Global Justice Education
Upside Down World
NUIG DE Day 2015
Vicky Donnelly
education@galwayowc.org
Development Education Quiz
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Which country has the lowest representation for women in parliament: Rwanda,
Ireland or Afghanistan?
•
Which country beginning with S______ only granted full voting rights to all women in
1989?
•
At just over 1%, which country has the lowest acceptance rate of refugee applications in
the EU?
•
What is the average life expectancy in Ireland?
•
UN estimate cost of providing clean water for all: $30 billion. How much is spent
annually on bottled water? $__
•
True or False: The ‘Developed World’ throws out enough food every day to feed every
hungry person in the world.
•
What was the most valuable traded item in 15th centuary Timbuktu?
No Easy Answers…
•
Ireland (16%) has the lowest representation for women in parliament:
Rwanda (64%) ; Afghanistan (28%) http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SG.GEN.PARL.ZS
•
Switzerland granted full voting rights to women in all local Canton elections by 1989.
•
At just over 1%, which country has the lowest acceptance rate of refugee applications in the EU? Ireland
•
Average life expectancy in Ireland is 80.5 years. For Traveller men it is 61, and 70 for Traveller women.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/travellers-life-expectancy-still-lags-far-behind-26677596.html
•
UN estimate cost of providing clean water for all: $30 billion. $ 100bn spent annually on bottled water.
•
True – three times over: According to Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, the ‘Developed World’
throws out three times enough food every day to feed every hungry person in the world.
•
Books were the most valuable traded item in 15th century Timbuktu.
Founded in the 5th century, by the15th and 16th centuries Timbuktu was an important centre for the diffusion of Islamic culture with
the University of Sankore, with 180 schools and 25,000 students. It was also a crossroads and an important market place where the
trading of manuscripts was negotiated.
80:20
80:20
80:20
Upside Down World
Development Education
• Addresses global concerns, such as the root
causes of poverty, inequality, conflict and
environmental issues…
• Assumes a level of interconnectedness – and
involves an analysis of power
• Builds critical awareness, recognising and
learning from diverse forms of knowledge
• Encourages informed solidarity action
If the connections between power relations,
knowledge production and inequalities are
overlooked, the result is often education practices
that are ethnocentric (projecting one view as
universal), depoliticised (foreclosing their own
ideological location), paternalistic (seeking
affirmation of superiority through the provision of
help to other people), and hegemonic (using and
benefiting from unequal relations of power).
Vanessa de Oliverira Andreotti
Introduction to Learning to Read the World: Teaching and Learning about Global Citizenship and
International Development in Post-Primary Schools. Audrey Bryan and Meliosa Bracken (2011)
Colonial Legacies
• When Belgium left the Congo, a total of three Congolese
people held positions of responsibility in government.
• When Great Britain left Tanzania, the county had but two
engineers and twelve doctors.
• When Spain left Western Sahara, the country had one
doctor, one lawyer and one specialist in commerce.
• When Portugal left Mozambique, the county had a 99%
illiteracy rate, not a single high school graduate, and no
university.
(Galaeno, Mirrors, pg.329)
‘Underdevelopment’
Legitimising Exploitation and the invention of ‘Race’
(Chinua Achebe’s ‘good excuse’)
“It is always useful to think badly about people one
has exploited or plans to exploit”.
Professor James W. Loewen (1995): Lies My Teacher Told Me The New Press: New York
Our analysis of the problem
determines the solutions we pursue.
Focus on symptoms or root
causes?
Samir Amin: http://monthlyreview.org/2006/03/01/themillennium-development-goals-a-critique-from-thesouth
http://www.stwr.org/poverty-inequality/critiquing-themillennium-development-goals.html#Sogge
Activity: Language of Development
•
Critical Discourse Analysis (kind of…)
What terms do we use to describe this 80:20 divide?
