THE POST DEVELOPMENT READER

EDITED BY MAJID RAHNEMA WITH VICTORIA BAWTREE

ZED BOOKS             1997

PART 3

 

Introduction by Majid Rahnema (cont.)

Part Four starts with a forceful demonstration by Susan George of the ways ‘the poor are developing the rich’, thanks to development practices. Eduardo Galeano follows by telling us the sad story of those who are programmed to die of hunger ‘on the altar of productivity’, ‘during the last chapter of the televised serial of history’. At the end of a poignant testimony on what Latin America has gone through in order to ‘be like them’, he asks himself whether the Goddess of Productivity ‘is worth our lives’.

Other concrete examples of development practices are then given from the perspective of the grassroots populations. James Ferguson addresses the case of development in Lesotho, which, in his view, constitutes an ‘almost unremitting failure’. The tragic effects of the transmigration project in Indonesia are then discussed by Graham Hancock. Pam Simmons then shows how recent efforts, particularly by the aid agencies, to integrate women into mainstream development theory and practice constitute a serious threat to much of what the women’s struggle for freedom and dignity has stood for, especially in the South. This is followed by Peter Bunyard’s testimony on the ‘other side of the story’ in the case of the Tehri dam in the Himalaya region, and how ‘the misguided obsession with prestigious projects, such as large dams, is missing the point that denuded lands urgently need rehabilitation.’

To bring a note of almost black humour into the picture, Leonard Frank gives us, finally, an inside story of how development projects are generally prepared. Consultants familiar with the type of mission he describes would have no difficulty in agreeing in private that Leonard Frank’s account is not an unusual one.

The last section of the Reader, Part Five, is intended to give an idea of the arts of resistance that ‘losers’ all over the world continue to refine in order to build for themselves different and more humane futures. They are designed to show wayfarers that the most promising roads are, to paraphrase Machado, the ones that they discover by themselves as they move ahead. Thee is no point in taking old roads which lead to undesirable destinations. In such a context, it becomes imperative for all wayfarers to learn, from their own traditions and from each other, the arts of resistance most adequate to the conditions of their journey. It is also important for them not to fall into ideological traps, the false promises of which often prevent their followers from seeing things around them as they are, and to learn from their own experiences.

To this end, this last part of the anthology starts with some inspiring thoughts on the ways different cultures have learned to resist domination. These theoretical reflections are then followed by some examples illustrating the various types of resistance.

Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash open up the discussion by dissecting the fashionable slogan ‘Think globally, act locally’. They find it misleading to the extent that it does not prevent the harmful effects of ‘thinking big’. Grassroots populations engaged in movements such as Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) do not deny the reality of the internationalization of economy. But they seek to oppose globalism with radical pluralism. The Zapatista movement in Chiapas reflects people’s choice ‘to live, to think as well as to act on the human scale’. And that does not prevent them from circulating their news through three different e-mail networks.

For Wolfgang Sachs, after forty years of development, the world has indeed developed, but in two opposite directions. The 8% of the world population who own a car now composed a global middle class that is socially excluding the remaining majority. The demise of development has brought about a crisis of justice and a crisis of nature, in an inverse relationship to each other. Three perspectives are proposed to address the double crisis: the ‘fortress perspective’, the ‘astronaut’s perspective’ and the ‘home perspective’.

The Chiapas rebellion was a historic signal to the extent that it represented this last perspective, as the report by Gustavo Esteva shows. Like the Narmada Valley movement, it signifies that the conventional development idea has to be abandoned in the name of justice. Similarly, the ‘efficiency revolution’ should be complemented by a ‘sufficiency revolution’: that is, a mix of ‘intelligent rationalization of means and prudent moderation of ends’. Such a revolution cannot, however, be programmed or engineered. For in the home perspective, the discourse amounts to an invitation, rather than a strategy.

Mahatma Gandhi’s citations remind the reader that the quest for simplicity, advocated by the previous authors, actually belongs to a deep-rooted tradition of vernacular societies. David Shi goes on to indicate how simple living has had similar roots in the history of the west, from the early Greeks to modern Americans.’ Like the family, simplicity is always said to be declining but never disappears.

