Edward Carr, Ami Shah and Bruce Hall providing a cutting analysis on what's wrong with celebrity humanitarianism. Now while some things just speak for themselves (I actually can't get over this, here to be guided through by Brendan Rigby, or even more obviously Oxfam's Scarlett Johansson problem), much celebrity involvement seems insidiously good news: the authors above cite a figure of $150 million for the amount raised by the LiveAid concert in aid of the Ethiopian famine. More money = more food = more lives saved no? If only that clear cut....
“In part because rebel groups in Ethiopia also used the aid, it is estimated that the supply of humanitarian aid helped to extend the war by at least a year" (p. 22)
And more generally/long term, Carr and friends highlight two worrying narratives behind much of Bono's work, to take one example; a) the creation of a simple narrative of Africa as a "single, homogenous, helpless region" and b) the idea that we actually know what to do about it (witness 60 years of failure to find the 'key' to development). As they put it,
“celebrity humanitarians often reinforce stereotypes of the global poor as helpless, which reinforces and reproduces the highly unequal structures of power that characterize our world” (p. 3)
What I found more novel, however, was the idea that this is no new phenomenon. "Bono-as-wonk," they say, goes back to the celebrity activism of the 18th and 19th centuries, to those such as Samuel Ajayi Crowther and Smeathman. In fact Gomes Eanes de Zurara was already popularising the inhumane treatment of African slaves disembarking at the Portuguese port of Lagos in the 15th century apparently. So in fact, Bono got there over 500 years late.
Either way, give it a read.
Wednesday 29 January 2014
Thursday 23 January 2014
Britain: rain, queuing and rubbish food or providing 'Plumpy'Nut' to undernourished children in the DRC?
National identity is not often considered a force for good by 'progressives' committed to internationalism and social justice. For many, national identity at best providing trite stereotypes, (as demonstrated by own father's assessment of France: 'only problem is the French'), at worst is an illogical, arbitrary and inconvenient psychological phenomenon to be managed as we try to support social and political change. Instinctively, I'd probably agree. It seems implausible if not slightly surreal that my 'Britishness,' i.e. the chance fact I was born in West London, connects me as a 21-year old student living in Madrid with, say, a 65-year old Northern Irish fisherman who has never left Ballycastle, or, perhaps, David Hume. Facetiousness aside, nationalism, a phenomenon based on the idea of creating distinctions between 'us' and 'them' has always made me feel slightly uncomfortable and certainly not appeared to me to provide a basis of progressive change and solidarity across borders with those facing poverty and disempowerment.
Step forward Sunder Katwala from the thinktank 'British Future'. In the course of his eloquent contribution to the debate entitled, 'Is there a Progressive Case for National Identity?', he attempts to make just that case. The lecture itself focuses on British identity, drawing on some of his own experiences and exploring the challenges particularly for British (and Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and English) national identity today but here I'm more interested in a couple of nice arguments he makes which challenge those 'post-national, cosmopolitan esperanto-progressives' as he puts it (like me I guess?) who reject national identity as a basis for the case for supporting development efforts in other countries.
1) He argues that there is a slight disingenuousness in those progressives (at least in Britain) who seek to reject national identity as a force for good, in that they tend to favour it as long as it's not their own. He refers to the support given to postcolonial national identities as a force for good and for unity, and cites Ignatieff's claim that cosmopolitanism is a privilege for those who can take a stable nation state for granted. The latter seems a fair point for me - for someone who had a stable, easy upbringing in London, a cosmopolitan city with a sense of self-confidence coming from being both the capital of the UK and perhaps one of the most famous and admired cities in the world, I can do without a strong sense of Englishness or Britishness.
2) Perhaps more importantly, Katwala shows how national identity can potentially provide a more powerful base for promoting change in development and international politics. In concrete terms, the reason why Denmark ensures it gets a kick-ass rating on the Centre for Global Development's commitment to development index is not because Denmark (personified) is a true world citizen and all-round nice gal committed to Kantian cosmopolitanism, but because it's part of Denmark's national identity to do their best to help other nations which might be in a worse off position and thereby create a more just world (to whatever extent). Likewise, like it or love it, Britain's post-imperial national identity helps explain why Amnesty International and Make Poverty History, for example, were babies born in Britain. The message is that those who care about international development don't need to strive to overcome national identity because we already have a commitment to engaging in world affairs for good as an inherent part of our identity as Britons. Just focusing on the aid debate (which is not everything or even the most important thing but that's another debate, see point 7 here), there's an interesting counterpoint to Daily Mail-type efforts to undermine the UK's aid contribution (of which here's an example and why it's wrong) or the broader argument that it's just not in our national interest at this point to be providing Plumpy-Nut to undernourished Congolese children. And this is the idea that it's part of our collective identity to do so, and to stress that some depersonalised portrayal of national interest is the only thing to consider is to miss a whole lot.