First World / Third World – Developed / Developing – Rich/Poor
•
•
•
•
Language is part of how we bring the world into being, and how that world is
reproduced
Analysis of text (written or spoken)
Discourse practice – production, distribution and consumption.
Macro-analysis – how broader societal context affects our engagement with the
text.
See the work of Ruth Wodak for (much) more on CDA.
Activity: Language of Development
First World / Third World
Developed / Developing
[Under Developed; Undeveloped]
Rich / Poor
Global South / Global North
Majority / Minority World
Activity: Language of Development
• What images or associations come to mind?
• What is being measured – what are the criteria?
What values and assumptions lie behind these terms?
• Do you know the origins of these terms?
• How do the labels like developed/underdeveloped
affect social relations?
Terminology
First World / Third World
Cold war politics – decolonisation – ‘third way’
• Context of Anti-Colonial struggles
• Cold War interests
• Bretton Woods – world economic order
Developed / Developing
• US President Truman’s inaugural speech reference to
the ‘underdeveloped’ world set in motion the
imposition of a linear, universal model of
development.
• Traditionally measured in GDP (Gross Domestic
Product – goods and services produced in a country)
and GNP (GDP + net earnings from overseas) per
capita.
• Suggests a universal model of development...that we
are all on, and should follow, the one path.
• Suggests that some regions have ‘arrived’ while
others are only catching up.
• Strong associations with wealth markers - ‘growth’
=‘development’.
• How many Planet Earths would be needed…?
Terminology
Rich / Poor –
“Poverty [is] used to define whole peoples, not according
to what the are and want to be but according to what
they lack and are expected (by the ‘Rich’) to become.
There [is] no mention of the idea that poverty might
result from oppression and thus demand liberation. Or
that a culture of sufficiency might be essential for long
term survival. Or even that a culture might direct its
energies towards spheres other than the economic.”
Wolfgang Sachs (1999)
Measuring Development
• Rich / Poor
Wealth measures
Assumption that economic wealth = Development
Measures of Absolute poverty based on $1.25 per day
(World Bank) – 1.4 billion people.
• Who is an ‘average person’?
• Takes account of inequality?
• Counts the informal economy or unpaid work?
Human Development Index
Aggregate measure – IHDI (2010)
• Life expectancy
• Education (literacy…school completion 2010)
• GNI. Purchasing power in Parity Dollars (2010)
• More focussed on people
• Social Justice perspectives
Terminology
Global North / Global South
• 1980s attempt to find a less value-laden term
than First world/Third World or
Developed/Developing.
• While it may serve that function, it is also
geographically skewed (places Australia and New
Zealand are in the ‘Global North’)
• Apolitical: suggests that poverty may be an
accident of geography – rather than an outcome
of exploitation
Terminology
• Majority / Minority World
• 1980s attempt to find a less value-laden term
than First world/Third World or
Developed/Developing.
• Potentially a more democratic term in that it
draws attention to the demographics of global
inequality.
Terminology
Vandana Shiva insists on stripping away the
neutral language of science to reveal Third
World development policy as the global twin
of the industrial revolution. (Staying Alive, 2010)
Poverty is political. Politics is relational.
“‘Developing countries’ is the name
that experts use to designate
countries trampled by someone
else’s development.”
Eduardo Galeano
Marcus Arruda:
Brazilian economist and
champion of popular
education.
Our
fundamental
confusion
between
GROWTH and
Development
Endless Growth
We live within “a system of transformation and of self-expansion. In order to
pursue the [mythical] goal of endless growth, it must constantly seek out new
sites of accumulation, and commodify forms of social activity and processes
that previously existed outside of the market. “
•
Immanuel Wallerstein (2011) Historical Capitalism London: Verso.
Conor McCabe (UCD, School of Social Justice) ‘Economics As If People Really Matter’ http://dublinopinion.com/2013/02/18/economics-as-if-people-really-mattered-galway-learning-circle-19-feb-10-april-introduction/
a system “…in fundamental conflict
with nature.”
