development

As in my role of a researcher I am confronted of different ways of seeing reality, it clearly does not leave me without influence. In discussing theory it always makes sense to be self-reflective. To be aware of my own starting-point, of my own experience that connect myself with theory does not only help to understand, but also helps to adapt theory in personal life.

The conclusion in chapter 3.3 leads to the questions that I ask myself: What now is its impact on me? What is my personal encounter with Post-Development?

Discussing post-development in the seminar seemed like a summary of my whole study of International Development. The question „What is Development?“ was raised in my first university session some years ago. Step by step ‚development‘ and my positive, world bettering view on it was disillusioned, the world – my world – deconstructed. I did not only feel that these deconstruction is destructive: it brought a new, profound way of thinking and a seeking for reality, that has many different facettes – negative and positive.

Though, the reading of different critical comments on Post-Development, reminded me on the criticism that I put on my study of International Development. Because in my study there can be found a lot of influence of Post-Development theory, the points of critique that are formulated on Post-Development theory parallel my thoughts towards my field of study. Feeling without perspective in this whole criticism, that made sense, but also involves the danger of hopelessness.

In any case, it is clear that change starts at the local level. Regarding Post-Development, supporting development practice, the support of local movements, is a way to adapt theory in practice. In my personal life, the local engagement in my environment became now more theoretically reasoned. Being aware of the privileges as well as of the contradictions in my society and articulating areas of tension leads to a questioning of normatives. To deconstruct existing elitist, racist, sexist, hetero-normative and anti-Semitic signs and self-reproducing strategies of accepting poverty can evoke debates and a change in minds as well as in practice.

Concluding, Post-Development means the deconstruction of so-called truths as well as the encouragement of engagement and reflexive action.

5. Bibliography

• Conrad, Simon; Randeira, Shalini (ed.) 2002: Jenseits des Eurozentrismus. Postkoloniale Perspektiven in den Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaf­ten. Frankfurt/New York, Campus Verlag.
• Daum, Raphael 2004: Postmoderne Vielheitspostulate bei Jean- Francois und Lyotard, Gianni Vattimo und anderen, online-text.
• Engel, Sven 2001: Vom Elend der Postmoderne in der Dritten Welt. Eine Kritik des Post- Development Ansatzes. Stuttgart. Ibidem.
• Escobar, Arturo 1992: Imagining a Post- Development Era? Critical Thought, Development and Social Movements. In: Social Text, No. 31/32, Third World and Post-Colonial Issues, pp. 20–56.
• Escobar, Arturo 2000: Beyond the Search for a Paradigm? Post- Development and beyond . In: Development (43), pp.11–14.
• Jakimow, Tanya 2008: Answering the critics: the potential and limitations of the knowledge agenda as a practical response to Post-Development critique. In: Progress in Development Studies 8, 4 pp. 311–23.
• Kiely, R. 1999: The Last Refuge of the Nobel Savage A Critical Assessment of Post- Development Theory, The European Journal of Development Research 11, pp.30 – 55.
• Kothari, Uma 2005: Authority and Expertise. The Professionalisation of International Development and the Ordering of Dissent. In? Editoral Borad of Antipode. Oxford, Malden. Blackwell Publishing.
• Nederveen Pieterse, Jan 1998: My Paradigm or ours? Alternative Development, Post-Development, Reflexive Development.
• Nederveen Pieterse, Jan 2000: After Post- Development. In: Third World Quaterly, Vol 21, No 2, pp 175–191.
• Matthews, Sally 2004: Post- Development theory and the question of alternatives: a view from Africa. In: Third World Quaterly, Vol 25, No. 2, pp. 373–384.
• Matthews, Sallly year not known: Post-Development politics and practice, online-text.
• McKinnon, Katherine 2008: Taking Post-Development theory to the field: Issues in development research, Northern Thailand. In: Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol 49, No. 3, pp. 281–293.
• McKinnon, Katherine 2008: Exploring Postdevelopment: Theory and Practice, Problems and Perspectives (Review). In: Geographical Research, 64 (4), pp 476–477.
• Nanda, M. 1999: Who needs Post- Development? Discourse of Difference, Green Revolution and Agrarian Populism in India, in: Journal of Development Societies, 15 (1), pp. 5 – 31.
• Novy, Andreas 2002: Entwicklung gestalten. Gesellschaftsverände­rung in der Einen Welt. Frankfurt a. M./Wien, Brandes & Apsel/Südwind.
• Rahnema, Majid; Bawtree, Victoria (ed.) 1997: The Post- Development Reader. London: Zed Books.
• Raple, John 2004: Development Studies and the Post- Development Critique. In: Progress in Development Studies 4,4, pp. 350–354.
• Sachs, Wolfgang 1992: The Development Dictionary. A guide to knowledges as power. New York, Zed Books.
• Saunders, Kriemild (ed.) 2004: Feminist Post- Development Thought. Rethinking Modernity, Post-Colonialism and Representation. London and New York, Zed Books.
• Simon, David 2006: Separated by common ground? Bringing (post)development and (post)colonialism together. In: Geographical Journal, Vol. 172, No.1, pp. 10–21.
• Ziai, Aram; Jabobeit, Cord 2003: Entwicklungsthe­orie: Wer ist Wer?. In: Zeitschrift für Entwicklung und Zusammenareit, online-text.
• Ziai, Aram 2006: Zwischen Global Governance und Post-Development. Entwicklungspolitik aus diskursanalytischer Perspektive. Münster, Westfälisches Dampfboot.

The author is a political science student at the University of Vienna.

The reason why I have chosen this particular topic is a personal one: as a young mother, I have decided not to have my baby immunized because I have not been sufficiently convinced of a vaccination importance for diseases which have been, at least in Europe, eliminated for decades. In addition, the pediatrics’ reactions to my choice left me more than stumbled. Not only were they shocked, but more so they began to treat me and my son in an unfriendly manner.

1. Introduction

The opposition against mandatory health care measures by governments is not new in the history of modern medicine. The reaction was especially strong at the beginning of the 20th century, as Jenner’s vaccine against smallpox was introduced in order to fight the “deadly human scourge”. (Blume 2006: 628, Kunze 2010: 8) Although governments refrained from further compulsory immunisation programs, the pressure in order to become immunised or to have one’s kids immunised as soon as possible is hight – the media and public opinion makers, such as doctors and politicians, and not least pharmacological companies spread the word of the positive effects of vaccines. (e.g. the campaign for the last „swine flu“ supposed pandemic, or, in Austria the yearly spring campaign for FSME vaccination)

The reason why I have chosen this particular topic is a personal one: as a young mother, I have decided not to have my baby immunised because I have not been sufficiently convinced of a vaccination importance for diseases which have been, at least in Europe, eliminated for decades. In addition, the paediatrics’ reactions to my choice left me more than stumbled. Not only were they shocked, but more so began to treat me and my son in an unfriendly manner. I could not get rid of the impression that there was an effort to make me feel guilty, and although I have tried, there was no way to obtain some kind of understanding or competent and unbiased consultation. (I have visited two paediatric practitioners). The obvious easiness and certainty with which I have been left uninformed about possible risks or an actual importance of the inoculation left me puzzled. Blume’s article on the Anti-vaccination movement in the UK depicts quite the same feelings and experiences of other mothers confronted with the power of the health personnel. (2006:637) Also Hobson-West’s (1999) research on the vaccination critical groups shows that other opponents of vaccination have made the same experiences and arrived at their conclusions in a similar way.

People who voice their concerns against the growing vaccinitis are called irrational, quixotic, mediaeval or simply uneducated, esoteric or religious fanatics. (cf. Walles 2009, Kunze 2010:6) They claim that many of the immunisations are unnecessary, have long-term negative effects and contain too many dangerous poisons, but foremost are a profitable income for the pharmacology industry. However, I do not aim at proving, if their claims are right or not. What I think is much more interesting in the context of the Seminar Post-Development Theory and Practice is the analysis of the power knowledge relations in medical science and discourse. Critique on the increasing industrialisation of modern medicine was first voiced by Michel Foucault who historically analysed the “Birth of the clinic” and the development of the medical gaze. Soon after, the medicalisation concept crystallised, partly based on Foucault’s fin­dings, which has to be understood as criticism of the growing engagement of medical competence with social and cultural phenomena, including birth, death and pain (Illich 1972, Conrad 1979).

My particular research question for the following paper thus is, whether Foucault’s the­oretical concepts of the power relations and Illich’s medi­calisation concept can be applied here in order to analyse the debate on infant vaccination as embedded in a wider health discourse. Methodologically I will focus on literature research, and review the statements made in the publications regarding infant vaccination.

The work is structured as follows: After a short insight in the history of vaccines, which is also embedded in the wider context of the genesis of modern medicine and patterns of vaccination acceptance, I will introduce the theoretical concepts of Foucault and Illich. Thereby I will first examine how the critique of medicalisation, i.e. turning human problems fit for medical competence goes together with the growing critique on the vaccination programs, mainly through Illich’s book “The nemesis of medicine” (2007). Further I will look at the mechanisms of power working in the discourses around vaccination. According to Foucault power is a productive force which works through discourse. I will show on the exemplary notions of citizenship, knowledge and trust how discourse on infant vaccination is constructed in order to support existing power relations in medicine.