It's a nice point, but here are a few issues which spring to mind (and which Katwala also makes greater or lesser reference to):
A) Other parts of our national identity mean that we can't hi-jack Britishness to support whatever political position we might have. A commitment to involvement in world affairs is part of Britishness but so is democratic debate about the positives and negatives of such involvement. Too narrowly defining national identity along progressive lines risks suggesting that patriotism is only legitimate from certain political standpoints. We have to make the case for an identity who would maintain Britain's commitment to development abroad, through aid, migration policies, trade policies, arms sales and a whole host of other areas. And that's a difficult, contingent process.
B) Relying on that aspect of British identity which derives from our imperial past for generating support for development is tricky. Britain's engagement with the world in the last few hundred years has been both positive, and often negative; we need to bear in mind the need to avoid the colonial perspective and cede power and control as much as possible when we focus on that part of our identity connected with empire.
C) I still have issues with the fact that national identity or social identity is founded fundamentally on an in-out dynamic and so it presents problems for encouraging the idea of 'solidarity'. You can emphasise the tolerance and democratic debate aspect of British identity but if you push the inclusiveness aspect too far a) people will not buy in to it or even b) the whole idea of identity loses its significance. We might look at Nyers' ideas on the refugee concept (book here) as an example. According to his ‘humanitarian violence’ argument, the way that our political and ethical community is organised to coincide with the boundaries of the nation state ‘outsider’ allows us to situate refugees outside our own ethical rules. Basically it means that our own fellow citizens first then our moral obligations to everyone else comes through the nation state to rest of humanity. But it seems to me that being serious about development requires us to think directly beyond the confines of our own political community.
So there is potential for a progressive national identity, but whether it can take us all the way from queuing and rubbish food to Plumpy'Nut for undernourished children in the DRC I'm not sure. Comments very much welcome on this one (for those who are intrepid enough to have reached the bottom).
 |
| Is this what Britishness means? (Child being fed Plumpy'Nut), Unicef |
Step forward Sunder Katwala from the thinktank 'British Future'. In the course of his eloquent contribution to the debate entitled, 'Is there a Progressive Case for National Identity?', he attempts to make just that case. The lecture itself focuses on British identity, drawing on some of his own experiences and exploring the challenges particularly for British (and Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and English) national identity today but here I'm more interested in a couple of nice arguments he makes which challenge those 'post-national, cosmopolitan esperanto-progressives' as he puts it (like me I guess?) who reject national identity as a basis for the case for supporting development efforts in other countries.
1) He argues that there is a slight disingenuousness in those progressives (at least in Britain) who seek to reject national identity as a force for good, in that they tend to favour it as long as it's not their own. He refers to the support given to postcolonial national identities as a force for good and for unity, and cites Ignatieff's claim that cosmopolitanism is a privilege for those who can take a stable nation state for granted. The latter seems a fair point for me - for someone who had a stable, easy upbringing in London, a cosmopolitan city with a sense of self-confidence coming from being both the capital of the UK and perhaps one of the most famous and admired cities in the world, I can do without a strong sense of Englishness or Britishness.
2) Perhaps more importantly, Katwala shows how national identity can potentially provide a more powerful base for promoting change in development and international politics. In concrete terms, the reason why Denmark ensures it gets a kick-ass rating on the Centre for Global Development's commitment to development index is not because Denmark (personified) is a true world citizen and all-round nice gal committed to Kantian cosmopolitanism, but because it's part of Denmark's national identity to do their best to help other nations which might be in a worse off position and thereby create a more just world (to whatever extent). Likewise, like it or love it, Britain's post-imperial national identity helps explain why Amnesty International and Make Poverty History, for example, were babies born in Britain. The message is that those who care about international development don't need to strive to overcome national identity because we already have a commitment to engaging in world affairs for good as an inherent part of our identity as Britons. Just focusing on the aid debate (which is not everything or even the most important thing but that's another debate, see point 7 here), there's an interesting counterpoint to Daily Mail-type efforts to undermine the UK's aid contribution (of which here's an example and why it's wrong) or the broader argument that it's just not in our national interest at this point to be providing Plumpy-Nut to undernourished Congolese children. And this is the idea that it's part of our collective identity to do so, and to stress that some depersonalised portrayal of national interest is the only thing to consider is to miss a whole lot.