(Clow 1994; Foster 2002) (pg. 215) in Veltmeyer, Henry (ed) 2011 The Critical
Development Studies Handbook: Tools for Change London:Pluto Press
Anti–Development
• Development “created a space where only
certain things could be said, or even
imagined.” Escobar (1997)
• Development discourse and practice shaped
by the West in its interests – cannot be an
emancipatory process for the South as it
erases ‘local’ social and cultural contexts and
replaces them with a globalised norm.
80:20
•How do we describe and
define development?
•What are our criteria?
5 : 50 : 500
5 : 50 : 500
• $5bn voluntary overseas
aid to Global South
5 : 50 : 500
$5 billion voluntary overseas
aid to Global South
$50 billion official overseas aid
5 : 50 : 500
•$500 billion
• Unfair Trade
• Tax Injustice
• Illegitimate Debt
TRADE
4%
Growers
79%
Mulitnational traders
and Retailers
TAX JUSCICE
The Swiss branch of HSBC
bank cost Tanzania, Senegal
and the Ivory Coast over
30% of their national health
budgets.
In 2011, the United Nations
Economic Commission for
Africa estimated the cost of
IFFs to the continent at $50
billion each year
http://www.euractiv.com/sections/developmentpolicy/swiss-leaks-catastrophic-african-economies312035
DEBT JUSTICE
‘There’s a hole in the bucket…’
The world’s poorest countries
pay more that $100 million in
debt repayments each day.
Debt: Mad, bad and dangerous
• The Bataan nuclear power
plant in the Phillipines was
built by the US company
Westinghouse
• On an earthquake fault-line
• At the foot of a volcano
• 30 years on, the plant
remains unused.
• Westinghouse got paid and
the Filipino people had to
pay $1.5 billion debt for the
plant’s construction
“Did we ever live above our means?”
“No.”
“ Well, it seems someone else did it for us.”
Real life, being rather more messy…
8: 105: 790
5 : 50 : 500
www.developomenteducation.ie
Tax Justice Network
Estimates there may be $20 trillion hidden in tax
havens, like the Caymen Islands, and…
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d5FZU64Bnw
Prezi : http://www.tackletaxhavens.com/
Podcasts : http://www.tackletaxhavens.com/taxcast/
Biggest donors? Migrant workers
2002 -2006
Aid $84 bn
Remittances $167 bn
5 : 50 : 500
www.developomenteducation.ie
“There Is No Alternative”
We have reached a stage where it is
easier to think of the total annihilation of
humanity than to imagine a change in the
organisation of a manifestly unjust and
destructive society. What can we do?
John Holloway (2010,pg. 7)
TINA
“There Is No Alternative”
Estimated cost of achieving the MDGS
in all countries (projected 2015):
•
http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/reports/costs_benefits2.htm
$189 Billion
Estimated cost of bailing out private
banking losses in Europe
(October 2007 – DEC 2013)
$721 Billion
Estimated cost of achieving
the MDGS in all countries
(projected 2015)
Estimated cost of bailing out
private banking losses in
Europe
(October 2007 – DEC 2013)
$189 Billion
$721
Billion
http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/reports/costs_benefits2.htm
Michael Taft: Notes On the Front
15 January 2013
http://notesonthefront.typepad.com/politicaleconomy/2013/01/with-considerable-speculation-about-an-impending-deal-on-bank-debt-with-the-taoiseach-and-the-german-chancellor-jointly-sta.html
Ireland makes up 0.9 %of
the EU population
The Irish economy makes
up 1.2 % of EU GDP
People in Ireland have
paid 42 % of the
total cost of the
European banking crisis
No Alternatives?
NAMA: 192 debtors with debts of €62bn
“a relatively small number of people chasing the
same assets…like a Ponzi scheme.”
