defenders of global south development

After all the discussion of globalization and how it affects the global south, one should wonder how long has the globalization process been into play. Some say it’s a 500 year process while others says it’s a 5000 year process, but Anthony Giddens is one who identifies globalization as, “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa”, thereby changing all aspects of our everyday life. Do you agree with Giddens’ stance? Or Thomas Klak for example who states that globalization is a 500 year process. According to Klak he stated that the term globalization gives the illusion of a “global village” to which all belong, but, in fact, the countries of Western Europe, North America, and Japan derive most of the benefits from prevailing global economic patterns, marginalizing the vast majority of humanity. Niche markets and global commodity chains today provide new details to economic exchange, but the end results duplicate the legacies of the exports of old — widening gaps in wealth and power between Core and Periphery. Yes! He said it! The complete opposite of what Giddens was saying right? Which side do you believe? Who do you choose? Do you believe that globalization is in fact a 500 yea process or is it what Giddens says it is? To add to Klak’s stance is Kelvin Singh who in his article said ” the process of globalization is not as new as current economic literature on the subject suggests. Rather it has been an ongoing process initiated five hundred years ago with the Portuguese discovery of the Cape of Good Hope route to India and Spanish discovery of the transatlantic route to Las Indias and the Americas.” again, who do you choose? Which of the definitions make sense to you? Is globalization really a 500 year process? When did it begin? Has it ended? Where are we in the process?

Thomas Klak, ed. Globalization and Neoliberalism: The Caribbean Context. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998 

 

Singh, K. (2002) Globalisation and the Caribbean: A Five Hundred-year Perspective. In Ramsaran, R. ed Caribbean Survival and the Global Challenge, Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston. 

A.M.O

Is the World Bank genuinely interested in the development of ‘third world countries’ ?

Take a moment and look at this video.

S.A

The reality is that for over 20 years, the developing world has been adjusting to the agendas of the IMF and the World Bank. In the 1980s the IMF and the World Bank became the principal institutional mechanisms by which developing countries unable to stabilize their external account were forced to ‘adjust’ their policy and institutional framework to the prescriptions of the international lending agencies and by extension the first world.

In the sovereign commonwealth state of Jamaica, there were drastic policy reforms in the 1980’s due to the conditionalities under which loans given to them by the IMF were granted. The island’s relations with the IMF provided badly needed balance-of-payments support, and stimulated renewed investor confidence in the island. With the signing of a US$650-million loan in April 1981, Jamaica became the number-one per capita recipient of IMF lending in the world. The government signed three more agreements with the Fund through 1987 on relatively favorable terms. IMF lending, however, entailed economic policy conditionalities and austerity measures. As in the case of IMF funding, the structural adjustment loans of the World Bank included economic policy reform conditions that Jamaica had to meet prior to obtaining further disbursements.  These conditions included lower tariffs on imports and tighter monetary policy, the devaluation of the Jamaican dollar, a lift on import and export restrictions, decrease in public spending, the removal price controls and state subsidies and a reduction in the size of the public sector. The rigorous implementation of the policies did not however lead to the expected results in productivity and efficiency.

In the case of Trinidad and Tobago there was a tightening of government expenditure together with improved management of expenditure and investment, Value Added Tax (VAT) was implemented and there was widespread restructuring, divestment and liquidation of a number of state owned enterprises. These reforms were implemented almost simultaneously with a world-wide move towards trade liberalization and a global economy.

Although these were a set of common policies and prescriptions imported to the Caribbean for the express purpose of developing the region, the actual outcomes, rate of success and their selective application in different territories were largely determined by the domestic social, political and economic environments.

Like so many other countries that entered into agreements with these international  lending bodies, their economic standing has not only not increased but moreover have fallen into much deeper liability than was their initial standing. With the case of Jamaica, the IMF rejected their proposal for a short term lending plan to help ease the economic strain but only agreed to a long term developmental loan under highly skewed conditionalities and restrictions; sometimes appearing to question the sovereignty of the state. The national debt stood at 800 million in 1970’s and by the end of the 1980’s it stood at a cool 4 billion. Caricom as a whole spent nearly 1,500 million US dollars on imported food in 2004; compared to just over $1,000 million in 1995. Ironically in most regions, the same policies set out in theory to develop these 3^rd world economies many times lead to them being significantly more indebted and dependent on the metropole with negative growth in GDP and  deficit balances of trade. The current system of global economics and politics has opened up the Caribbean to exogenous shocks and forced them to compete in a market in which the region is very much outclassed by the developed world. In sports such as boxing, they make it structurally impossible for mismatched actors to compete, with weight differentiation as small as two pounds within classes yet by requesting that the 3^rd world economies deregulate and liberalize their policies, these states are being forced to compete in a skewed system neither of their making nor for their benefit.

X.E

S.B

“First, people should open their eyes to see structural sin,which is the very existence of a First and Third world. As long as there’s a First World, there won’t be peace because there won’t be justice or sharing. (Pedro Casaldaliga, p. 243)

Puleo,Mev. “The Struggle is One: Voices and Visions of Liberation”. State University of New York Press. Albany.1994

E.C

http://mindythings.tumblr.com/post/97687832266/please-help-the-garment-workers-in-bangladesh-the Read More

S.B

The fundamental basis of the concept of the Third World arose during the Cold War as a means of differentiation between NATO (1^st World), the communist bloc (2^nd World) and the non-aligned countries; Africa, Asia and Latin American and Caribbean region. The current internationally recognized, but not officially defined distinction classes the developed capitalist industrial countries (aligned with the USA), the former communist-socialist industrial states (Eastern bloc and Soviet influenced) and all the other countries (Africa, Asia, Caribbean and Latin America) as first, second and third world respectively. Despite the multitude of historical, cultural, economic, social and political differences within the societies, as well as the bitter taste of the colonial past, it has been the practice and pattern of third world nations to import and implement the prescriptions of the 1^st world capitalist ideology in their bid towards development. Whether due to conviction, coercion, desperation or the absence of viable alternatives.

In “Reclaiming Development; Independent Thought and Caribbean Community”, Kari Levitt suggests that it’s time for developing nations to reclaim their right to development and progress and their right to engage in global politics and economy on their own terms as is the right of any sovereign nation. “There is a crying need for creative thinking and new initiatives to protect the gains of development from devastation by financial hurricanes fed by institutional investors who freely move funds in and out of countries at the tap of a keyboard with no responsibility for the impact of their operations on host countries.” [1]Levitt notes that there is a fundamental need for 3^rd world societies to severe their intellectual affair with imported mismatch ideologies and policies, not in its entirety but in so much as they can comprehensively assess and differentiate between the relevant, irrelevant, beneficial and inevitably destructive. An attempt at critical independent thought was made by the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group. The members of the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group were primarily Latin-American scholars in the USA. Despite their attempt at producing a radical and alternative knowledge, they reproduced the epistemic schema of Area Studies in the United State. It is important here to distinguish the “epistemic location” from the “social location. Theory was still located in the North while the subjects to be studied are located in the South. (Dussel 1977) reminded us that we always speak from a particular location in the power structures… And therein lies a central impediment to Caribbean development.

[1] Levitt K. Reclaiming the right to development p387.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Levitt K. “Reclaiming Development: Independent Thought and Caribbean Community”

Understanding Caribbean Governance Challenges- Reader for UNDP Capacity Building Programme for Youth in Governance- 2007, 100 pages

Grosfoguel, Ramón, Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality

X.E

E.C & S.B

E.C & S.B