It's a nice point, but here are a few issues which spring to mind (and which Katwala also makes greater or lesser reference to):
A) Other parts of our national identity mean that we can't hi-jack Britishness to support whatever political position we might have. A commitment to involvement in world affairs is part of Britishness but so is democratic debate about the positives and negatives of such involvement. Too narrowly defining national identity along progressive lines risks suggesting that patriotism is only legitimate from certain political standpoints. We have to make the case for an identity who would maintain Britain's commitment to development abroad, through aid, migration policies, trade policies, arms sales and a whole host of other areas. And that's a difficult, contingent process.
B) Relying on that aspect of British identity which derives from our imperial past for generating support for development is tricky. Britain's engagement with the world in the last few hundred years has been both positive, and often negative; we need to bear in mind the need to avoid the colonial perspective and cede power and control as much as possible when we focus on that part of our identity connected with empire.
C) I still have issues with the fact that national identity or social identity is founded fundamentally on an in-out dynamic and so it presents problems for encouraging the idea of 'solidarity'. You can emphasise the tolerance and democratic debate aspect of British identity but if you push the inclusiveness aspect too far a) people will not buy in to it or even b) the whole idea of identity loses its significance. We might look at Nyers' ideas on the refugee concept (book here) as an example. According to his ‘humanitarian violence’ argument, the way that our political and ethical community is organised to coincide with the boundaries of the nation state ‘outsider’ allows us to situate refugees outside our own ethical rules. Basically it means that our own fellow citizens first then our moral obligations to everyone else comes through the nation state to rest of humanity. But it seems to me that being serious about development requires us to think directly beyond the confines of our own political community.
So there is potential for a progressive national identity, but whether it can take us all the way from queuing and rubbish food to Plumpy'Nut for undernourished children in the DRC I'm not sure. Comments very much welcome on this one (for those who are intrepid enough to have reached the bottom).
Friday 17 January 2014
A little bit of optimism never killed anyone
Similarly, I saw this advert today (see photo or video if you are a Spanish speaker) for Vicente Ferrer's foundation - the recently deceased and publicly-decorated Spanish philanthropist (whose work I am not familiar with so the following is no criticism of what he did as much as his foundation's ad campaign) - in which he appears saviour-like, holding the 'key' to development, urging us to give a little and solve the problem of poverty . Usually, and in fact today was no exception, I would double back and question why there was a white Spaniard in the foreground covering half the advert which was supposedly putting the poor of India (represented by nameless dark-skinned children behind him) first, whilst the text had the arrogance to claim we outsiders with our spare change have the 'key' to relieving poverty in India ("we are the key that can change everything" it says in the video).
This then sent me into a spiral of thoughts about a variety of frustrating phenomena: the depressing lengths to which charities have to put us the potential donors in the foreground to get any sort of reaction (see Lilie Chouliaraki for a fascinating treatment of this subject - still reading odd chapters of the book when I get the chance); my friend telling me that she went to a conference about happiness and is now set on going to Haiti for a month next summer to help the world's poor ('what will you be doing?' 'Not sure, whatever they need me to do'), the pervasive idea of international development as charity, ah the list goes on. And this suits my slight tendency to scepticism - it's much easier to criticise and avoid putting your neck out and making the solid claim that in many cases international development efforts are good and we should celebrate them when faced with criticisms of volountourism, of useless and even harmful development projects, and of the whole development 'project' itself.
But not today (or this evening at least). I'm reading Angus Deaton's The Great Escape, which opens up with a relentlessly optimistic salvo ('Life is better now than at almost any time in history. More people are richer and fewer people live in dire poverty') and which goes on to claim that the "total number of dollar-a-day poor people in the world fell by three-quarters of a billion between 1981 and 2008," and even more damningly positive things like the fact that there is not a single country in the world where child mortality today is not lower than it was in 1950. Added to this I came across a review of Charles Kenny's Getting Better as well as this article from the Independent and I'm thinking that it's time for a bit of optimism in my development thinking. Clearly there are many many negatives and criticisms that can be made, but perhaps, at the start of the new year, and in contrast to my previous post we should reflect on the successes for a moment. If only to steel us for the inevitable setbacks and frustrations as we observe what happens development-wise in the 12 months to come.
