Seeking equity and wellbeing – rather than economic growth – will be the new corner stone of the post development age, writes Wolfgang Sachs, editor of The Development Dictionary
Every time the Olympic Flame is lit in front of the host country’s President, the pulsating of a nation begins to accelerate. But the games had rarely been staged with more ambition to self- aggrandizement than in Beijing in the summer of 2008. China celebrated its arrival as a world power. Moreover, what in 2008 was broadcast to the world through the language of the Olympics will, in the course of this year, be reiterated in the language of a World Exhibition when China presents itself to the global public as a platform for the scientific achievements of the 21st century.
The Olympics and the World Exhibition are nothing but symbols of the secular shift that occurred around the turn of the 21st century, enabling the rise of China- and other countries of the South- to membership of the exclusive club of global players. It is scarcely possible to overestimate the significance of this shift for world history and in particular its significance for the people of the South, who, after centuries of humiliation, finally witness a country from their ranks on a par with the powers of the world. Yet what amounts to a triumph of justice threatens to turn into a defeat for the planet because the desire for equity is largely fixed on ‘development–as-growth’, and it is this definition of progress which strains human relations and brings the biosphere to its knees. Indeed, China’s success brings the dilemma of the 21st century sharply into focus: politics is compelled to push either equity without ecology or ecology without equity and it is difficult to see how this dilemma can be resolved unless the belief in ‘development’ is dismantled.
Whilst discussing the idea of the end of the development era, way back in October 1989, we were unaware that right at the same time the concept of ‘development’ was about to get a brand-new lease of life. I had gathered with a small group of friends (who eventually became contributors to The Development Dictionary) for what we called a ‘living-room consultation’ in State College, Pennsylvania, to review key concepts of the development discourse. At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, events were building that just a month later brought the Berlin Wall tumbling down.
Like most of our contemporaries, we were blissfully ignorant of the way in which the fall of the Wall would be a historical watershed. In hindsight, though, it has become obvious that those events finally opened the floodgates for transnational market forces to reach the most remote corners of the globe, and as the new era of globalization swung into full force, hopes of increased wealth were unleashed everywhere, providing fresh oxygen for the already flagging development creed.
On the one hand, the globalization period brought economic development full swing. The cold- war divisions faded away, corporations relocated freely across borders, and in many countries politicians as well as populations set their hopes on a Western – style consumer economy. In a rapid advance, a number of newly industrial countries acquired a larger share of economic activity. They have notched up growth rates far higher than those of the old-industrial countries, playing their cards as energy suppliers (United Arab Emirates, Venezuela and Russia), as export platforms (South Korea, Thailand, China) or as sizeable markets (Brazil, China, India). In any event, quite a few Southern countries have broken away from the group of money-poor economies and transformed into a new generation of industrial countries, narrowing the distance that separated them from the rich economies. For them, it is as if President Truman’s promise, at the birth of the development period in 1949, of poor nations catching up with the rich has finally come true.
On the other hand, the globalization period has superseded the development. This is mainly because nation-states have ceased to contain the relevant economic and cultural relations. Instead, goods, money, information, images and even people now flow across frontiers, resulting in the creation of a ‘transnational space’ in which interactions occur as if national spaces did not exist.
Historically, development concentrated on the transition of nation-states from agrarian to industrial societies, with the state conventionally considered to be the main actor, and the national society the main target of development planning. For this reason alone, the concept of development withered away under the influence of transnationalisation. With the state moving out of focus, development looks strangely out of place in the era of globalization.
Development has indeed become denationalized (indeed, globalization can be aptly understood as development without nation-states) and as a result of this shift, development now largely implies the extension of a global middle class, along with the spread of the transnational economic complex, and is no longer about the formation of a national middle class, along with the integration of a national economy.
Seen from this angle, it comes as no surprise that the globalization period has produced a transnational class of winners. Though distributed in different densities around the globe, this class is to be found in every country. In the large cities of the South, glittering office towers, shopping malls with luxury shops, screened–off districts with villas and manicured gardens, not to mention luxury limousines on the highways and a never-ending string of brand advertisements, all signaling the presence of high purchasing power.
Roughly speaking, the transnational consumer class now resides half in the South and half in the North and comprises social groups that, despite their different skin colours, are less and less country-specific and tend to resemble one another more and more in their behaviour and lifestyle models. They shop in similar malls, buy the same hi-tech equipment, watch the same films and TV series, roam around as tourists and dispose of the key instrument of assimilation: money. They are part of a transnational economic complex, which is now developing its markets on a global scale. Nokia supplies consumers everywhere with mobile telephones, Toyota with cars, Sony with televisions, Siemens with refrigerators, Burger King with fast food, and Time Warner with DVDs. Western- style development, to be sure, continued spreading during the globalization period, but boosted the expansion of the transnational economic complex rather than the formation of thriving national societies.
It would be misleading to recognize just the desire for wealth in the scramble of countries and middle classes for income. Though it goes without saying that the time-honoured vices of greed and arrogance are omnipresent drivers in this scramble, it is also true that from the point of view of the South, there is more to it. Behind the craving for skyscrapers and shopping malls, gigawatts and growth rates, there is also the desire for recognition and equity at work. A quick glance at China will illustrate the point.