Over borrowing and over lending. While the
economy was growing at 8 or 9% per annum, bank
lending grew by 35 – 45%
Brendan Mc Donagh, Chief Executive of NAMA, in evidence to the PAC 26/10/11
Quoted by Conor McCabe
http://www.slideshare.net/conormccabe/irish-water-bond-and-class-in-ireland
Terminology
Room for more…
Always evolving and tends to reflect dominant
values and interests.
Some suggestions from previous groups for
alternaives:
• Colonised and Coloniser
• High Consumption and Low Consumption
• Developing and Over-Developed
Whose Voice Are We Listening To?
Third World Network: provides reports and analysis on a range of
development issues; trade justice, climate change,. You can find information
about all the latest international climate change negotiations.
http://www.twnside.org.sg/
Focus on the Global South: promotes ‘deglobalisation’ and building
alternatives. “Research and analytical writing, debates, seminars and
conferences, education and study programs, network building, international
solidarity and fact-finding missions, direct action and parliamentary
testimonials, social forums, joint campaigns and media.
http://focusweb.org
Kicking Away the Ladder (2002)
Bad Samaritans (2007)
Ha Joon Chang tackles the
double standards that deny
‘developing countries’ the
opportunity to apply the
same interventionist policies
that, he argues all major
‘developed countries’ used
to build their wealth.
Criticises the WTO, IMF and
World Bank for maintaining
this line.
Alternative Perspectives on ‘Growth’
Vandana Shiva’s talk Growth = Poverty explores the
limits of growth, the flawed abstraction of GDP, and
alternative ways of measuring human development.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M3WJQbnHKc
Southern Alternatives series: Views of 8 activists and thinkers from the Global South, from the Philippines to
Colombia, Zimbabwe to India, detailing a vision of an alternative European trade policy, based on principles of
sustainability, democracy, flexibility, human rights, transparency and poverty eradication. Covers access to
water, agriculture, raw materials, and regional integration and more.
Full Report: http://comhlamh.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/AlternativetradebriefingWEB.pdf
Dead Aid:
Why Aid is Not Working and How there Is Another Way For Africa (2009)
Dambisa Moyo argues that aid
“reduces millions of people, in
the West’s eyes, to a childlike
state of beggary.”
Links to Corruption
Need to concentrate on Trade
and Investment policies.*
*From perspective of Goldman Sachs.
Wangari Maathai
“It's the little things citizens do. That's what will
make the difference.
My little thing is planting trees.”
Resources
Some of the Resources mentioned in this workshop:
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Professor James W. Loewen (1995): Lies My Teacher Told Me (Chapter 2: The True Importance of Christopher Columbus). The
New Press: New York
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Eduardo Galaeno : Upside Down World; Mirrors
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5:50:500 www.developmenteducation.ie
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Aamer Rahman (Fear of a Brown Planet) - Reverse Racism
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M&feature=share
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Walter Rodney (1982): How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Howard University Press: Washington, DC
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Basil Davidson (1966): Africa in History, Phoenix Press: London
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‘Focus: Action for Global Justice.’ www.comhlamh.org
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Thomas Sankara speech at OAU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx2PoOY3ADo
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‘Through Other Eyes: Learning to Read the World’ www.throughothereyes .org.uk (Open access study programme)
http://myuminfo.umanitoba.ca/Documents/2233/toe.pdf
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/aug/16/haiti-france
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Henry Veltmeyer (Ed) The Critical Development Studies Handbook
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Wealth Inequality in America, Politizane.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
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Opens Space for Dialogue and Enquiry
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http://movement.deeep.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/OSDEresourcepack.pdf
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WORLDWISE: LINKING AND LEARNING: A CLASSROOM TRANSITION UNIT RESOURCE PACK
http://www.developmenteducation.ie/resources/development-education/linking-and-learning-a-classroom-transition-unitresource-pack.html
Stay in touch...
Vicky Donnelly
education@galwayowc.org
www.galwayowc.org