Monday 13 January 2014
Some MOOCs to be getting on with
It's at this time of year that many people seek to overburden their lives with unnecessary and unrealistic aims and projects. I am like any other in this respect, and have signed up to two of the MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) listed below - Banerjee and Duflo, of Poor Economics fame were far too much for me to resist, and 'The European Union in Global Governance' is far enough away for me not to care about what I might be doing then. Not sure what I make of MOOCs as a concept yet (see here and here and here for some opinions on them) but it'll be interesting to see what they're like whilst brushing up on my global poverty and global governance knowledge at the same time.
Anyway here are five MOOCs on development-related subjects starting in the near future, along with brief information about their content, duration, conveners, etc. Oh and thanks to Anna Spinks for the inspiration for this. Enjoy!
1. Introduction to Sustainability
By: University of Illinois
Start date: 20 Jan 2014
Course length: 10 weeks
Effort: 8-10 hours per week
Superstar instructor: Jonathan Tomkin
A sneak preview...
"[The study of sustainability seeks to] uncover the principles of the long-term welfare of all the peoples of the planet". One for the inter-disciplinarians; as the description says: "understanding our motivations requires the humanities, measuring the challenges of sustainability requires knowledge of the sciences (both natural and social), and building solutions requires technical insight into systems (such as provided by engineering, planning, and management)"
By: Columbia University
Start date: 21 Jan 2014
Course length: 14 weeks
Effort: 5-7 hours per week
Superstar instructor: Jeffrey Sachs
A sneak preview...
"The fundamental question is how the world economy can continue to develop in a way that is socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable. The course describes the complex interactions between the world economy and the Earth's physical environment. Ecological processes and constraints (climate, disease ecology, physical resources such as soils and energy sources, topography and transport conditions) significantly shape the patterns of economic development, demography, and wealth and poverty. At the same time, human activities (farming, land use, urbanization, demographic change, and energy use) change the physical environments, increasingly in dangerous ways"
By: MITx
Start date: 5 Feb 2014
Course length: 15 weeks
Effort: at least 6 hours per week
Superstar instructors: Banerjee and Duflo
A sneak preview...
"[I]s extreme poverty a thing of the past? What is economic life like when living under a dollar per day? Are the poor always hungry? How do we make schools work for poor citizens? How do we deal with the disease burden? Is microfinance invaluable or overrated? Without property rights, is life destined to be "nasty, brutish and short"? Should we leave economic development to the market? Should we leave economic development to non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Does foreign aid help or hinder? Where is the best place to intervene? At the end of this course, you should have a good sense of the key questions asked by scholars interested in poverty today, and hopefully a few answers as well."
4. International Human Rights
By: LouvainX
Start date: 17 Feb 2014
Course length: 10 weeks
Effort: 6-8 hours per week
Superstar instructor: Olivier De Schutter
A sneak preview...
A course dealing with, among other issues, "the sources of human rights, the rights of individuals and the duties of States, and the mechanisms of protection...religious freedom in multicultural societies, human rights in employment relationships, economic and social rights in development, [and] human rights in the context of the fight against terrorism."
5. The European Union in Global Governance
By: KU Leuven
Start date: April 2014
Course length: 6 weeks
Effort: n/a
Superstar instructor: Prof. Dr. Jan Wouters (among others)
A sneak preview...
"The study of the EU as an international actor has become a key element in European and International Law, European Studies and International Relations. The EU represents the world’s largest trade power and aid donor, has a diplomatic service larger than that of most states, and has launched more than 20 civil-military operations. It has presented itself as a normative, global actor, and its emergence as a legal entity that is neither a state nor a classic international organization has both puzzled and fascinated legal scholars and political scientists alike. We invite students to delve into and help solve the most intriguing of these puzzles."
Anyway here are five MOOCs on development-related subjects starting in the near future, along with brief information about their content, duration, conveners, etc. Oh and thanks to Anna Spinks for the inspiration for this. Enjoy!