2. Vaccination History

The term vaccination is derived from the Latin name of the particular animal virus varolae vaccine, otherwise cowpox, which became the first scientifically acknowledged serum for immunisation against smallpox at the beginning of the 19th century.

For a long time, Edward Jenner’s path breaking publication An Inquiry on the Effects and Causes of the Variolae Vaccine from 1798 was seen as the hallmark of the modern form of health prevention. What was new and revolutionary about Jenner’s “invention”, however, was first and foremost the scientific approach in relation to infection prophylaxis. Jenner was the first to work with methods of verification and falsification on a broad and documented scale and subsequently made his findings available for the wider public. (Plotkin 1994:2) In fact, immunisation against smallpox after infectious contact with the cowpox germ was a well known folk wisdom in Wales for some time before Jenner. (Minna Stern/Markel 2005:612) Apart from dairymaids, who were often immunised in this way by virtue of their work, there is one known case of deliberate infection with cowpox for purpose of smallpox prophylaxis by a welsh cattle breeder, Benjamin Jesty some decades before Jenner’s publi­cation. (Baily 1899:221, Plotkin 1994:2)

Different techniques of immunisation have been known and practised across cultures and geographical areas for centuries. (Bhattacharya/Brim­nes 2009:3,4, Minna Stern/Markel 2005:612) Besides the already mentioned method used by the Welsh dairymaids, the practice of variolisation was introduced in Britain in around 1730, several decades before Jenners breakthrough. It was brought back by Lady Mary Wortly Montague after her stay in the Ottoman Empire, where she and her family have been successfully inoculated as well. (Baily 1899:219. Plotkin 1994:2) Variolisation, also called inoculation, is a method of inserting the human smallpox virus into scraped skin. The virus is collected from powdered smallpox crusts, preferably from an already inoculated person. (Apffel Marglin 1990:104, Minsky 2009:170) Records of the employment of variolisation techniques in Asia and Africa go back to the 7th century (e.g. using the snake-poison as anti-toxin immunisation), to the 10th century when varoliation was used in China (Plotkin/Plotkin 1994:1) and to the 16th century, when inoculation has become a common praxis among peasants in India, Punjab (Apffel Marglin 1990:104, Bhattacharya/Brim­nes 2009:3, 4, Minsky 2009:169). Together with the fact that the practices of smallpox and other infectious disease prophylaxis varied largely across time and space, and features such as the hand to hand method, the use of human and animal, or dried and fresh lymph have been known long before vaccination was deployed with governmental power, supports the thesis that varioliation was a direct forerunner model to vaccination. (Minsky ibid.) Nevertheless, the view of a linear and one-way communication of knowledge has long been represented by medical historians when dealing with smallpox eradication (Bhattacharya/Brim­nes 2009:14, for e.g. vis Mark/Rigau-Pérez 2009:84, Baily 1899)

However, Jenner’s work laid ground for what is known today as the science of vaccinology and immunology (Hilleman 1999, Wolfe/Sharp 2002:430). Soon afterwards, in 1875, Louis Pasteur made the second step when he sought to replace the “person-to-person” vaccination with a safer method and simultaneously adopted what is today known as bacteriology. The vaccines against cholera, plague and anthrax are attributed to him in the same way as is the technique of growing organisms in pure culture solely for the production of vaccines. (Plotkin 1994:2,3) Other giants of the ending 19th century were Robert Koch and Emil von Behring who discovered the antitoxins to tetanus, tuberculosis and diphtheria bacilli, and Paul Ehrlich whose technique for the development of synthetic drugs is substantial until today (ibid 1438). The subsequent years were full of optimism and belief in progress. However, before the WWI those were dashed by the great influenza pandemic. (Galamos 1999:8) and a stagnation in medical progress followed, until the decade of WWII, when wartime research and military medicine again led to important findings in virology. From the 1950s on the rate of new findings become closely bound to financial investment and institutional concern in this field, which in that time were most pronounced in the USA, leading to what became known as the “golden age of vaccine development” (Plotkin1994:6, Galamos, ibid) A fact which clearly reflects the socio-political power of the health discourse. Polio, measles, rubella, varicella and encephalitis all became opposable diseases before 1970, and soon HAV (hepatitis A), influenza, meningococcal, pneumococcal as well as HBV followed. The last however has experienced some difficulties in the licensure because it was made from derivatives of human blood at the time when the HIV epidemic arrived. A fact which actually animated the genetic production of DNA vaccine by the end of the 1980s. (Plotkin 1994:6, 7)

3. Medicalisation

From the 1970s on, medicalisation increasingly became the object of scrutiny in critical social sciences. Ivan Illich and other adherents of the medicalisation concept aimed primarily at challenging the discursive practice of subsequently turning social and cultural aspects of human life into medical problems. (Illich 1975, Conrad 1992:210, 211) One objective of medicalisation critique is to question medicine as an instrument of social control. (Conrad/Schneider 1995:212) Another point, as set up by Illich, is based on the critique of modern science and society as built upon the belief of infinite progress and development. In the realm of medicine this aims at the abolishment of pain and continual improvement of human health condition, mainly through drugs and technical inventions. (Illich 1975:30, Rose 2007:701, Foucault 1988:52) In spite of the quantity of approvals and compliments to the achievement of medical science (cf Conrad 1992, Rose 2007), Illich suggests that most of medical therapies are in fact ineffective and that the public unfoundedly takes up an optimistic position towards its technical and scientific accomplishments. (Illich 1975:32, 58) Illich designates three modes in which medicine is iatrogenetic, i.e. generates illness. The social iatrogenesis fosters the patient character and the dependence on medical interventions at the side of a growing part of the population, not only in times of illness but also in times of health. This happens mainly through the power of medical institutions to define health and the display of their ability of early detection of health risks. Thus increasingly more people seek medical support even if they feel healthy. In addition, the authority of medicine to prescribe withdrawal from work, and thus officially ascertain the status of health or discomfort, compel its integration in society, especially in cases in which a patient would be able to recover without seeing the doctor. As structural iatrogenesis medicine promotes the establishment of the ideal of a perfect health, an ideal which naturally does not exists as such. The modern medicine denies the necessity of the human being to deal with pain, disease and death and promises their extinction instead. In reaction the human ability to deal with physical discomfort and its self-healing forces weaken over time, and the created desire for the better health leads to increasing financial expenditure and pressure for medical progress. As the delivery of an eternal health life fails, the efforts lead to longevity with sub-lateral diseases, which in turn makes high financial input necessary in order to keep those sub-laterally ill patients alive. The clinical iatrogenesis refers to bodily harm caused through a medical treatment. (Illich 1975: 25, 26, 95)

Nevertheless, such misperformance is hardly ever mentioned, in fact is often dispersed as arbitrary. Furthermore, the authoritarian manner of physicians often leads to obedience and fear of scrutiny on the side of patients. Such an attitude, common in our expert led service economy, actually bears the danger of disabling and incapacitation of the knowledge and skills of large parts of the population. In order to enable a real non-hierarchical and emancipated popular authority, Illich suggests a necessity to maintain a doubtful and dismissive position towards expert knowledge. (Illich 1978:30) Such is the view of the vaccination critiques, which were already successful in forcing the medical institutions to review their pronouncements. So, the efficacy of physicians is, according to Illich, an illusion. Concerning epidemics and their extinction, he continues, it was not for the vaccines but simply for changed living circumstances and foremost for better nutrition which improved the resistance of the human organism, that epidemics disappeared or were substantially weakened. Illich shows that most of the epidemics were diminished before vaccination could be active. Illich further proves with the example of aggregated mortality rates of children that the casualty on grounds of infection with tuberculosis, cholera or typhus sank by 90% before the introduction of relevant vaccines or antibiotics. (Illich 1975:12, 13) The form of power in Illich however, differs from that of Foucault. The power as Illich defined it is repressive and consists of legal control and guarantee, especially in respect to production and satisfaction of needs. (Illich 1978:38)

“Because of this monopoly position, which empowers the tyrannical expert guilds to forbid you to shop elsewhere, or to distil your own schnaps, they seem, at the first glance, to equal the lexical definition of a mafia. But the gangsters make profit out of the human needs by controlling the supply of adequate goods. Today, teachers, physicians and social workers can do, what earlier only priests and judges were able to – namely to create, out of their own legal integrity, needs which only they are enabled to satisfy.” (Illich 1978: 38)

Opposed to this is Foucault’s per­ception of the interaction between power and supply of needs. The fundamental need, created in the 18th century by the medical science was health, and it is through the successful addressing of this need that power relations could densify into strategies of power, which finally led to a constitution of the dominant discourse, for that matter, the health discourse. (Foucault 1980:142)

Foucault argues that it was the peculiar way of dealing with and looking at diseases, in Foucault’s words the medical gaze (Foucault 1988), which finally led to medicalisation and social control through medicine. Particularly, Foucault’s work provides a useful analytic tool when looking at the status of infant vaccination today. The Birth of the Clinic (1988) as well as The Politics of Health in the 18th Century (1980) both offer a study of how certain power – knowledge relations support a specific regime of health politics.