The question remains as to how the victims of unjust and dehumanizing regimes go about exercising their power – that is, ‘act over other’s actions’ – as Foucault has defined power. For James Scott, whose book Domination and the Arts of Resistance is a landmark in the understanding of this subject, it is crucial to decipher the ‘hidden transcript’ of the subordinate groups’s resistance. This is enacted in a host of down-to-earth, low-profile stratagems designed to minimize appropriation. This form of resistance continually presses ‘against the limit of what is permitted on stage, much as a body of water might press against a dam.’

Focusing on the grassroots movements in India, D.L. Sheth submits that these movements have now turned their backs on ‘received’ theories of any kind. What appeals to them is ‘concrete and specific struggles’ aimed at their own empowerment and at ‘redefining economic demands in terms of political and cultural rights.’

The ‘power of the powerless’, particularly under a post-totalitarian system (a term he uses to describe the political regimes of East Europe in the late 1970s) is then forcefully explored in Václav Havel’s contribution. Taking up the case of a greengrocer who places in his window, among onions and carrots, the slogan ‘Workers of the World Unite!’, the president of the Czech Republic imagines the day when the same greengrocer stops putting up the slogan and refuses to submit himself to the ‘blind automatism which drives the system’. This revolt is for him a crucial decision to live within the truth. For this is tantamount to breaking ‘the exalted façade of the system’ and saying the emperor is naked! No wonder that such simple gestures are actually perceived as a fundamental threat to systems whose main pillar is living a lie.

At the end of his essay, Havel’s message, based on his own personal experience, reveals a fact common to many great social changes and takes a prophetic dimension: ‘The moment a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a game – everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably.’

The essay by Karen Lehman reminds us how such novel approaches to the emergence of a world of friendship and gift make it imperative for everyone to focus on fundamental issues, such as the relationship between the ‘space within’ and the structure around it’. The space within, she notices, is shrinking with the economization of life, as it places a market value on such gifts as childbearing and housekeeping. The post-development era would not be different from the present one if the space within was still forced to fit the economy. A new kind of relation should be imagined in order to create a relation between the two ‘that supports both and damages neither.’

Could such a relation lead to what Judith Snow, another contributor concerned with friendship and the preservation of the unique gift incarnated by everyone, calls the ‘inclusion society’? For her, one creates the possibility of meaningful interaction by offering one’s gift to the community. And the millions who are now trying to regenerate the old ideal of a community under modern conditions do it mainly by creating and broadening such possibilities.

And that is perhaps why they continue singing. We sing, Mario Benedetti tells us.

because the sun recognizes us

and the fields smell of spring

and because in this stem and that fruit

every question has its answer.

Depending on the oppressive regimes to which the subjugated belong – be they developmentalist, totalitarian, ‘post-totalitarian’ or fundamentalist – people indeed have their different ways of preparing for the day when they all together cry out ‘the emperor is naked!’ It remains true, however, that the ends are always affected by the means. That perhaps explains the reason why Gandhiji refused, as early as the 1930s, to invite his fellow companions to ‘seize’ power, or to chooses violence for reaching their ends. Thus did Sunderlal Bahuguna in India, Vaclav Hável in former Czechoslavakia, Subcomandante Marcos and Superbarrio in Mexico, or the Chodak team in Dakar who later learned, from their own experiences, that it was more important to modify the nature of political power than to seize a power that ultimately corrupts all its holders. ‘Reinventing the Present’, the essay presented by Emmanuel N’Dione and his Chodak team, is a fascinating report on how a relationship of friendly complicity between insiders and outsiders can lead to increasing refinement in the arts of helping each other.

Now a final word about the ‘boxes’ that appear throughout this anthology. They have been chosen to represent some of the most interesting thinkers of all cultures, whose insights and words of wisdom illuminate the questions raised in the Reader. We view these as messages from absent friends or teachers who were either too far away or too busy to spend more time around the bigger table where the main conversation was being held. And we welcome their ‘messages’ as their gifts to us; they add new dimensions to the ongoing dialogue. References to their works have, however, been given in each case so that the more inquiring students can meet their authors at their convenience. We recommend strongly that readers use the boxes of their choice as signposts for the particular roads they are inclined to explore.

I take it as a good omen that the last box contains Fe Remotigue’s moving poem on the power of resurrection, that which from the Christ to the smallest, most forgotten ‘architects of dream’ – like Garitoy – gives life its fullest meaning. ‘One body down, one spirit up…’