POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENT Class meeting days: TBD Class time: TBD Location: TBD Instructor: Ian Bailey Office: 161 Warren Hall Office Hours: TBD Email: Idb6 {at} cornell.edu Course Description: This course engages with key theoretical lineages informing contemporary scholarship in the political sociology of development. Using Karl Polanyi, Antonio Gramsci, and Michele Foucault as theoretical pillars, this seminar focuses on different conceptualizations of power, politics, and social change, and how these conceptualizations inform the study of development. The objectives of the course are for students to 1) grasp the key theoretical and methodological debates in the political sociology of development, 2) develop an historical and relational understanding of development and power, and 3) assess and unpack dominant categories and practices of development scholarship. While the contemporary idea of development emerges out of the post-WWII conjuncture in which projects to rebuild Europe and ‘develop’ (post-) colonial countries led to the institutionalization of international development agencies, this course takes a longer historical view of ‘development’, situating it within the transition to and development of capitalist modernity. While we will interrogate ‘official’ development institutions, practices, discourses and projects, students in this seminar will be expected to critically engage with broader theoretical debates within political sociology (i.e. structure/agency, global/local, etc). The second half of the course emphasizes food, agriculture, ecology, and social movements as they provide a window into historical processes and relations of power undergirding contemporary development practices and experiences. Prerequisites and Course Rationale: This course is not designed to provide a comprehensive or chronological review of development theory. Students are expected to have a strong foundation in classical sociological theory as well as a basic understanding of development theory prior to enrolling in this course. This is an upper level graduate course, which builds on strong theoretical grounding of the program’s core coursework, which includes classical theory, epistemologies, development theory, and research methods. This course provides the opportunity to delve deeper into contemporary debates and approaches to the study of development, broadly speaking. This course, within the broader programmatic goals, should prepare students for their own dissertation proposals and / or for fieldwork concerning issues of development. Learning Objectives: students will be able to: identify and critically assess the main theoretical approaches to development articulate their own theoretical position describe their methodological approach vis-a-vis the study of development integrate key concepts and ideas from class into their own research projects develop a strong comprehension of contemporary development scholarship, and the epistemological and theoretical underpinnings. Course Requirements: This seminar is discussion-based and requires the active participation of class members. Out of courtesy to your colleagues, please thoroughly read all assigned articles. Additionally, you will be required to submit a weekly one-page, single spaced, response paper (please post to Blackboard 24 hours prior to our class meeting time). Your response papers should selectively engage with one or two of the critical issues raised in the week’s readings. Please do not summarize the articles. Lastly, you are required to write a 15-20 page analytic paper engaging one of the central seminar themes (topics must be approved by the instructor). Course Texts: Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power Goldman, Michael. Imperial Nature Elyachar, Julia. Markets of Dispossession Tsing, Anna. Friction J.K. Gibson Graham. Post-Capitalist Politics Escobar, Arturo. Territories of Difference Recommended Texts: Sayer, Derek. 1992. Capitalism and Modernity: An Excursus on Marx and Weber. Cooper, F. and Packard. 1997. International Development and the Social Sciences Rist, Gilbert. 1997. The History of Development: from Western Origins to Global Faith. McMichael, Philip (ed) 2010. Contesting Development: Critical struggles for social change. Summary of assignments There are three main assignments for this course. 1) weekly reading responses are due by 6pm the day before class. I will provide three or four questions from which you can choose one to write a concise, no more than 1pg, response. These responses will be discussed in class and will be graded weekly with a -, , or +, indicating needs improvement, good, and excellent respectively. 2) group presentation and discussion facilitation. At the beginning of each class period two or more students will present a concise summary of the weeks readings, and present a few critical questions for discussion. They will facilitate the class discussion for the first 45 minutes of class. 