Colonialism

The simple reason for colonialism was to generate more power for the colonizing countries (European) over the colonized.  Development is a “power relationship” (pg. 26).  To achieve greater power, the colonizers had to use what resources they already had (military) to control other territories.  Not only did they want to control the territories socially (schooling, religion, etc.), but the colonizers needed to control the economies of those territories to inevitably manage the global economy.  At the time colonialism was happening, the European economies were based on industrialization and the non-European territories had a lot of raw material.

• Socio-political rationale for the movement
  • colonizers performed social engineering through economic (forced labor schemes) and cultural development (schooling, and segregation) (pg. 26)
  • colonizers built power through exerting “physical and psychological force… through military conquest of territory and stereotyping the relation between the two cultures” (pg. 27)
• Implicit economic rationale
  • “the extraction of colonial resources facilitated European industrialization” (pg. 25)
  • colonialsim depended on unequal relationships: division of labor and ecological exchanges (pg. 37)
    • “the colonial division of labor stimulated European industrialization [and] forced non-Europeans into primary commodity production” (pg. 31)
    • “industrialism is premised on transforming nature from a regenerative system to mere ‘raw material’” (pg. 31)

Colonialism did not last forever due to the framework it was built upon.  “European development was realized through a racialized global relationship, ‘underdeveloping’ colonial cultures” (pg. 34).  Because there was a “relationship” between colonizers and colonized, a dependency was also present.  Another flaw in the framework was that the process of colonialism was not sequential or linear, meaning the colonized territories would never “catch up” to the colonizers because this system was built upon unequal relationships (division of labor and ecological exchanges).  Since dependency was the main flaw in colonialism, one of the simplest answers to fixing the system would be to create independence amongst nations.

Deconstruction of Colonialism

Territories, both colonized and European, were now seeking independence.  One attempt at avoiding dependence was through the creation of a stronger “nation-state, which offered formal political independence” (pg. 38).  For those who had less power than was necessary to create their own nation-state, they had to mount resistance both militarily and through labor unrest (pg. 40).

• souSocio-political rationale for the movement
  • evacuating the colonial framework that was based on dependency
  • maintaining sovereignty
• Implicit economic rationale
  • development was “the restoration of a capitalist world market to sustain First World wealth” (pg. 45)
  • “economic disparity between the First and Third Worlds generated the vision of development that would energize political and business elites in each world” (pg. 44)

During this period, “the nation-state was to be the framework of the development project.  Nation-states were territorially defined political systems based on the government-citizen relationship that emerged in nineteenth century Europe.  Colonialism exported this political model (with its military shell), framing the politics of the decolonization movement” (pg. 46).  The development project was mainly based on economic growth or measurable material well-being (pg. 47).  But, economic growth is a problematic measuring stick because it obscures inequalities among social groups and classes (pg. 48).

Economic Nationalism

• Socio-political rationale for the movement
  • “The development state organizes economic growth by mobilizing money and people.  It uses individual and corporate taxes, along with other government revenues such as export taxes and sales taxes, to finance public building of transport systems and to finance state enterprises such as steel works and energy exploration.  And it forms coalitions to support its policies” (pg. 51).
• Implicit economic rationale
  • “Just as political nationalism pursued sovereignty for Third World populations, so economic nationalism sought to reverse the colonial division of labor” (pg. 51)

International Framework for Developmentalism

• Socio-political rationale for the movement
  • “The Bretton Woods system was unveiled as a universal and multilateral attempt to promote rising living standards on a global scale” (pg 59)
  • Rising living standards and upward mobility legitimized the development project (pg. 65).
• Implicit economic rationale
  • “The Marshall Plan was a bilateral transfer of billions of dollars to Europe and Japan, serving U.S. geopolitical goals in the Cold War” (pg. 57).
  • “The World Bank’s mandate was to make large-scale loans to states for national infrastrucutural projects such as dams, highways, and power plants” (pg. 59)

Questions

Why and when do certain dependencies begin?

We can easily talk about the U.S. “dependence on foreign oil” and how other countries are getting Americanized by a McDonald’s on every corner and a taste for beef.  But, how do these incredibly massive dependencies *originate and **continue?  With oil, we can point to the invention of the automobile and say that and industrialization developed the reliance.  However, we would have to assume that our reliance on oil was sort of coincidental to cars requiring gasoline.  *Was is all just coincidence?  **Why did we never adapt over these 100 years to build cars that ran on solar power?  Maybe we shouldn’t have built a massive highway system that strengthened our dependency on foreign commodities.  It seems like the world has enjoyed the transport of tea, coffee, sugar, and rice over a long time period and those staples haven’t changed much.  Why not?

Is development linear?

“‘Productivism’ has been a central development theme.  It was promoted heavily by the U.S. land-grant university system, with an extension program geared to a model of commodity-specific research, supporting large, capitalized farmers” (pg. 77).  Michigan State was the pioneer land-grant university established in 1855.  Over 150 years later, do you feel the initial intentions of establishing Michigan State have been carried out and completed and/or do you believe MSU is still continuously trying to achieve the goals of the land-grant establishment? (This question is geared at the discussion of whether or not development is linear, what the goal of development is, if the goal is strictly economic growth, whether the establishment can adapt from commodity-specific research to new frontiers and if those new frontiers have similar or different goals of the initial institution.)

Appendix to Presentation

link to visual chart [here]