4. Power / Knowledge and disposition of health

Indeed, the critique of medicalisation is virtually built upon the assumptions of social control, which Foucault began to analyse with his first monograph Histoire a la folie a l’age classique in 1961. (cf. Illich 1975:115) Concerning health and medicine, Foucault noted, the exertion of control is not as easy to detect as in psychiatry, however, there also is a discourse equally dominated by epistemological truths, which are an outcome of power knowledge relations. (1980:109)

Medicalisation and the obsession with health are as much an outcome of 18th century events as is medical science and the institution of hospital. In his historical analysis Foucault shows, how modern medicine was based on the control over epidemics which made necessary a whole new structure of medico-administrative institutions. This included the practice of medical staff, organs for record and control of the social body’s biological set up as well as medical education and acculturation of the population. (1988: 40–42) According to Foucault for this purpose a reorganisation of medicine in several ways was necessary. First and foremost, through scientification expertise of medical knowledge, previously available to and exercised by a number of professions, such as healers, herbalists or midwifes or by other lay or religious institutions was in a way monopolised. The medical gaze, a concept central to Foucault’s ana­lysis, describes how the visibility, as well as the skill of disclosure, of parts of human body played a dominant role in the constitution of this knowledge. The scientific methods of measuring, ranking and classification as well as the upcoming mode of truths production¹ in positivism (Foucault 1988:10, 27) allowed doctors to assume power over definition of the illnesses and the right methods of cure. As Conrad notes medicine profited also from the overall social context of the 18th century, such as a growing “faith in science” and the belief in “individual and technological solutions” (Conrad 1992:213) The new hospitals replaced the old form of asylum for the sick and the poor, and existed from then on only as places of medical treatment. There too, diseases were classified and sorted according to their assumed origin or effect. Albeit the vision of those engaged in the construction of the modern medicine was that once the inequality and injustice of corrupt governments were redressed (it was a revolutionary project) diseases would disappear and hospitals would finally become obsolete. (1988:51) This however, proved rather illusionary.

In addition to the scientification of medicine, health became central in bio-politics² in such a way that it’s maintenance became a moral duty for the society and was inscribed in the notion of citizenship (which was often employed by pro- and opponents of vaccination, see further below), and in further consequence an essential objective for political power. (1980:169,170). Foucault identifies therein one of the major functions of power – “the disposition of society as a milieu of health, physical well-being and optimal longevity” (1980: ibid)

According to Foucault, for power to move top down, there also has to be at least some movement from bottom to the top, i.e. power has to be productive. In a very simplified example of the modern medicine, power from above would mean to make the visit to the doctor in cases of illness compulsory. But then, people would also start to see the doctor voluntarily because there has been buzz about modern medicine’s wonders in press and word-of-mouth and they would like to be modern. Some would also go because the doctor’s attest is the only way to have money back from the insurance. Others would go because they want to be sure everything is al right even if they suffer no discomfort. Finally, a discourse would be established which restricts thinking and acting beyond its boundaries, thus leaving no other option than to accept that being healthy is the most desirable thing and that it is only through the expertise of the physicians that he or she can achieve it. Thus these power relations are most effective if they succeed to deploy a discourse in which prime principle of health and the best possible physical well-being is as broad and inclusive as possible. That means, that not only increasingly more human beings but also more areas of human life become medicalised, and that only designated experts are able to provide this medical attention³.

In order to allow the power to work from below and in a productive manner, as envisaged by Foucault, it was thus necessary to make health a condition of personal endeavour. The demographic boom and its problems in political and economic terms, as well as the zeitgeist of capitalism and its need for productive labour, led to what could be called privatisation of health. The aim was to set “the able-bodied poor to work and transform them into a useful labour force, but it [was] also to assure the self-financing by the poor themselves of the cost of their sickness and […] incapacitation […]” (Foucault 1980:169) The establishment of the clinic for purposes of healing only led to the elimination of the category “the sick poor” which, as a group, had socially defined claims to welfare, such as the asylum. Consequently, from then on, those who withdrew from arbitrarily, and were not under medical treatment at the same time, were labelled and made financially self-dependent. (ibid 168)

For reasons of further optimisation of bio-politics the burgeoning notion of health implicated also a new purpose for the family, away from an organisational model towards a unit of population regulations. Foucault suggests that all following imaginations of family as a place of care, protection and cleanliness go back to this new set of rules imposed on the family. (1980:173) Consequently this newly defined milieu is used as object of moralising and normalising interventions, which ceased to serve the upbringing and development of the happy and healthy human being but primarily aim at guaranteeing a certain population regime. Thus, family as we know it today helps to provide disciplined and healthy (i.e. physically functioning) individuals which constitute a safe, ordered and economically productive society. (Simons 2004: 169)

5. Vaccine Critical and Vaccine Friendly groups

Since the triumphant acceptance of vaccination as a new means of health prevention, it became a common practice to implement state-led and supervised immunisation programs which, depending on the degree of democratisation, could be more or less stringent. (Streefland et al 1999:1707) However, simultaneously with these programs emerged resistance to them. In Britain, the first Vaccination Act in 1840 only outlawed varioliation, whereas the following Acts of 1853 and 1867 made vaccination compulsory for infants and for children and made omitting parents liable to court sentences. (Wolfe/Sharp 2000:430) After complaints and pressure of anti-vaccination groups, however, the Vaccination Act of 1898 introduced the clause of “conscientious objector” to the English law, which allowed concerned parents to withdraw from the mandatory vaccination program. (Guillon et. al. 2008:402) Not only in England opposition against the extension of government authority over their bodies increased among civilians. In Stockholm anti-vaccination ideas become very popular around 1872, and in the USA the Anti-Vaccination Society was founded a little later. (Wolfe/Sharp 2000:431, Blume 2006:629) Remarkably, in Britain a coalition across class boundaries could be established in order to fight vaccination. Durbach describes how populist rhetoric of a common enemy, the ruling class, was determining for such an alliance. (Durbach 2005:69) Nevertheless, bourgeois resistance was inspired through libertarian concerns of the relationship between the state and the individual, and was thus more related to party politic. The working class instead perceived much more the physical effects of the Vaccination Acts as any middle-class member, and thus put their body at the centre of their fight against vaccination. (Hobson-West 2007:201, Durbach 2005:85,92) The concept of citizenship, for instance, was crucial in the controversy and all involved parties employed it to support their arguments. Whereas its proponents proclaimed vaccination as a civic duty in order to protect the whole of the society, its opponents postulated good citizenship as protecting the bodies against assault, which a compulsory vaccination would be. (Durbach 2005:85, Blume 2006:629)

There seems to be some discontinuity in the writing about vaccination resistance in the first half of the 20th century, a period relatively under-represented in the literature. (Hobson-West 2007:201, Wolfe/Sharpe 431, Blume 2006:629) Steefland et. al. mention resistance against the WHO smallpox eradication campaign in the 1970s, albeit on individual level only. (Streefland et. al. 1999:1710) As Hobson-West notes, there is a notable revival of writing about organised and collective resistance from the 1990s on, where vaccination opponents are largely portrayed as dubious and as a serious risk to the society. (Hobson-West 2007:201) Mostly, such resistance refers to the MMR vaccination and associated discomfort about the vaccine additive thimerosal, which was suspected of causing autism and autoimmune diseases. (e.g. Amanna/Slifka 2005:308) However, not every opponent to vaccination actually is a member of an organised anti-vaccination group. In a cross-country study about immunisation acceptance Streefland et. al. (1999:1709) classify present patterns of attitude towards vaccination as ranging from acceptance, over social demand to non-acceptance. The latter demonstrates itself on the individual level as refusal and on the collective level as resistance. Whereas the reasons for refusal can be on the demand side (e.g. personal beliefs) as well as on the supply side (bad experiences with staff), the reasons for resistance are mainly on the demand side, and those adherents are often well organised and connected through communication campaigns. (Streefland et. al. 1999:1710)

There is naturally a clear divide between the opponents and proponents of vaccination, and their arguments are quite constant and uniform over time, however, both camps claim to have the real knowledge and are more trustworthy and both employ the notion of citizenship for their interest. Furthermore, better state of health is a common aim for both groups which is why it can be stated, that both engage in the same strategy of power.