The ascendancy of China to the ranks of a world power is balm on the wounds inflicted on her during two centuries of colonial humiliation. And the success of the middle class is seen as a source of pride and self- respect that puts the Chinese elite on a par with social elites elsewhere on the globe. The Chinese example brings to the fore what has been part and parcel of development all along ; the desire for justice is intimately linked to the pursuit of development.
Looking at our original 1992 version of The Development Dictionary today, it is striking that we had not really appreciated to what extent the development idea had been charged with hopes for redress and self-affirmation. It certainly was an invention of the West, as we showed at length, but not just an imposition on the rest. On the contrary, as the desire for recognition and equity is framed in terms of the ‘civilisational model’ of the powerful nations, the South has emerged as the staunchest defender of development. Countries in general do not aspire to become more ‘Indian’, more ‘Brazilian’ or for that matter more ‘Islamic’ : instead, assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, they long to achieve industrial modernity.
To be sure, the element of imposition has not been lacking, and self-defense against the hegemonic powers was a key motive in the drive for development, but what once might have been an imposition, more often than not turned into a basis for identity. In this way, however, the right to a cultural self- identity was compromised by accepting the development worldview.
Despite decolonisation in the political sense, which has led to independent states, and despite decolonisation in the economic sense, which has turned some countries into economic powers, a decolonisation of the imagination has not occurred. Quite the opposite, because across the world, hopes for the future are fixed on the right man’s patterns of production and consumption. The longing for greater justice on the part of the South is one reason for the persistence of the development creed, even if neither the planet nor the people of the world can afford its predominance.
As it turns out, the demand for relative justice may easily collide with the right to absolute justice. To put it in political terms: the competitive struggler of the global middle classes about greater shares in income and power is often carried out at the expense of fundamental rights on the part of the poor and powerless in society. As government and business, urban citizens and rural elites mobilise for forging ahead with development, more often than not the land, the living spaces, and the cultural traditions of Indigenous people, small farmers or the urban poor are put under pressure. Freeways cut through neighbourhoods, high-rise buildings displace traditional housing, dams drive tribal groups from their homeland, fish trawlers marginalise local fisherfolk, and supermarkets undercut small retailers.
Economic growth is of a cannibalistic nature: it feeds on both Nature and communities and shifts unpaid costs back to them as well. The shiny side of development is often accompanied by a dark side of displacement and dispossession: this is the reason why economic growth has time and again produced impoverishment next to enrichment. The globally oriented middle classes, however, who push for development in the name of greater equality, largely disregard the plight of the poor. No wonder then that in just about all new-industrial countries social polarisation has been on the rise, along with growth rates, over the last thirty years.
To invoke the right to development for the sake of greater equity is therefore an untrustworthy undertaking. This is particularly the case when governmental and non-governmental representatives call for accelerated growth in the name of helping the poor. Most of the time, they take hostage the poor for garnering relative advantages from the richer countries’ without much of an intention to guarantee the fundamental rights of economically disadvantaged communities. At the core of this cover-up lies the semantic confusion brought about by the concept of development. After all, it can mean just about everything, from putting up skyscrapers to putting in latrines, from drilling for oil to drilling for water, from setting up software industries to setting up tree nurseries.
It is a concept of monumental emptiness, carrying a vaguely positive connotation. For this reason, it can be easily filled with conflicting perspectives. On the one hand, there are those who implicitly identify development with economic growth, calling for more relative equity in GDP. Their use of the word reinforces the hegemony of the economic worldview. On the other hand, there are those who identify development with more rights and resources for the poor and the powerless. Their use of the word calls for de-emphasising growth in favour of greater autonomy of communities. For them, using development speech is self-defeating: it distorts their concern and makes them vulnerable to hijack by false friends. Putting both perspectives into one conceptual shell is a sure recipe for confusion, if not political cover-up.
It is difficult to see how, in any case, the automobile society, high-rise housing, chemical agriculture, or a meat-based food system could be spread right across the globe. The resources required would be too vast, too expensive, and too damaging for local ecosystems and the biosphere. Since the Euro-Atlantic model of wealth has emerged thanks to exceptional conditions, it cannot be generalised to the world at large. In addition, this model requires social exclusion by its very structure, so it is unfit to underpin equity on a global scale. Therefore, unless global apartheid is taken for granted, development-as-growth cannot continue to be a guiding concept of international politics. If there are to be some forms of prosperity for all world citizens, the Euro-Atlantic model of production and consumption patterns will not be fit for justice unless they are resource-light and compatible with living systems. For that reason there will be no equity without ecology in the 21st century.
Cleansing the mind from development certainties requires a conscious effort; therefore, the authors of this book have ventured to expose those key concepts that make up much of the mental furniture of ‘development’. As it emerges, just to name some examples, ‘poverty’ incorporates a materialistic prejudice, ‘equality’ is transmogrified into sameness, ‘standard of living’ reduces the diversity of happiness, ‘needs’ make the dependency trap snap shut, ‘production’ brings forth disvalue next to value, and ‘population’ is nothing but a statistical artefact. Exposing the epoch-specific nature of key concepts liberates the mind and prompts it to find a language that is up to tomorrow’s challenges. The Development Dictionary has been designed to help in this endeavour.
In particular, it will not be possible to reconceptualise equity without recovering the diversity of prosperity. Linking the desire for equity to economic growth has been the conceptual cornerstone of the development age. De-linking the desire for equity from economic growth and re-linking it to community-and culture-based notions of wellbeing will be a cornerstone of post-development age.
This article is printed with permission from Resurgence Magazine, UK.
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