1. Introduction to Sustainability
By: University of Illinois
Start date: 20 Jan 2014
Course length: 10 weeks
Effort: 8-10 hours per week
Superstar instructor: Jonathan Tomkin
A sneak preview...
"[The study of sustainability seeks to] uncover the principles of the long-term welfare of all the peoples of the planet". One for the inter-disciplinarians; as the description says: "understanding our motivations requires the humanities, measuring the challenges of sustainability requires knowledge of the sciences (both natural and social), and building solutions requires technical insight into systems (such as provided by engineering, planning, and management)"
By: Columbia University
Start date: 21 Jan 2014
Course length: 14 weeks
Effort: 5-7 hours per week
Superstar instructor: Jeffrey Sachs
A sneak preview...
"The fundamental question is how the world economy can continue to develop in a way that is socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable. The course describes the complex interactions between the world economy and the Earth's physical environment. Ecological processes and constraints (climate, disease ecology, physical resources such as soils and energy sources, topography and transport conditions) significantly shape the patterns of economic development, demography, and wealth and poverty. At the same time, human activities (farming, land use, urbanization, demographic change, and energy use) change the physical environments, increasingly in dangerous ways"
By: MITx
Start date: 5 Feb 2014
Course length: 15 weeks
Effort: at least 6 hours per week
Superstar instructors: Banerjee and Duflo
A sneak preview...
"[I]s extreme poverty a thing of the past? What is economic life like when living under a dollar per day? Are the poor always hungry? How do we make schools work for poor citizens? How do we deal with the disease burden? Is microfinance invaluable or overrated? Without property rights, is life destined to be "nasty, brutish and short"? Should we leave economic development to the market? Should we leave economic development to non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Does foreign aid help or hinder? Where is the best place to intervene? At the end of this course, you should have a good sense of the key questions asked by scholars interested in poverty today, and hopefully a few answers as well."
4. International Human Rights
By: LouvainX
Start date: 17 Feb 2014
Course length: 10 weeks
Effort: 6-8 hours per week
Superstar instructor: Olivier De Schutter
A sneak preview...
A course dealing with, among other issues, "the sources of human rights, the rights of individuals and the duties of States, and the mechanisms of protection...religious freedom in multicultural societies, human rights in employment relationships, economic and social rights in development, [and] human rights in the context of the fight against terrorism."
5. The European Union in Global Governance
By: KU Leuven
Start date: April 2014
Course length: 6 weeks
Effort: n/a
Superstar instructor: Prof. Dr. Jan Wouters (among others)
A sneak preview...
"The study of the EU as an international actor has become a key element in European and International Law, European Studies and International Relations. The EU represents the world’s largest trade power and aid donor, has a diplomatic service larger than that of most states, and has launched more than 20 civil-military operations. It has presented itself as a normative, global actor, and its emergence as a legal entity that is neither a state nor a classic international organization has both puzzled and fascinated legal scholars and political scientists alike. We invite students to delve into and help solve the most intriguing of these puzzles."
Thursday 9 January 2014
Reflections from a student volunteer in Uganda
In summer 2013 I was fortunate enough to work as a volunteer investing money and trying to generally make improvements at a secondary school in rural Uganda. I recently entered the following essay in a competition (give it a go here!) on a title along the lines of 'what did you learn/how did your view of development change?'
Basically my key idea (not that original: similar sort of idea from Angus Deaton here) is we zealous international development-minded students should either:
a) accept that the projects we get involved with (and I'm not talking about hopeless gap yah projects which no one would claim are very beneficial) may very well not have great long-term impacts but keep doing them anyway because of an intuitive feeling that we can't be wrong about micro, short term impacts (building a school is surely never bad right?) or some ideal of solidarity whereby us being there is a good thing in itself.
OR
b) don't go on summer projects but concentrate on campaigning at home on issues like illicit financial flows, transparency, indigenous rights/environmental destruction, take your pick (there is no shortage), where governments in the global North could often be doing a whole lot more.
If you fancy reading the whole thing, here it is below for your enjoyment...
Basically my key idea (not that original: similar sort of idea from Angus Deaton here) is we zealous international development-minded students should either:
a) accept that the projects we get involved with (and I'm not talking about hopeless gap yah projects which no one would claim are very beneficial) may very well not have great long-term impacts but keep doing them anyway because of an intuitive feeling that we can't be wrong about micro, short term impacts (building a school is surely never bad right?) or some ideal of solidarity whereby us being there is a good thing in itself.