6. Infant Vaccination in the health discourse

Finally, in this section, I would like to examine the concepts constituting the health discourse. Against the background of Foucault’s analysis of power, the strategy of bio-politics uses the health discourse to consolidate dominion over the social body, one of the components, or tactics, in the discourse are the vaccination programs. As mentioned earlier, the family is constructed as a point of intersection between the general objective of bio-power to govern the social body and the social body itself. This happens mainly through the imposition of its new major task, the care and protection of its offspring which implies a sort of moral obligation to participate in medical care. (Foucault 1980:174)

I would like to recall Foucault’s sug­gestion for the understanding of the mechanisms of power. According to these, power relations encompass the whole social body, so that all relations are interwoven with power relations and it is at the joining of these relations where dominion emerges. Also, inseparable from these power relations is their resistance. Foucault’s concept conveys that resistance does not come about from the outside, but is inherent in the power relations it is opposed to. (Foucault 1980:142) In order to understand Foucault’s power analysis it is essential to separate power from some interest, a group of people or a class. The procedures of power, which react to an arising need, a kind of necessity, and the beneficiary of its outcomes, have a somehow reciprocal relation. (ibid 203, 205)

In this light I would like to examine the strategies employed by advocates and opponents of vaccination, which astonishingly (or not) are more or less the same. Exemplary I have chosen the notion of citizenship, trust (and related truth) and knowledge. As noted earlier, the notion of citizenship is pivotal to the modern health discourse since its beginnings. (cf. Durbach 2005). The participation in preventive health measures and especially immunisation programs often becomes interpreted as a duty, rather than right of citizenship by vaccination supporters. As one US study has shown, the interest of maintaining a healthy society is one of major motivations behind having one’s child inoculated (Wu et.al. 2008:766) However, in general sanctions for withdrawal, be it imprisonment in earlier times, or e.g. non-admission to schools and colleges today, also implicitly invoke the notion that vaccination is a good citizen’s duty. (Dew 1999:393) Opposed to this is the invocation of the rights of citizenship to decide whether or not being, or have one’s infant, immunised by objectors of inoculation. In a profound analysis of what he calls Vaccination Critical groups, Hobson-West finds that many of them argue the duty of a good citizen is to make an informed decision about vaccination. (Hobson-West 2007:208) The notion of citizenship and its implication of rights and duties are not questioned by those opposed to vaccinations. To the contrary, their understanding of real citizenship implies emancipation and empowerment strategies (ibid.) Thus, the concept of citizenship can be understood as a strategy of power in Foucault’s sense, as it is not only employed in order to invoice dominion, but it is also used from below, in order to obtain authority over its redefinition.⁴

Another constantly recurring theme in the social science literature on vaccination is the conception of trust. (cf. Hobson-West 2007, Guillon et al 2008, Wu et.al. 2008) In this context, trust could be interpreted as faith, which, according to Misztal (1996, in Hobson-West 1999:207), expresses confidence in another person on grounds of their specific knowledge or skills, but also within social networks or family relations. The latter is referred to as a “leap of faith” and largely influences the decision making on side of the vaccination opponents, who often perceived trust towards medical personnel negatively as a risk by itself (Brownlie and Howson 2005, in Hobson West ibid.). While on the side of the opponents trust is thematised in context of individual risk management, obtained knowledge and anxiety about the right judgement (pro or contra the vaccination), the expert understanding of risk is rather concerned with the population level and “herd immunity” (ibid 199) Thus trust is an important mechanism in the strategies of bio-governance. In order to overcome distrust, government and health institutions often decided to embark on information campaigns and strategies to provide knowledge about vaccines. For example, one study of vaccination attitudes in the USA revealed that there is lack of knowledge about vaccines among post-partum mothers which supported issues of distrust and scepticism towards vaccination. The US Preventive Health Service Expert Panel thus recommended to offer “education to support and promote healthy behaviours, provide general knowledge about pregnancy and parenting” at prenatal visits, whereby “knowledge about parenting” included information about vaccination. (Wu et.al. 2008:771) Distrust towards the government and health workers and institutions might however be supported through the coercive nature of immunisation programs.

Closely interrelated with trust is the notion of knowledge which also plays a central role in the debate over vaccines. Many lay person opponents to vaccination have received their information through their own research and from a variety of sources which might not necessarily be acknowledged by the scientific community. Such popular, or lay epidemiology is often pictured as unreliable and inaccurate, among others because it includes “personal experience and personal (i. e. non-scientific) information gathering” (Guillon et.al. 2008:403). Knowledge, in terms of education and study, is also crucial in Hobson-West’s study of the Vaccine Critical groups as this is the way they construct themselves other to the vaccination friendly population. Their stress on being “free thinkers” enables them to empowerment from the expert dominated discourse. The author however problematises the way in which knowledge and information becomes central to the notion of morality in childrearing which may put those who are not able to obtain the necessary expertise under pressure (Hobson-West 1999:211,212). Such strategies could be described with Foucault as the “capillarity from below to above” (Foucault 1980:201) insofar as the opponents of vaccination try to challenge the dominant strategy in this discourse which is to employ expert knowledge, but yet do so at their own game and thus support the power knowledge relations at work here. Knowledge is also central to those who accentuate the vaccination friendly positions. In their case study of an anti-vaccination spokespeople, Leask and McIntyre analyse the arguments employed in the vaccination discussion. It is clear that for both, the researcher as well as the researched, scientific methods play a central role in generation of knowledge. While the vaccination opponent uses her degree in natural science to reinforce credibility and presents material from medical literature to support her arguments, the authors claim that her findings lack support and can easily be refuted. Here however, it is the dominant power relations which claim ownership of knowledge and the right epistemology.

7. Conclusion

In the present paper I tried to reconstruct the workings of power and knowledge in the health discourse, using the example of infant vaccination. I have shown that albeit apparently outside agents, the vaccination opponents actually participate on the construction of the health discourse. In order to conceive the impact vaccination had on the health discourse in its whole bearing, I have started my work with a review of the history of vaccination, and in which ways it becomes what it is today – the most favourite means of health prevention within the medical industry. Albeit vaccination critiques and medicalisation theorists have long been pointing out that this might not be entirely correct little has changed on this perception, and I have provided a short insight on the concept of medicalisation as well.

I have further employed Foucault’s power relation analysis which conveys that in order for grant power strategies to work, they are mutually dependent on other relations, not only power relations. In addition, apparent relations of resistance, such as the vaccination critical actors, operate within the dominant health discourse. According to Foucault, there is no power relation outside the overarching, discourse creating power relations. (Foucault 1980:142) This becomes clear in the fact, that the main objective of vaccination opponents for their children is perfect health as well. This is supported by the more or less explicitly indicated affection for alternative lifestyles. (Hobson-West 1999: 211, Guillon et al. 2008) and again supports Foucault’s thesis after which family was purposely constructed as a place of health and care provision, in order to reduce public cost. (Foucault 1980:178) Nevertheless those parents who refuse to immunise their offspring perceive themselves as outside the prevalent discourse. Here, further research could help to shed more light onto the ways in which such resistance supports or alters the health discourse, or if it has any effect at all. In order to show how the pros and the cons of vaccination work along the same lines, I have chosen the themes prevalent in the literature, namely the concept of citizenship, trust and knowledge. All three concepts have shown that the concerns of both camps are surprisingly similar. So do both camps claim to be a better citizenship, either because being immunised and thus guarantee the herd immunity or not being inoculated and thus determine their own rights. With regard to trust, the result is that there is crisis in confidence towards the expert; on the other hand, the proponents of vaccination do not really trust either, as they rely on statistical results. (cf. Hobson-West 1999: 200) Also central to the arguments around vaccination is the question of knowledge, which again is instrumentalised from both sides. One side claims that only medical experts or the like can really know about vaccination, other praises knowledge and self-education as the only, or at least the most important, way of really knowing.

Bibliography:

• Amanna, Ian / Slifka Mark K. (2005) Public Fear of Vaccination: Separating Facts from Fiction. In: Viral Immunology, Vol 18, Number 2, pp 307 – 315.
• Apffel Marglin, Frederique (1990) Smallpox in two systems of knowledge. In: Apfel Marglin, F. – Marglin, S. A. (eds) Dominating Knowledge. Development, culture and resistance. Oxford, Clarendon Press. pp. 102 – 144.
• Baily, William (1899) History of Vaccination Public Health Papers and Reports Vol. 25, pp 219–222.
• Blume, Stuart (2006) Anti-vaccination movements and their interpretaions. In: Social Science & Medicine 62/2006, pp 628–642.
• Bhattacharya, Sanyoj / Brimnes, Niels (2009) Introduction: Simultaneously Global and Local: Reassesing Smallpox Vaccination and Its Spread, 1789 – 1900. In: Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Volume 83, No 1, Spring 2009, pp. 1–16.
• Conrad, Peter (1992) Medicalisation and Social Control. In: Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 18, pp 209–32.
• Conrad, Peter / Schneider, Joseph W. (1999) Medicine as an institution of social control In: Herman, Nancy J. (ed) Deviance: A symbolic interactionist approach. General Hall, Lanham.
• Dew, Kevin (1999) Epidemics, Panic and Power: Representations of Measles and Measles Vaccines In: Health, Vol. 3, pp 379 – 398
• Dick-Read, Grantly (1949) Childbirth without Fear, Pollinger in Print, London.
• DuBois, Mark (1991) The Governance of the Third World: A Foucauldian Perspective on Power Relations in Development, Alternatives, Vol. 16, pp 1 – 30.
• Durbach, Nadja (2005) Bodily Matters: the anti-vaccination movement in England 1853 – 1907. Duke University Press, USA.
• Foucault, Michel (1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and other Writings 1972 – 1977. Gordon, Colin (ed.) Pantheon Books, New York.
• Foucault, Michel (1988) Die Geburt der Klinik. Eine Archäologie des ärztlichen Blicks. Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt am Main.
• Frawley, David / Ranade, Subhash (2001) Ayurveda. Nature’s Medicine. Lotus Press, Wisconsin.
• Galambos, Louis (1999) A century of innovation in vaccines. In: Vaccine Vol. 17, pp 7 – 10.
• Gullion, Jessica et. al. (2008) Deciding to Opt Out of Childhood Vaccination Mandates Populations at risk across the lifespan: empirical studies. Public Health Nursing Vol. 25 No. 5, pp. 401–408.
• Hilleman, Maurice, R (2000) Vaccine in Historic Evolution and Perspective: a narrative of vaccine discoveries. In: Vaccine, Vol. 18, pp 1436 –1447.
• Hobson-West, Pru (2007) Organised resistance to childhood vaccination in the UK In: Sociology of Health & Illness Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 198–215.
• Illich, Ivan (1975) Die Enteigung der Gesundheit. Medical Nemesis Rohwolt Verlag, Reinbeck bei Hamburg.
• Illich, Ivan (1978) Fortschrittsmythen Rohwolt Verlag, Reinbeck bei Hamburg.
• Kunze, Michael (2010) Das Österreichische Impfsystem und seine Finanzierung. Lösungsvorschläge für eine alternative Finanzierungsform. May 2010, online-text.
• Leask, Julie / McIntyre Peter (2003) Public opponents of vaccination: a case study Vaccine Vol. 21, pp 4700–4703.
• Mark, Catherine / Rigau-Pérez Jose G. (2009) The World’s First Immunization Campaign: The Spanish Small Pox Vaccine Expedition, 1803 –1830. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Volume 83, No 1, spring 2009, pp. 63–94.
• Minna Stern, Alexandra / Mark, Howard (2005) The History of Vaccines and Immunization: Familiar Patterns, New Challenges. In: History Affairs, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp 611 – 621.
• Minsky, Lauren (2009) Pusuing Protection from Diseas: The making of Smallpox Prophylactic Practice in Colonial Punjab. In: Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Volume 83, No 1, spring 2009, pp. 164 – 190.
• Plotkin, Stanley. A (Hg) (1994) Vaccines Philadelphia W.B. Saunders Company, 2nd edition.
• Rose, Nikolas (2007) Beyond Medicalisation Lancet, Vol. 369, pp700–01.
• Simons, Maartens (2004) Lernen, Leben und Investieren: Anmerkungen zur Biopolitik. In: Ricken, Norbert / Rieger-Ladich, Markus (eds) Michel Foucault: Pädagogische Lektüren. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaf­ten, Wiesbaden.
• Streefand Pieter et al. (1999) Patterns of Vaccination Acceptance In: Social Science & Medicine, Vol. 49, pp 1705 – 1716.
• Smith, Alan et al. (2007) Tracking Mothers’ Attitudes to MMR immunisation 1996 – 2006. In: Vaccine, Vol. 25, pp. 3996 – 4002.
• Wallace, Amy (2009) An Epidemic of Fear: How Pannicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All. 19. 10. 2009, online-text.
• Wolf, Robert M / Sharpe Lisa K. (2002) Anti-Vaccionists past and Present. BMJ 325, pp 430 – 432.
• Wu, Ann Chen et.al. (2008) Postpartum Mothers’ Attitudes, Knowledge, and Trust Regarding Vaccination Matern Child Health Vol. 12, pp 766–773.

Figure 1

The author is a political science student at the University of Vienna.

Many aspects of post-development thinking can be found in the Zapatist movement; especially their way of thinking about the economy outside of standard capitalist realms and the emphasis they put on the preservation of their culture. Mixing indigenous beliefs and knowledge with modern achievements (like in the health sector) is what Escobar had in mind when he wrote about hybrid cultures.

1. Introduction

The Zapatist movement in the South of Mexico is one of the most famous social movements in the world. They fight against oppressive policies from the Mexican state, against economic exploitation, the eradication of their culture and for a more self-determined life. They criticize neoliberalism and the advancing westernization and homogenisation of the world. Claiming that the Mexican state has done nothing but exploit the indigenous population for the last 500 years, they demand an end to this repression and respect for their way of life. Although the Zapatistas have not (yet) achieved their aim of gaining the official status as an autonomous region within the Mexican state, they have managed to create new ways of living, thinking and interacting.

Post development theory is a school of thought that criticises development aid, unreflected modernisation, neoliberalism, the reign of commerce and capital and the construction of a biased world that divides people, countries and culture into categories according to Western standards. Post development writers envision a world of cultural differences and self-determined people that create own and new ways of organising societies according to people´s self-defined needs.

In this paper, I will try to examine if the society the Zapatistas have created is the sort of society post development writers imagine. In order to do so, I will describe in Chapter 2 the origins of the Zapatist movement which are rooted in an oppressive state that has been pushing (neoliberal) reforms against its own people. Chapter 3 offers an explanation of why post development thinking rejects development and an illustration of the three components (politics, knowledge, economy) that in the eyes of theorists need to be claimed back by the people in order to create a new society. In Chapter 4, I will look at aspects of Zapatist society structures, examine their principles and put them in relation to post development thinking to see if they overlap.

It has to be noted that the Zapatist movement and its organisation structures are very complex. It would go beyond the scope of this paper to examine all parts of the movement. The ones I picked out seemed to me the most conforming with post development. Aspects of the armed struggle, the governments efforts to divide the movement, international solidarity, the autonomous finance, banking and juridical system, the role of NGOs and the church are largely left out of this paper.

2. Chiapas and the Zapatist Movement

Chiapas is Mexico´s most Southern federal state, bordering Guatemala. It is a state rich in natural resources and fertile land. About 4 million people, of which one quarter is of indigenous decent, live in Chiapas. It is one of the poorest states in Mexico. 25% of all households lack direct water supply, about the same percentage of people don´t have access to the medical system. 71% of the indigenous population is malnourished, which is a common cause of death. Around ¼ of the male and ½ of the female indigenous population are illiterate, the highest ratio in all of Mexico. (cf. Moser 2009:53) Although Chiapas produces 10% of Mexico´s overall supply, 275.000 of chiapanese people still have no access to the electricity network and those who do have been faced with skyrocketing prices in the last decade (cf. Kerkeling 2009).

Chiapas is also home of one of the most known and acclaimed social movements world wide. The Zapatist uprising led by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) on New Year´s Day of 1994, the same day the Northern American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) entered into force, caused a stir way beyond the Mexican borders. The inital war between the EZLN and the Mexican military lasted only 12 days but to this day, the Zapatist struggle for indigenous autonomy over their land and resources and a more peaceful and dignified life continues. The Zapatistas have achieved to build autonomous education and health care systems and created ways of directing their economy further away from dependency on the international market. Their infamous spokesperson is Subcomandante Marcos who himself is not of Indian decent. He calls himself Subcomandante because the main commander of the movement are the people. The Zapatistas are organised as a grassroots democracy and promote indigenous knowledge and forms of organising community life. Their support is mainly based on the civil society within the Chiapas Region, but can also be found in urban Mexico. Solidarity groups around the world have sprung up since 1994 to support the Zapatist struggle from abroad.

It is remarkable that despite continuous threads and repression from the government and attacks by the military and state- and enterprise-sponsored paramilitary groups, the Zapatist movement has survived until today.

In order to comprehend the Zapatist rebellion, one has to look at Mexican history to understand the reasons for the movement.

2.1 Outline of Mexico´s History

Mexico was colonized by Spain in the 16th century. For a long time the country had the sole purpose of providing cheap raw materials, especially silver, for the European market. The Indian population was widely neglected by the Spanish rulers and used as a cheap labor force to provide for European needs. Mexico became independent in 1810 but remained in the hands of a European-educated and European-oriented elite that would do very little for the indigenous Mexican population. Most of Mexico´s land was owned by great land owners that employed Indian laborers and through their economic power played a major role in Mexican politics. At the turn of the twentieth century, large segments of the southern Lacandon forest in the southern Chiapas region „were in the hands of US-and Belgium-owned companies that exploited the vast rain forest, cutting mahogany and cedar“ (Sanchez Cruz 2005:35). The government followed a policy that proposed „concerted colonization […] by European settlers with the aim of the complete fusion of the Indians with whites and thus the total extinction of the indigenous castes“ (Higgins 2004:77).