3) is a final paper in which you will write an essay in response to a set of questions from which you will choose one. These questions are formulated to challenge students to synthesize and put in conversation various themes in the course. Final papers should be no longer than 25pgs and are due on the assigned final exam date (TBD). Grading: Presentations will account for 15% of your overall course grade, participation accounts for 25%, and the final paper accounts for 60% of your grade. Note that your participation grade is assessed from both your contribution to class discussion and also your written reading responses. Format and procedures Class time will be dedicated to discussion of the texts, arguments, and themes of the course. Each week, two or more students will briefly summarize the substantive points of the week’s readings, draw connections to previous readings and raise questions for discussion. These presentations and student facilitation will constitute the first 45 minutes of class. The remainder of class discussion will be focused around the reading questions and student responses. Students are expected to read and be prepared to engage with other students’ responses. As a graduate seminar, I encourage students to draw on their experiences in development and their research interests to richen the conversations. Expectations As a discussion class, participation is absolutely necessary. The strength of this class requires the full preparation of each student and a genuine desire to engage each other in debate and discussion. That being said, it is essential that the classroom environment remains respectful and open. We can disagree, but must do so with respectfulness and in honor of the class. Academic Integrity: All the work you submit in this course must have been written for this course and not another and must originate with you in form and content with all contributory sources fully and specifically acknowledged. Carefully read Cornell’s Code of Academic Integrity. The Code is contained in The Essential Guide to Academic Integrity at Cornell, which is distributed to all new students during orientation. In addition to the Code, the Guide includes Acknowledging the Work of Others, Dealing with Online Sources, Working Collabora- tively, a list of online resources, and tips to avoid cheating. You can view the Guide online at newstudentprograms.cornell.edu/AcademicIntegrity- Pamphlet.pdf. In this course, the normal penalty for a violation of the code is an “F” for the term. Class Schedule Week 1. Introduction: Defining Development The idea of development emerged from Enlightenment notions of progress in Western Europe. However, conceptions of development crystallized during the colonial encounter where Eurocentric ideas of progress, racial and gender hierarchy, and material wealth were forcefully spread around the world. This week examines the historical production of development as a relation of power and selective accounts of the effects of so-called development. Film: Darwin’s Nightmare Rist, Gilbert. 1997. “Definitions of Development.” Ch. 1 in The History of Development. Zed Books, London, UK, pp 8-24. Suggested: -Hart, G. 2001. "Development critiques in the 1990s: culs de sac and promising paths." Progress in Human Geography 25:649-658. -Williams, R. 1983. Development. Pp. 102-4 in Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana Paperbacks. -Crush, J. S. 1995. Introduction: Imagining Development. In Power of Development, Crush ed. London: Routledge. Week 2. Food, Power, and Development: Sweetness and Power Mintz uses sugar as an analytical vehicle to reveal the historical relations and processes constitutive of the ‘modern’ world. His analysis of inside and outside meanings of sugar helps to unmask the interconnections of British industries, the English working class and colonial slave plantations through capitalist development. For Mintz, the rise of sugar consumption is inextricably linked to British imperialism and the ‘underdevelopment’ of colonial economies. Mintz, Sidney. 1985. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Penguin Books, NY. Marx, Karl. 1867. “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof” in Capital, Vol 1 Suggested: -Braudel, F. 1979. Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century Vol I. “The Structures of Everyday Life: The limits of the possible.” Harper & Row Publishers, NY. -Daviron, B. and S. Ponte. 2006. The Coffee Paradox: Global Markets, Commodity Trade and the Elusive Promise of Development. Zed Books. -Talbot, J. 2004. Grounds for Agreement: The Political Economy of the Coffee Commodity Chain. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Week 3. States, Citizens, and Nation Notions of the state, citizen, and nation are prominent analytical categories employed in development scholarship. However, these categories are too often employed in theoretical frameworks unscrupulously, risking the tendency to reify these categories in space and time. This week’s readings challenge reified notions of states, citizens, and nations. They blur the boundaries separating state, economy, and society by historicizing and politicizing their formation. Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities. Chs 1-3. Verso, NY. Corrigan, Philip and Derek Sayer. 1985. “Introduction,” in The Great Arch. English State Formation as Cultural Revolution, eds, Corrigan and Sayer. Abrams, Philip. 1988. “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State.” Journal of Historical Sociology, 1:1 pp. 58-89. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2001. Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of Nineteenth-Century Paradigms 2nd ed. Ch. 5: “Societal Development, or Development of the World-System.” Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Intro, 1-8; and Ch. 3: “Authoritarian High Modernism,” 87-103. Suggested: -Holston, J. 1998. Spaces of Insurgent Citizenship. In L. Sandercock (Ed.), Making the Invisible Visible: A Multicultural Planning History. UC Press: Berkeley. -Souza, M. 2006. “Together with the state, despite the state, against the state: Social movements as ‘critical urban planning’ agents.” City, 10(3). Week 4. The Great Transformation: Politicizing the Market Society In Polanyi’s classic book, he chronicles the rise and fall of 19th Century liberalism exposing the violent implementation of free market capitalism and the political backlash to it. Importantly, he de-naturalizes the ‘market’ by illuminating the violent social and ecological upheaval caused by the commodification of land, labor, and money (what he terms fictitious commodities). However, Polanyi argued that the disembedding tendencies of free market capitalist development provoked a broad-based counter-movement attempting to embed the economy in society, themes we will return to later in the course. Polanyi, Karl. 2001 [1944]. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Times. Beacon Press, NY. Abrams, Philip. 1982. "Explaining Events: A Problem of Method." Pp. 190-226 in Historical Sociology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Suggested: - Lacher, Hannes. 1999. “Embedded Liberalism, Disembedded Markets: Reconceptualising the Pax Americana,” New Political Economy 4, 3. Week 5. Markets of Dispossession: Empowerment debt and Neoliberal disembedding Elyachar’s critical analysis of micro credit projects in Cairo arguably builds upon, yet supersedes Polanyi’s analysis of 19th Century liberal disembedding at a moment of neoliberal hegemony. Similarly, Elyachar’s argument that micro credit projects attempt to commodify the cultural practices of the poor into ‘social capital’ resembles Polanyi’s discussion of fictitious commodification. In what ways, and how, does Elyachar depart from Polanyi? How do they conceptualize development and power? And how are these conceptualizations reflective of the historical conjunctures in which they analyzed development? Julia Elyachar. 2005. Markets of Dispossession. NGOs, Economic Development, and the State in Cairo. Duke University Press, Durham, NC. Marx, Karl. 1859. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Progress Pub, Moscow. Suggested: -Marx, Karl. 1858. “The method of Political Economy.” In The Gundrisse. -Timothy Mitchell, The Rule of Experts, Chapter 7: “The Object of Development,” 209-243. -Harvey, David. 2003. The New Imperialism. Oxford University Press. Week 6. Hegemony, Nature, and Development Through his concept of hegemony, Gramsci incorporated ideological and cultural forms of domination and rule into the arena of power and politics. Goldman employs Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to explore the contradictions of the ‘greening’ of the World Bank. How do particular ideas, practices, and policies become hegemonic such that they become ‘common sense’? In what ways, and how, does the World Bank’s development discourse and knowledge production conceal their underlying agenda? How does the idea of hegemony reconstitute our understanding of power and development? Goldman, Michael. 2005. Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the age of globalization. Yale University Press, New Haven. Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. International Publishers. (Selections) Suggested: -Laclau, E. and C. Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Verso, NY. Ch. 1. “Hegemony: the genealogy of a concept” and Ch. 4 “Hegemony and Radical Democracy” - Burawoy, M. 2003. “For a Sociological Marxism: The Complementary Convergence of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi,’ Politics & Society 31, 2. - Cox, R. 1983. “Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 12, 2. Week 7. The Micro Politics of Development: Governmentality and Power/Knowledge Foucault’s writings on discourse, governmentality, and power/knowledge radically blurred and multiplied the way scholars conceptualized power and relations of rule. While Gramsci discussed how the struggle for ideological control was a key mechanism of domination, Foucault suggested that power can be internalized through moral regulation. His concept of governmentality elaborates the complex forms and relations of domination in modern society, and the strategies and practices by which governments create subjects. Building off this diffused notion of power, Li and Agrawal apply governmentality to the study of development. Foucault, M. 1980. "Truth and Power." Pp. 109-133, Ch 6 in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, edited by M. Foucault. Pantheon Books, NY. Foucault, M. 1991. "Politics and the Study of Discourse." Pp. 53-72 in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, edited by G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. 1991. “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, edited by G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Li, Tania. 2007. The Will To Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics. Ch. 1 Introduction. Duke University Press, Durham, NC. Argrawal, Arjun. 2005. Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects. Chs. 1 and 7. Duke University Press, Durham, NC. Suggested: -Foucault, M. 1972. "Science and Knowledge." Pp. 178-195, Ch 6, in The Archaeology of Knowledge & the Discourse on Language, ed. by M. Foucault. Pantheon Books, NY. -Mitchell, Timothy. 2002. The Rule of Experts. Chs 1, 3, 7 and 9. UC Press, CA. Week 8. Politicizing Development Discourse Building on Foucault, this set of authors interrogate development discourses. As they demonstrate, development discourses serve to legitimize the development industry and interventions through a-historical and depoliticized framings of development. Hall, Stuart. 1996. “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power,” in S. Hall et al. (eds.) Introduction to Modern Societies, Blackwell Pub. NY, pp. 185-225. Ferguson, James. 1994. The Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, Ch 2: “Conceptual apparatus: the constitution of ‘the object of development” pp. 25-73. Cooper, Frederick. 1997. “Modernizing Bureaucrats, Backward Africans and the Development Concept,” in F. Cooper and R. Packard (eds.), International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays in the History and Politics of Knowledge. Pp. 64-92. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa and César A. Rodriguez-Garavito. 2006. “Introduction: Expanding the Economic Canon and Searching for Alternatives to Neoliberal Globalization,” in Another Production is Possible: Beyond the Capitalist Canon, Santos (eds). Verso, NY. Suggested: -Cooper, F. and R. Packard, International Development and the Social Sciences: Ch 1 Intro. Week 9. Re-Centering Food and Agriculture: Contesting Development Narratives Historical narratives of development have devalued agrarian livelihoods as anachronistic in the modern world. However, the global food crisis of 2008 refocused the development industry’s attention on agriculture and food. Meanwhile, agrarian social movements are reframing food and agriculture around the concept of food sovereignty. The competing visions of food and agriculture reveal the material and epistemic crises of development. This set of readings analyzes contemporary discourses and narratives of development and the politics of reframing agriculture in development discourse. Finnemore, Martha. 1997. “Redefining Development at the World Bank.” In Cooper, F. and R. Packard (eds) International Development and the Social Sciences. UC Press, CA. McMichael, Philip. 2009. “Banking on Agriculture: A Review of the World Development Report 2008.” Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 235-246. Amanor, Kojo Sebastian. 2009. “Global Food Chains, African Smallholders and World Bank Governance.” Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 247–262. Duncan, Colin. 1996. The Centrality of Agriculture. Between Humankind and the Rest of Nature. Ch. 1: ‘Agriculture as the problem: replacing the economy in nature and society.’ Friedmann, Harriet. 2000. “What on Earth is the Modern World-System? Food-Getting and Territory in the Modern Era and Beyond,” Journal of World-Systems Research VI (2):480-515. Weis, Tony. 2007. The Global Food Economy. The Battle for the Future of Farming. Conclusion Suggested: -Symposium on the World Development Report 2008, Journal of Agrarian Change, 2009, 9:2. -Marcel Mazoyer and Laurence Roudart. 2006. A History of World Agriculture. From the Neolithic age to the current crisis. -Jack Kloppenburg. 2004. First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology. -Van der Ploeg, Jan Douwe. 2008. The new Peasantries. Earthscan, London, UK. Week 10. Food, Power, and Development: Food Regimes Friedmann and McMichael pioneered food regimes analysis as a way to ‘historicize the global food economy’ and to ‘highlight the central role of food and agriculture in the global political economy.’ As such, food regime analysis uses food as a lens into global political economic processes and power relations, highlighting moments of crisis and transition as expressed through global food relations. Friedmann, Harriet and Philip McMichael. 1989. “Agriculture and the State System. The rise and decline of national agricultures, 1870 to the Present,” Sociologia Ruralis 29(2):93-117. Friedmann, Harriet. 1993. “International political economy of food: a global crisis,” New Left Review 197: 29-57. Araghi, Farshad. 2003. “Food regimes and the production of value: some methodological issues.” Journal of Peasant Studies 30(2):41-70. Friedmann, Harriet. 2005. “From colonialism to green capitalism: social movements and emergence of food regimes.” In F.H. Buttel and P. McMichael, eds, New Directions in the Sociology of Global Development. McMichael, Philip. 2005. “Global development and the corporate food regime.” In F.H. Buttel and P. McMichael, eds, New Directions in the Sociology of Global Development. Suggested: -Special symposium on Food Regimes. 2009. Agriculture and Human Values, Vol. 4. -Philip McMichael. 2009. “A food regime genealogy,” Journal of Peasant Studies 36(1):139-170. Week 11. Rethinking Urban/rural linkages: metabolic relations and development… John Bellamy Foster’s ground-breaking article on Marx’s theory of metabolic rift refocused attention on the spatio-temporal rupture between capitalist production and distribution and natural/ecological cycles. The theory of metabolic rift has become a prominent approach to understanding contemporary social and ecological crises. In what ways, and how does the theory of metabolic rift reformulate and/or transcend the urban/rural binary? How might we rethink development through the lens of metabolic relationships? This weeks readings explicitly or implicitly deal with the deepening of the metabolic rift and strategies for mending the metabolic rift. Foster, John Bellamy. 