OR
b) don't go on summer projects but concentrate on campaigning at home on issues like illicit financial flows, transparency, indigenous rights/environmental destruction, take your pick (there is no shortage), where governments in the global North could often be doing a whole lot more.
If you fancy reading the whole thing, here it is below for your enjoyment...
"I spent summer 2013 working with two other volunteers for an
NGO[1]
in a secondary school in rural south-west Uganda, planning and implementing
initiatives to improve the quality of education for the students using money we
fundraised previously. We worked alongside school management, students and
teachers, ultimately introducing measures improving the library, sanitation and
counselling provision, among others. We were fortunate enough to receive constant
and engaged support from the school, as well as a brilliantly warm reception
from both school and community. Yet despite this overwhelmingly positive
experience, in which we witnessed tangible outputs in infrastructure and school
resources, the question of whether we have a long-term, sustainable impact
remains doubtful. Having subsequently joined the central charity administration
in a monitoring and evaluation capacity, I was struck by a double realisation:
first, that we currently lack a means of knowing that our work is effective;
and second, with the further discovery that our water purification scheme had
failed, that it is possible that our work is not effective in many areas, and even that our whole model may be
partly misguided(see Crawfurd 2013). Fundamentally, the idea of international
volunteering and indeed international development, in the broadest sense, is to
help promote positive changes in the lives of others. Therefore, short of rigorous
evidence of impact, we are left with a challenge.
One immediate lesson to be learnt is that we need to focus
our attention to the evaluation of programmes, in order to find out empirically
what works. And indeed, impact evaluation and RCTs are undoubtedly ‘in fashion’
in the development world, as demonstrated by the popularity of Banerjee and
Duflo’s Poor Economics(2012) and the
establishment of the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation in 2009. My
own charity is itself doing some excellent work to put in place a more robust
M&E programme. But leaving aside the empirics and entering speculatively
into the theory of how development
happens, my volunteering experience suggests some potentially sobering lessons
for any young international volunteer.
Our school did not perform well academically, achieving
generally poor exam results and failing to get many students into university.
In a wider sense, it is a school with many talented teachers and fantastic
students, but which could be much better. We observed unmotivated and often
undisciplined students and teachers, unfocused lessons starting late, and a
chronic lack of effective communication between staff and administration, among
other problems. To address these, we attempted to plug some gaps: we
facilitated better access to the many books the school possessed by expanding
the library; we introduced a system to improve students’ wellbeing through a
peer-to-peer counselling system; and we improved sanitation to get more happy,
healthy students in class more often. Nevertheless, comparing the problems we
perceived with what we supplied as ‘solutions,’ it is clear that they do not
match up. Part of this, admittedly, is due to the size of our investment, which
was insufficient to even attempt to cover the financial shortfall faced by the
school. Yet we also failed to prompt change in areas not directly determined by
money: the basic operating pattern of the school; the motivation to teach well
or learn; the power structures which deny voice to innovative and motivated
teachers, for instance. In this way, what we supplied was investment,
creativity and time to plan projects to facilitate
better delivery of education and better learning at the school. But
unfortunately, what I have come to realise is that this sort of facilitation cannot
drive dynamic change or permanently improved outcomes.
Acemoglu and Robinson(2012) offer a broad theory of why some
countries prosper and others do not, and I suggest that their analysis holds
some relevance for us. They locate the drivers of prosperity in ‘inclusive
economic and political institutions,’ implying that improvements come from
gradual alterations in the institutional makeup of a country rather than an
imposition of the ‘right’ policies. The latter idea they denounce as a
manifestation of the ‘ignorance hypothesis’ which “asserts that world
inequality exists because we or our rulers do not know how to make poor
countries rich”(2012:57), therefore “enlightening and informing rulers and
policymakers can get us out” of poverty (2012:440). This manifests itself, for
example, in the ‘Washington Consensus,’ generally accepted to have been largely
unsuccessful, which advocates “seemingly attractive macroeconomic goals such as
a reduction in the size of the government sector, flexible exchange rates, and
capital account liberalization”(2012:440). Applying these ideas to my
experience, this logic seems evident at least partly in what we did; we came
with ideas about how to better run a school (and the money to make change
happen), on the assumption that the school management may not be aware of such
ideas. Extending this thought further, we too advocated ‘seemingly attractive
goals’ such as enlarging the library and improving sanitation. However, like
Acemoglu and Robinson who find that it is “institutional patterns” which are
“condemning them[poor countries] to poverty” (2012:61), it strikes me that the institutional
pattern and environment of the school is what condemns it to underperforming.
