Zed Books Beyond Colonialism, Development and Globalization: Social Movements and Critical Perspectives

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Beyond Colonialism, Development and GlobalizationSocial Movements and Critical PerspectivesBy Dominique Caouette, Dip KapoorZed Books LtdCopyright © 2016 Dominique Caouette and Dip KapoorAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-78360-585-9ContentsAcknowledgements, 1 Beyond Colonialism, Development and Globalization: Social Movements and Critical Perspectives Dominique Caouette and Dip Kapoor, Part I: Indigenous and Peasant Movement Perspectives, 2 Subaltern Social Movements and Development in India: Rural Dispossession, Trans-local Activism and Subaltern Re-visitations Dip Kapoor, 3 Democratic Hopes, Neoliberal Transnational Government(re)ality: Grounded Social Movements and the Defence of Communal Natural Resources in Ghana Jonathan Langdon, 4 Indigenous Movement Politics in Bolivia: Forging New Citizens of a Plurinational and Decolonized State Stéphanie Rousseau, Part II: Acting across Borders, 5 What Are Peasants Saying about Development? La Vía Campesina and Food Sovereignty Annette Aurélie Desmarais, 6 Debunking the Productivist Myth: Food Sovereignty Movements Eric G. Chaurette and Beatriz Oliver, 7 Neoliberal Immigration and Temporary Foreign Worker Programmes in a Time of Economic Crisis: Local/Global Struggles Aziz Choudry, 8 Working for a Day Off: Advocating the Rights of Migrant Women in Southeast Asia Michele Ford and Lenore Lyons, 9 The Alter-globalization Movement: A New Humanism? The Case of the World Social Forum Kléber Ghimire, Part III: Reflections on Critical Knowledge, Culture and Pedagogy, 10 Liberating Development from the Rule of an Episteme Dia Da Costa, 11 Neoliberal Globalization as Settler Colonialism the Remix: Centring Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence Sandy Grande and Naadli (Todd Ormiston), 12 Globalization, Culture and Development: Perspectives on Africa Ali A. Abdi, 13 Learning, Knowledge and Action in Social Movements Brian K. Murphy, 14 Conclusion Dominique Caouette, About the contributors, Index, CHAPTER 1Beyond Colonialism, Development and GlobalizationSocial Movements and Critical PerspectivesDominique Caouette and Dip KapoorIntroductionMore than sixty years ago, US President Harry Truman announced that his nation would undertake the project of improving what he described as underdeveloped countries (Escobar 1995; Parpart and Velmeyer 2004). The idea of a 'developing world' (Ferguson 1994; Rist 2001), later named Third World (Beaudet et al. 2008; Dansereau 2008), captured the imagination and energy of several generations of individuals and institutions dedicated to the project. The international development industry was not just the domain (chasse-gardée) of the West; the Communist bloc also promoted development aid programmes. Although capitalist and socialist-driven aid programmes differed widely in terms of the role of the state and commitments to equality, the notion of political participation and the ultimate goals of development were infused with ideas embedded in the philosophical liberalism of the Enlightenment and of modernity, science and industrial modernization.Although the origins of the ideology of unlimited scientific progress and its intrinsically positivist character go back as far as Greek Antiquity, it is with the onset of the Enlightenment period in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the doctrine of social development took root. As development became institutionalized, it started to embody various corpuses of knowledge, each with its own underlying disciplinary effects, including productivity, homogeneity and division of labour. Such ideas were not detached from the daily realities of the time, as newly consolidated Western European nation states were experiencing social tensions and new problems with increasing industrialization and urbanization. Liberal philosophers and intellectuals, who advised policymakers and the emerging bourgeois regimes, worked to avoid or stabilize social disorder. This period w