The revolution of 1910 brought little change to the Southern part of Mexico. The Constitution of 1917 that derived from the revolution, „written to guarantee a new Mexico“ (Sanchez Cruz 2005:38), beared the potential for a land reform. Article 27 promised that „the poor and landless could petition for the use and ownership of idle, empty, and eventually expropriated lands“ (Sanchez Cruz 2005:35). The lands, called ejidos, were to be corporately held and administered under a form of governance deriving from indigenous custom. Ejidos could not be legally sold or rented „because the community, not the individual, retained the basic property rights“ (Sanchez Cruz 2005:35). While the Northern part of Mexico soon experienced some redistribution of land to landless farmers, the land reform did not arrive in Chiapas until the late 1930s. During the next decades, some lands were made available but it was mainly done on the landholding rancher´s terms who would give their workers marginal lands on the fringes of their holdings which „staved off true redistribution“ (Sanchez Cruz 2005:36). These parcels of soil were „the poorest agricultural land, steep slope sitting above the broad valleys still held by the same families“ (Sanchez Cruz 2005:36).

Demographic pressure within the indigenous communities forced the Mexican government to make more land available for the Indian population. These lands were not intended for subsistence farming. The government encouraged the new owners to produce cash crops such as coffee and cattle for export, „allowing the nation to integrate into the international market“ (Sanchez Cruz 2005:40) rather than permitting the indigenous population to determine the use of the soil themselves. Even though there was some re-distribution of land in the decades after the Mexican revolution, power and dependence relations between the suppressed Indian population and the land-owning families remained largely untouched (cf. Moser 2009:48).

2.2 Neoliberal Reforms and its Consequences

Mexico was the first state to declare bankruptcy in the depth crisis of 1982. In its aftermath, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund forced a series of structural adjustment programs on Mexico that created the basis for a series of neoliberal reforms. The Mexican political elite was „a vital component“ (Higgins 2004:135) in pushing for radical economic changes. „Removing subsidies, reducing union power, […] and exposing manufacturing goods and producers to an aggressive international market“ (Higgins 2004:136) were all neoliberal reforms designed to boost Mexico´s economy and take the country (in modernization theory-thinking) „to the next level“ of economic development in order to „catch up“ with economically further developed countries.

For the people of the Chiapas region this meant even more hardship in their lives. Since the government had never installed an education or health care system in this region in the first place, it was not so much the budget cuts that created social unrest. But the government´s fi­xation on cash crops (increasingly cattle herding which takes up a lot of land) designed for export meant that even less land was available for the farmers.

When oil was found in Chiapas, PEMEX, the national oil company, claimed large territories for oil production. Also, large areas of fertile land have been flooded to build dams in order to generate electricity, mainly for use in the Northern part of Mexico (cf. Moser 2009:48). The government declared the land re-distribution of the Constitution´s Ar­ticle 27 completed. This took away many people´s hope that one day they would get a piece of land assigned. The state created a new law which prohibited people from cutting firewood in the forest, thus making it impossible for the indigenous to make use of the resources on their soil. Furthermore, in order to avert any kind of social mobilisation or uprising, a new law on terrorism was passed, prohibiting all forms of gathering, demonstrations and public actions (cf. Klatzer 1997:201). But indigenous forms of organising community life and resistance against the government´s sup­pression had existed for a long time and continued to exist.

From a strictly economic point of view, the Mexican State was doing well under the neoliberal rule since it could pay its debt. By late 1993, the government´s po­licies of privatization and deregulation had created a new generation of billionaires. „Mexico sought to secure its international status through negotiating an entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement […]“ (Higgins 2004:142). Of course, this was an elite decision which did not take into consideration the jobs lost on both sides of the border, the immense pressure put on Mexican manufacturers and the social consequences attached to such a great transformation of the economy. „On the eve of 1994, as Mexico sought to promote itself as an international model of development, the highly partial, coercive, and elite nature of Mexico´s neoliberal revolution was about to be laid bare“ (Higgins 2004:143).

The Zapatist movement´s focus is very much oriented against neoliberalism and all its inhumane consequences. The EZLN had formed years before it first went public but when it did, the date was carefully chosen. As Subcomandate Marcos explained on the first day of the uprising:

„Today the North American Free Trade Agreement begins, which is nothing more than a death sentence for the indigenous ethnicities of Mexico, who are perfectly dispensable in the modernization program of Salinas de Gortari [Mexico´s President from 1988– end of 1994]. Thus the compañeros decided to rise up on this same day to respond to the decree of death that the Free Trade Agreement gives them, with the decree of life that is given by rising up in arms to demand liberty and democracy, which will provide them with the solution to their problems. This is the reason we have risen up today.“ (La Jornada 1994 in Higgins 2005:155)

The Zapatistas have broken off as many ties with the official government as possible and created a way of life in their communities that is based on solidarity, respect and communal learning. It very much differs from a Western way of perceiving the economy, nature, health and freedom. Many of their beliefs and practices accord with post-development thinking which will be explored in the next chapter.

3. Post-Development

In the 1980s, a new approach of thinking about development emerged. From a post development perspective, the discourse about development had so far been largely dominated by Western technocrats who thought to solve the problems of the „underdeveloped“ parts of the world through modernisation programs. „The Third World (as it came to be known) was regarded as backwards and primitive, but these problems could be overcome by following a similar path of development to that of the Western (civilised) world.[…] This could be achieved through an increase in production in underdeveloped areas, and this in turn could occur through the introduction of rational scientific methods“ (Kiely 1999:32). The nation state was seen as the unit of analysis and economic indicators were used to determine the stage of development a country had reached. Poverty was reduced to a technical problem that could be cured by technical measures. In this way „development tends to depoliticise poverty“ (Nustad 2001:482) because the shortcomings of the global South were always defined in a way that would allow for a technical solution and shield out structural and political causes.

Disadvantageous integration into the world market, post-colonial dependencies and uneven power distribution within the international arena were left out off the development-equation and replaced with more graspable and less threatening problems such as lack of capital or technology. Thereby, poverty and underdevelopment were constructed in a manner that would allow the developed world and its many enterprises to retain their political and economic reign over their former colonies and continue their rule of exploitation even after decolonisation (cf. Ziai 2004a:177). Furthermore, during the Cold War, development was used as an agenda by the West to ward off communism. „From the start, development´s hid­den agenda was nothing else than the Westernization of the world“ (Sachs 1995: 4–5).

Post development thinkers reject the idea and practice of development as it has been carried out in the last decades. They do so for three distinct reasons:

1. Development aid, as it has been practiced since World War II, has failed. Despite the hundreds of NGOs, agencies, think-tanks, states and institutions that have tried to „develop“ the poorer regions of the world, the latter are worst off today than they were decades ago. Their debt rises and the gap between the poor and the rich countries widens continuously despite all efforts. This is due to the fact that the concept of development is flawed in itself, not because development has been practiced incorrectly.
2. Defining the Western world as developed is what constructed the rest of the world as underdeveloped in the first place. It created a way of regarding cultures differing from Western customs as less valuable, backward and weak. Development demanded the assimilation of the rest of the world to Western values and culture, thus declaring the latter superior to dissenting habits.
3. Since the term „development“ comes along with the flawed practice of development and the theoretical construct of a developed and an underdeveloped world, the word itself is deemed unusable and therefore rejected. (cf. Ziai 2004a:168)

Post-development is not a homogeneous theory. It is rather a critique of the development practice of the last decades. Many writers from different fields with contrary views have contributed to this school of thought. According to Ziai, Escobar, one of the main voices of the theory, summarizes the shared beliefs of post development as follows:

– „an interest not in development alternatives but in alternatives to development, thus the rejection of the entire [development] paradigm;

• an interest in local culture and knowledge;
• a critical stance towards established science discourse;
• the defense and promotion of localised, pluralistic grassroots movements“. (Ziai 2004b:1046)

3.1 Politics, Knowledge and the Economy

3.1.1. Politics

Post development authors demand an end to development aid and call for alternatives to development. This can be realized only if the people reclaim the right to govern themselves because the nation state has long enough put the project of development before its own people. Rather than serving their people´s needs, many states have complied with international institution´s de­mands and chased the recognition as a developed country, as was the case when Mexico reformed its economy in the 1980s due to outside pressure and an ambitious elite. „Consequently, existing power structures have to be radically decentralised, power has to remain at the local level“ (Ziai 2004b: 1056). This can be done in autonomous regions where people govern themselves in a manner of radical democracy because „[t]he modern state does not understand the right […] to be underdeveloped. It claims the right to develop people and nature on the basis of a vision of progress set out according to the blueprint supplied by modern science“ (Alvares 2009:251).