It is thus the interplay of fundamental factors, often political, including why
students comes to school, what opportunities(or lack thereof) are available post-school,
the private situation of students and teachers, the distribution of power and
authority amongst the staff, the decision-making process at school, the demands
made on and interests of the management, the relationships with boards of
governors and with local authorities, extending all the way up to the ministry
of education. And these areas are generally beyond the scope of student volunteers’
capabilities.
So where does this leave us? We have seen that many
development NGOs lack empirical evidence of positive impact for ‘beneficiaries’,
and are faced with a theoretical argument which locates the long-term solution
to beneficiaries’ problems outside the remit of what we can achieve. There are
therefore perhaps two options for young people in the global North. First, to
continue participating in international volunteering programmes in their
current form whilst striving to improve monitoring and evaluation to improve
our offering, meanwhile recognising that the benefits will often be limited to
(i) short-term gains,(ii) promoting ‘solidarity’ whereby our being there and
interacting with people is recognised as an intrinsic good,(iii) encouraging volunteers’
interest in development in anticipation of further, more productive involvement,
or even (iv)(more controversially) boosting the reputation of the school or
organisation through our prestigious status as ‘outsiders’, often connected to
racial factors. This option would reflect Chouliaraki’s (2013)idea of an
‘ironic’ attitude to development, whereby the desire to help others exists
alongside a fundamental scepticism towards the benefits of the project of
development itself. Second, we might avoid international volunteering, and
instead concentrate either on fundraising on behalf of charities with demonstrated
impact, or lobbying governments to change policies detrimental to the prospects
of the global South. Indeed the recent revelation that for each dollar that
reaches the global South in aid, seven escape through illicit financial flows(Green
2013) provides an arresting starting point. Whichever option is chosen, what is
essential is that young people with an interest in development actively examine
the value of what they are doing, and ensure that their actions are dictated by
concrete outcomes not good intentions.
Bibliography
Acemoglu, D. and
Robinson, J. A. (2012) Why Nations
Fail (London: Profile)
Banerjee, A. V. and
Duflo, E. (2012) Poor Economics
(London: Penguin)
Crawfurd, L. (2013)
‘We don’t need no education’ Roving
Bandit accessed 22/12/2013 available at <http://www.rovingbandit.com/2013/12/we-dont-need-no-education.html>
Chouliaraki, L.
(2013) The Ironic Spectator:
Solidarity in the age of post-humanitarianism (Cambridge: Polity)
Green, D. (2013) ‘Poor countries are losing $1 trillion a year
to illicit capital flows – 7 times the volume of aid’ From Poverty to Power accessed
22/12/2013 available at <http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=16967>
The best of possible worlds
Having failed to keep up a micro-blog about international development and related issues in the form of twitter (see https://twitter.com/CharlieSatow), perhaps upgrading to a full-sized model will force my hand.
To give the briefest of introductions, I am an undergraduate student from London, currently residing in Madrid. I think that will do for now.
The title is an overused cliche from Candide but was the first thing that came to my mind after 'blog about international development' so please forgive me. Above all it conveys a) a satisfying level of irony and b) the idea that the world is not, in fact, the best of possible worlds. And that, in a nutshell, is why I'm interested in ways to make things better for the world's poor (in the broadest sense of the word) and politics in general.
So please read on; there is likely to be an extra keen flurry of posts in the next few minutes, hours and days. After that, we shall see if I can keep things going...
To give the briefest of introductions, I am an undergraduate student from London, currently residing in Madrid. I think that will do for now.
The title is an overused cliche from Candide but was the first thing that came to my mind after 'blog about international development' so please forgive me. Above all it conveys a) a satisfying level of irony and b) the idea that the world is not, in fact, the best of possible worlds. And that, in a nutshell, is why I'm interested in ways to make things better for the world's poor (in the broadest sense of the word) and politics in general.
So please read on; there is likely to be an extra keen flurry of posts in the next few minutes, hours and days. After that, we shall see if I can keep things going...
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