*Topicality/Definitions Democracy Promotion Includes Military Intervention
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AT: EscobarESCOBAR’S K IS TOTALIZING AND ENTRENCHES NEGATIVE REPRESENTATIONS OF AID RECIPIENTS Edward Ramsamy, Africana Studies Professor-Rutgers, 2006, The World Bank and Urban Development, p. 15-6 However, I contend that there is an air of déjà vu around many of Escobar’s criticisms of the project of development. Echoing Horkheimer and Adorno’s (1984) critique of the project of modernity, developmentalism is questioned for its evolutionary assumptions, its optimism about the possibility for solving global social problems through the expansion of production, its faith in modern science and technology, its reliance on experts, and its insensitivity to cultural diversity. In this regard, Escobar’s critique, contrary to its own claims and intentions, reads like a modernist critique of a modernist project because it lacks originality in spite of an allegedly “postmodernist” point of departure. Ironically, the postmodernist approach does not acknowledge that it reproduces the very discourses of modernity it critiques when it conceptually totalizes (in spite of the postmodernist taboo against totalizing) and represents “development” as being deployed by the powerful West against the powerless Third World. Not surprisingly, the modernist propensity toward determinism is evident in the postmodernist reification of development discourse as all-powerful in its capacity to organize the reality of the Third World. Like dependency theorists, postmodernists stress the negative consequences of the Third World’s linkages with the West, thereby dualizing the relationship.
Edward Ramsamy, Africana Studies Professor-Rutgers, 2006, The World Bank and Urban Development, p. 16 Methodologically, also, in spite of consciously distancing itself from “ideology,” discourse analysis via deconstruction mimes and mimics the historical materialist theories of ideology that came of age with Marx, which were later interpreted through language as a medium of action by which thinkers such as Thompson (1984) and Habermas (1982). “Discourse” also resembles the idea of hegemony as development by Gramsci. Echoing Gramsci, Escobar considers development as a “space” in which “only certain things could be said and even imagined.” He then combines the articulation of ideas, institutions, practices, and changing historical realities into a unified discursive system. However, “discourse” does not capture the nuances of hegemony and ideology or their potential for praxis because it is, unlike hegemony and ideology, disconnected from critiques or other spheres of life, such as the economic.
Edward Ramsamy, Africana Studies Professor-Rutgers, 2006, The World Bank and Urban Development, p. 17-8 Foucault’s ideas, particularly his perspectives on the state and power, deserve attention here because they constitute the cornerstone of Escobar’s thesis. The exercise of power has traditionally been conceptualized in terms of either the actions of individual or institutional agents or the effects of structures or systems. Weber, for example, conceptualizes the articulation of power relations as “systems of domination” and the “state bureaucracy.” For Marx, power is rooted in the economic structure of society. Foucault’s conception of power significantly departs from these views in that he calls for the close scrutiny of the “micro-physics of power relations” in different localities, contexts, and social situations. Such a shift led Foucault to conclude that there is an intimate relationship between systems of knowledge (discourses) that codify techniques and practices for the exercise of social control, on one hand, and domination within particular localized contexts, independent of any systematic strategy of class domination, on the other hand. The prison, the asylum, the hospital, and the university, for Foucault, are sites where dispersed and piecemeal organization of power is built up. However, what happens at each site cannot be understood by appealing to some overarching theory. For Said, Foucault lacks: “something resembling Gramsci’s analyses of hegemony, historical blocs, ensembles of relationship done from the perspective of an engaged political worker for whom the fascinated description of exercised power is never a substitute for trying to change power relationships within society.” (Said 1983: 222) Because he draws so heavily from Foucault, Escobar’s own ideas fail to empower the very “victims” of the discourse of development. Even as he claims to speak on their behalf, he strips them of whatever agency they might yet possess. AT: “Partnership” Discourse Bad“PARTNERSHIP DISCOURSE” NOT A CONSPIRACY TO MASK EVIL INTENTIONS Maria Eriksson Baaz, Goteborg University-Department of Peace and Development-Researcher, 2005, The Paternalism of Partnership: a postcolonial reading of identity in development aid, p. 8-9 “The development industry,” although increasingly homogenized, is still too diversified and heteroegenous to harbor a coordinated conspiracy (a point to which I return). Moreover, assessing intentions is a much more complicated task than comparing policy with outcomes, which seems to be the method used by some critics. As Ray Kiely (1999:37) contends while commenting on Arturo Escobar’s book Encountering Development, it is one thing to accept that development practitioners are inefficient, but post-development texts often rest on “unsubstantiated assumptions about development practitioners and how the achieve their goals.” In order to understand the workings and outcomes of development interventions there is a need to separate intentions from outcomes. That the partnership policy is poorly reflected in practice cannot be taken as the pretext for a conspiracy—that partnership was never intended. This could only be assumed if one accepts the rationalist mainstream model of development intervention, according to which development interventions proceed smoothly from policy and implementations to outcomes. As several researchers have shown, this model is as simplistic in development as it is elsewhere. This perspective downplays not only power inequalities and conflicts of interest but also the process of translation of hybridization – that is, the ways in which policies and concepts are appropriated and reinterpreted by different actors in the process (see Chapters 2 and 3). Such an intentional and conspiratorial reading also masks another thing, namely that discourses are not closed systems but open-ended and related to other discourses. The intersection between discourses of partnership and sustainability should not necessarily be seen as a strange phenomenon hiding unambiguous true intentions. It can simply be seen as a reflection of the open-ended nature of discourses and also as an example of how concepts are provided with different meanings in different discursive contexts. 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