3.1.2 Knowledge

Science and knowledge play another vital role in post developmentarian thinking. „The faith in science and technology […] played an important role in the elaboration and justification of the development discourse“ (Escobar 1995: 35). Truth, as we accept it, is based largely on the prominent discourse and on modern science. Anything that is not scientifically proven, rational or comprehensible to a Western understanding of the world is doomed to be nothing more than a myth or a leftover of traditionalist thinking that is yet to be eradicated by modernization. The West retains its power by defining truth. Their „tools are [considered] neutral, desirable, and universally applicable“ (Escobar 1995: 26). Since historiography is still largely done in the West and (beside the exception of some successful Asian countries) research and science are still considered realms of the developed world, it seems virtually impossible for Third World countries, to produce their own truth and knowledge, let alone to contribute to the debate about it. From a post-development perspective, this is exactly what needs to happen if societies want to emancipate themselves. „Give priority to immediate experience within locally available conceptual categories, over the claims of scientific knowledge,[…] [because] all knowledge [is] culturally constructed“ (Nanda 1999:15). Cultural differences should be embraced rather than homogenised so that people and societies regain their self-esteem, confidence in their own ways, strengthen their autonomy and define their own needs and expectations. Most post development writers do not call for an unreflected return to traditional societies and pre-modern ways of life. They demand the freedom to define their values, beliefs and traditions autonomously. That way, hybrid cultures which combine positive elements of the past and the present can come into existence. (cf. Escobar 1995:219) „There are numerous ways of living a ‛good life‘, and it is up to each society to invent its own“ (Rist 1997 in Ziai 2004a:195).

3.1.3 The Economy

The ‛good life’ mentioned above also implies the need for a definition of who is poor and what is underdeveloped. In the West, these terms are closely connected with economic potential. Poverty and wealth are often connected with individual material prosperity. Other society, „cultures in which non-economic assumptions govern lives […]“ (Sachs 1995:19), may define these terms in a more sociable manner, such as respect within the community or a person’s achi­evement for a group of kin. Post development thinkers point out that the capitalist system as we know it, dominated by scarcity, needs and competition has tremendous flaws and is not favorable to all kinds of society. People should have the possibility to define their own economic needs themselves. In order to get out of the loop of exploitation and foreign interest that have dictated Third World country’s economic integration into the world market for centuries, societies should try to build parallel market structures and informal economies to avoid being preyed upon by the international market.

It should be noted that the post development school goes further than just a mere critique of development practice. It questions western convictions of science, rationality, capitalism, the nation state and the relationship between people and nature, therewith the basis of modernity. This challenge derives from modernity’s many inherent problems and flaws that have created disparity and exploitation, not only in the less-advantaged regions but anywhere in the world. (Cf. Ziai 2004a: 373) Modernity should no longer dictate people’s way of life in an unreflected manner. Life should be self-determined.

4. Zapatismo and Post Development

As mentioned in Chapter 2.1, the Zapatistas have struggled for more than a decade for autonomy over their land and resources and the freedom to determine their own way of life. After the initial uprising of 1994, the EZLN entered into negotiations with the government and after two years of talks published the San Andres Accord which voiced their central demands:

• basic respect for the diversity of the indigenous population of Chiapas;
• the conservation of the natural resources within the territories used and occupied by indigenous peoples;
• a greater participation of indigenous communities in the decisions and control of public expenditures;
• the participation of indigenous communities in determining their own development plans, as well as having control over their own administrative and judicial affairs;
• the autonomy of indigenous communities and their right of free determination in the framework of the State (Global Exchange 2007).

4.1 Zapatist Politics

Until today, only an alleviated version of the Accord was granted by the Mexican government in 2001 which is not accepted by the EZLN. „330 complaints against the inadequacy of this law were thrown out by the Supreme Court in September 2002, signaling the end of the last hope for a negotiated solution“ (Chatteron 2007). But as a Zapatist spokesperson announced: „We’re moving forward. If the government won’t give us autonomy, we’ll just go ahead and apply it in practice“ (Earl/Simonelli 2005:276).

In 2003, the EZLN stated that it had broken off all contact with the official government and all political parties. One month later, the movement created the Juntas de Buen Gobierno (JBG), the Good Goverment Juntas (cf. Moser 2009:59). „The Good Government Juntas represent both the poetic, populist and the practical nature of the Zapatista struggle to build workable alternatives of autonomy locally, link present politics to traditional ways of organising life in indigenous communities, and contrast with the ‘bad government’ of official representational politics in Mexico City“ (Chatterton 2007).

It has to be noted that the Zapatistas´ aim is to have autonomy within the Mexican state, not the separation from Mexico.

The Zapatistas have decided to govern their part of the country autonomously. Therefore, they divided it into five Caracoles which represent the five Zapatista zones of the North, the highlands, jungle, border and the mountains. These caracoles constitute the administrative and political center of each zone with JBG headquarters in all of them. The caracoles are subdivided in about 40 municipalities, the Municipios Autónomos Rebeldes Zapatistas (MAREZ). The JBG is made up of representatives of the councils within the MAREZ which are chosen on a rotating schedule in assemblies at the municipal level. Within the MAREZ-council, a representative period lasts from 2 weeks to 3 month. In the JBG, a term lasts 3 years but any representative can be kicked off its position when he or she does not do his/her work well. The JBG has different fields of responsibilities such as agriculture or health to which its members are assigned. Their work is overseen by the Comisión de Vigilancia, a commission chosen by the MAREZ as well.

Representatives, of which 40% are female, do not get paid for the work they do at the community level. Engaging in politics is not considered a profession in the Zapatist movement. Rather, it is seen as representing the will of the people, which has been voiced in general assemblies, discussed and decided upon in a consensual manner. Their only function is to make sure that the consensus is executed. Consensus is achieved with a method called „huac ta huoc“, which is Tzeltal (one of the indigenous languages) for „collect, reflect and collect again“. In this decision making process, every group member voices his/her opinion. The leaders of the group summarize them and present them to the whole community, where possible decisions are discussed again until a consensus is reached. This consensus is the basis off all action taken later concerning the issue that had been discussed. Zapatist decision making can take days if a consensus can not be reached. (cf. Klatzer 1997:200) Since there is no salary for the representative’s wor­k, no direct economic gain is attached to the position. On the contrary, it is time-consuming work with a lot of responsibility that keeps people from pursuing their everyday jobs. (cf. Moser 2009: 57–60)

The Zapatist understanding of politics very much complies with post development thinking where the „project of ‘radical and plural democracy’ [is seen] as the ‘extension of the democratic struggles for equality and liberty to a wide range of social relations“ (Ziai 2004b:1056 quoting Laclau and Mouffe). This radical democracy is practiced in the community and municipal meetings. Politics is usurped by the people and integrated into their everyday life because it is accessible to everyone and not a field of experts who are not in touch with people’s actu­al needs.

4.2 Zapatist Truth and Knowledge

Truth and knowledge have a direct connection to a person’s self-esteem. If an indigenous person is constantly surrounded by a discourse preaching hers or his inferiority, one day that person will start to feel that way about her/himself and abandon traditional customs, knowledge, beliefs and thereby its identity. It is a clearly stated goal of the Zapatist movement to prevent that loss of identity and bring back knowledge that has already been lost. Meanwhile, the movement does not shut itself off from innovations that can usefully be incorporated into people’s lives, thus creating hybrid cultures. The health care and education system, which will be briefly explained, are good examples for this.

4.2.1 Education

Autonomous Zapatist schooling started in 1996. Promoters of education, as teachers are called and who, just like political representatives, do not get paid for their work, were recruited from the communities. Anyone can become a promoter if they attend the training courses. Beside basic skills like mathematics and reading and writing, topics of immediate concern for everyday life are taught. This includes agricultural knowledge and skills, sustainable use of resources and nature and the practice of politics in an autonomous manner. Mexican history is taught including the history and struggles of the indigenous population. Also, computer courses are part of the curriculum. Zapatist ideologies such as respect, solidarity and collectivism play a vital role in children’s edu­cation. Frequently, pupil’s grandpa­rents are invited to the classes to share their knowledge about a topic with the kids. Classes are held in Indian languages, which is a big difference to state schools where classes are held in Spanish. Rather than individualisation, collective thinking is encouraged. (cf. Moser 2009:67–72)

4.2.2 Health Care

Even before the uprising in 1994, an independent network of health promoters existed in Chiapas. This was due to the shortcoming of the official government to provide the population with adequate health care. The network formed with the help of NGOs, universities and the church. Today, health clinics can be found in all municipals. Their main focus is on disease prevention (vaccination, workshops on hygiene, monitoring of pregnancies) but they also have specialised clinics and laboratories. Health promoters work for free, they only get paid their expenses. Treatment in the clinics is free, even for non-Zapatistas who frequently visit the clinics because they provide more accessible health care than the state-run clinics. Only a small amount has to be paid for the medicine in order to restock the stash. If a patient falls seriously ill and needs an operation, he/she is taken to a state hospital. If the family cannot afford the treatment or the journey, it is paid for from the funds of the movement.