1999. “Marx’s Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations for Environmental Sociology,” American Journal of Sociology 105, 366-405. Arraghi, Farshad. 2000. “The Great Global Enclosure of Our Times,” in Magdoff et al, Hungry for Profit: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food and Environment, 145-160. Wittman, Hannah. 2009. “Reworking the metabolic rift: La Vía Campesina, agrarian citizenship, and food sovereignty.” Journal of Peasant Studies, 36:4, pp. 819-840. Harvey, David. 1996. “Possible Urban Worlds.” In Justice, Nature & the Geography of Difference. Blackwell publishing, Oxford, UK. Kinna, Ruth. 2007. “Fields of Vision: Kropotkin and Revolutionary Change.” Project Muse: SubStance, Issue 113 (Volume 36, Number 2) pp. 67-86. Suggested: -Bunker, S. 1985. Underdeveloping the Amazon. University of Chicago Press, IL. -Cronon, W. 1991. Nature’s Metropolis. W.W. Norton & Company, NY -Walker, Richard. 2004. The Conquest of Bread. The New Press, NY. -Van der Ploeg, Jan Douwe. 2008. The new Peasantries. Earthscan, London, UK. -Vasudevan, A., C. McFarlane, and A. Jeffrey. 2008. “Spaces of Enclosure.” Geoforum, 39. Week 12. Relocalization I: Alternative Economies, Production, and Food Systems Gibson-Graham challenge totalizing representations of capitalism and globalization. Shifting ontological perspective, they argue, reveals a diversity of economic activity and opens spaces for alternative futures. Their theory of action consists of a ‘politics of language (challenging totalizing representations), of the subject (reconstituting post-capitalist subjectivities), and of collective action (a politics of place and difference)’. Food system localization projects are illustrative of Gibson-Grahams idea of ‘building community economies,’ including the racial, gender, and class politics of place (and food). How does Gibson-Graham’s notion of postcapitalist politics reframe the meaning and goals of development? How might Gibson-Graham’s reformulation of politics inform food system localization projects? Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2006. A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Introduction, Chs. 2, 4, 6, and 7. Hinrichs, Claire C. 2003. “The practice and politics of food system localization.” Journal of Rural Studies 19: 33–45. Fonte, Maria. 2008. “Knowledge, Food and Place: A Way of Producing, a Way of Knowing,” Sociologia Ruralis 48(3): 201-222. Allen, Patricia. 2010. “Realizing justice in local food systems.” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 3: 295–308 Gottlieb, Robert and Anupama Joshi. 2010. “Growing Justice.” In Food Justice. MIT Press. Suggested readings on the politics of urban space: -Lefebvre, H. 1996. The Right to the City. In E. Kofman and E. Lebas (eds.), Writings on Cities by Henri Lefebvre. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing. Pp. 147-159. -Purcell, M. 2002. Excavating Lefebvre: The right to the city and its urban politics of the inhabitant. GeoJournal, 58: 99–108. -Harvey, D. 2008. The Right to the City. New Left Review, 53: 24-39. -Holder, J. B. and T. Flessas. 2008. “Emerging Commons.” Social & Legal Studies, 17(3). Week 13. Global/Local I: Global Connections and Social Movements The last two week’s readings problematize the global/local binary through analyses of global connections, place-based politics, and epistemologies of difference. Herein we explore how the global and local are mutually constituted through cultural processes such as the travel and ‘touch down’ of universal narratives, the production of political subjectivities premised on the valorization of difference, and movements of domination, resistance, and opposition. Though capitalism figures prominently in both Tsing and Escobar’s ethnographic accounts of development, the authors go to great lengths to demonstrate how capitalist development is neither a totalizing nor uniform process. Santos et al build on this premise by illuminating the ways in which alternative epistemologies premised on difference pose challenges to capitalist social relations and possibilities for global justice and emancipation. Tsing, Anna. 2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton University Press. Preface, introduction, ch. 7, and Coda. Escobar, Arturo. 2008. Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. Duke University Press. introduction, chs. 2, 3, 6 (capital, nature, networks). Suggested: -Escobar, Arturo. 1992. “Imagining a Post-Development Era? Critical Thought, Development and Social Movements.” Social Text, No 31/32, pp 20-56. Week 14. Global/Local II: Territories of Difference Escobar, Arturo. 2008. Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. Duke University Press. Chs. 1, 4, and 5 and conclusion (place, development, identity). Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, J. A. Nunes, and M. P. Meneses. 2007. “Introduction: Opening Up the Canon of Knowledge and Recognition of Difference.” In Another Knowledge is Possible. Verso, NY. Suggested: -Martinez-Alier, J. 2000. Environmentalism of the Poor.