Beside scientific health knowledge, traditional healing methods are being promoted, especially for child birth, bone-healing and the use of herbs to cure disease. The healers are organised in cooperatives, supporting the movement. A lot of the traditional healing knowledge has already been lost. Today, the movement holds workshops with older people (especially women) to share the know-how of their generation. On the other hand, they incorporate new available technologies, such as instruments to process herbs. Promoters of traditional healing methods are considered equally important as „real“doctors. (cf. Moser 2009: 86–93)

Health promoters represent a holistic approach to health. They recognise that mental imbalance can lead to physical symptoms. Also, health is defined as more than just the absence of illness but includes the possibility to lead a dignified life, free of suppression and exploitation and thereby incorporates social, economic and political aspects in the Zapatist vision of health (cf. Moser 2009:90).

4.2.3 Knowledge Conclusion

Both, the education as well as the health care system are achievements of the Zapatist autonomy. These structures coexist with state structures and are just as (and sometimes even more) efficient. Local knowledge is embraced and mixed with modern achievements to create hybrid skills that are necessary and relevant for everyday life. The indigenous identity is preserved and the basis of the movement strengthened.

The schooling systems, with its emphasis on collectivism and the restoration of Indian pride is the Zapatist „attempt to make […] visible what had been made invisible [by the Mexican State]: an Indian populace that had both political opinion and socio-cultural vision“ (Higgins 2004:185). By taking it upon themselves to educate their children themselves, „whole communities, through regenerating their traditions, are once again assuming responsibility for the initiation of their young ones into their culture. They are learning to resist the state requirement to hand over their kids to ,experts’, ,professional teachers’ and other varieties of agencies of Outsiders” (Moser 2009: 72 quoting Esteva / Prakash 1998:141).

The Zapatist heath system „challenges the claim of Western science to be a superior form of knowledge which renders obsolete more traditional systems of knowledge“ (Apffel Marglin 1990: 102). People are treated equally and respectfully. Solidarity practices, such as paying treatment out of the movement’s fund, strengthen the community.

These practices conform with the social vision of post development thinking. „At the level of daily life, these popular practices represent a counter-hegemonic force that opposes the instrumentalization and reactionary attempts of the […] state and modern science to domesticate popular culture. […] The concept of hybrid cultures provides an opening towards the intervention of new languages“ (Escobar 1995:220/219).

4.3 Zapatist Economy

Although Gibson-Graham describe a different social movement, they capture the Zapatist economy when they write: The „[…] economy is made up of a thin layer of capitalist economic activity underlaid by a thick meshwork of traditional practices and relationships of sharing […] and collective work.“ (2006:171).

Food security plays a very important part in the Zapatist economy. Since malnutrition is a big problem in Chiapas, subsistence farming is promoted. The farmers are organised in collectives that share their crops. Because of Chiapas´ great ecological diversity, it is possible to grow numerous crops that are exchanged within the community. Surpluses are kept in storages, overseen by the JBG. Some crops are sold in local markets, their earnings are kept collectively and the community decides what to spend the money on. Often, this money is used to support sick members of the community. People are valued over profit and the collective survival is more important than individual success. In this, barter also plays a big role. As the Zapatistas say: „For each of us nothing, for all of us everything“ (Earl/Simonelli 2005:253).

As mentioned in chapter 2.1 and 2.2, there has been a constant shortage of land available for the Indian population. The recoupment of land has played a pivotal role in the Zapatists struggle, since only fertile soil can guarantee independence from international markets and the survival of the movement. „Tierra y Libertad“ (Earl/Simonelli 2005:68) is still the main Zapatist demand. The squatting of unused land has become common practice, since the government had refused to redistribute land to the Indian population.

It is the Zapatista’s aim to become as independent as possible from the international, neoliberal market. Manufacturing articles for everyday life is encouraged by the movement, the producers are organised in collectives. But the Zapatist community is not self-sufficient and has still linkages with the world market. Fertiliser, electric equipment and many other products can not be produced within the community. Also, the Zapatistas produce coffee which is sold abroad. Again, their producers are organised in collectives and their gains are shared within the community. Some of the money goes to a fund which enables them to buy goods from outside markets. Zapatist coffee is sold by solidarity movements in Europe and the US who pay fixed and fair prices.

Zapatist communities are not pre-modern places. Schools have computers and the people and communities own TVs, radios and cars. But owning these goods has a different meaning than it does in our society. As Ziai explains in general, consume can never be used as a substitute for self-esteem and approval (cf. 2004a:180). This thinking mirrors the Zapatist attitude towards material possessions. In post development thinking, the Zapatist´s con­nection with the international market could be doomed unexceptional since the movement is still (if only marginal) engaging with the neoliberal market. But the Zapatist way of thinking about the economy (people over profit) and the collective way of organisation conforms with the post development school.

The Zapatistas are skeptical towards the „conviction that economic growth […] is unquestionably desirable“ (Gibson-Graham 2006: 166) and „non-capitalism is rendered a positive multiplicity rather than an empty negativity“ (Gibson-Graham 2006:70). Given the degree of globalisation and interlinkage in the world, the Zapatistas have managed to reduce their interaction with the world market to a minimum and thereby retained self-determination over the way they organise their economy.

5. Conclusion

As this paper hopes to have shown, many aspects of post development thinking can be found in the Zapatists movement; especially their way of thinking about the economy outside of standard capitalist realms and the emphasis they put on the preservation of their culture. Mixing indigenous beliefs and knowledge with modern achievements (like in the health sector) is what Escobar had in mind when he wrote about hybrid cultures. The principle of huac ta huoc-decision making is a form of radical/grassroots democracy. The Zapatist´ effort to put its own people before profit and organise its economy in a cooperative manner comes close to the sort of economy envisioned in the post development idea, despite some remaining ties with the world market. Through their schooling system, the Zapatistas teach their children in a non-Western manner and encourage the creation of new forms of knowledge. The aim of becoming an autonomous region is also a feature found in post development literature. The New York Times even went so far as to call the Zapatistas „the ‘first post-modern revolution of the twenty-first century’“ (quoted in Higgins 2004:171).

However, it would be wrong to assume that the Zapatistas have built their rebellion around post development theory. In the last 16 years, the movement’s struc­tures have come into being through trial and error and discussions within the communities. They are constantly evolving and adjusted according to the people’s wants and needs and not according to a theory. People in Chiapas might not even know this theory exists. Still, it can be concluded that many aspects of post development thinking can be found in the Zapatist movement and the movement is a viable proof that post developmentarian societies can exist.

6. Literature

• Alvares, Claude (2009) Science p. 243–260 in Sachs (2009) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London, Zed Books
• Apffel Marglin, F. (1990) Smallpox in two systems of knowledge p.102–144 in Apffel Marglin, F. – Marglin, S. A. (eds., 1990) Dominating knowledge. Development, culture and resistance, Oxford, Clarendon Press
• Chatterton, Paul (2007) The Zapatista Caracoles and Good Governments: The Long Walk to Autonomy, online-text.
• Earl, Duncan; Jeanne Simonelli (2005) Uprising of Hope: sharing the Zapatista journey to alternative development. Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press
• Escobar, Arturo (1995): Encountering Development, The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press
• Gibson-Graham, Julie/Katherine (2006) A Postcapitalist Politics, Minneapolis, University of Minesota
• Global Exchange (2007) The San Andres Accord, online-text.
• Higgings, Nicolas P. (2004) Understanding the Chiapas Rebellion: Modernist Visions and the Invisible Indian. Austin: University of Texas Press
• Kerkeling, Luz (2009) Die Energie gehört dem Volk!, online-text.
• Kiely, Ray (1999) The Last Refuge of the Noble Savage? A Critical Assessment of Post-Development Theory, p. 30–55 in The European Journal of Development Research 11. London
• Klatzer, Christoph (1997) Ya Basta. Der Aufstand der Zapatisten p. 195–218 in Zapotoczky, Gruber (Hrsg.) Entwicklungsthe­orien im Widerspruch. Plädoyer für eine Streitkultur in der Entwicklungspo­litik. Frankfurt: Brandes & Apsel
• Moser, Bettina (2009) Autonomie statt Entwicklung: Zapatismus und Post-Development. Universität Wien
• Nanda, Meera. (1999) Who needs Post-Development? Discourse of Difference, Green Revolution and Agrarian Populism in India p.5–31 in: Journal of Developing Societies, 15 (1) Leiden
• Nustad, Knut G. (2001) Development: the Devil We Know? p.479–489 in Third World Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 4. Carfax Publishing
• Sachs, Wolfgang (1995) Introduction p 1–5 in Sachs, W. (1995): The Development Dictionary. A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London: Zed Books
• Sanchez Cruz, Antonio (2005) The Road to the Edge of the Jungle p.31–40 in Earl, Duncan; Jeanne Simonelli. Uprising of Hope: sharing the Zapatista journey to alternative development. Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press
• Ziai, Aram (2004a) Entwicklung als Ideologie? Das klassische Entwicklungspa­radigma und die Post-Development Kritik. Hamburg: Deutsches Übersee-Institut
• Ziai, Aram (2004b) The ambivalence of post-development: between reactionary populism and radical democracy p.1045–1060 Third World Quaterly, Vol. 25, No. 6.