Jordan's Skepticim: a brief history (Introduction Part 2)

Now I’m into the thick of my course/programme, trying to read as much as I can on topics range from climate change to structural analysis of conflict, to social movement theory, to the debates over how to measure poverty. This post is all about the skepticism side of the White Man’s Paradox, the realization that I/we can’t save the world and the question: where my skepticism has come from? So as I read for my courses, I’m trying to evaluate the effect on my skepticism. At the end of one of my lectures last week (for a module/course called ‘Citizen-led Development’) I remarked to a colleague: out of my four modules, this is only one where we hear about things that work. And the White Man is notably absent from the picture that is being drawing in the lectures.

This seems to confirm my skepticism. When I look at some of the things the World Bank has done, all of what I know about the IMF (International Monetary Fiend?), the philosophy of USAID, the mammoth, sluggish, cobbled UN, I despair. After reading a lot last week about the politics of climate change, I am now down to zero hope that a global consensus will ever be reached in time to make any difference. The conclusion that I came to in the essay I handed in on Friday is that the poor in the Global South may have to help themselves. The White Men will not agree to cut emissions soon enough, maybe never (I fully acknowledge that countries in the Global South have to cut back as well, though I have no more hope that they will agree any sooner). And the mantra of economic growth only leads to development practices that increase the vulnerability of the very poorest to global climate shocks. Growth, growth, growth. If cancer had a motto, that would be it.

But I digress. I’m supposed to be a critical-thinking professional and avoid taking cheap shots…

Unlike Kurtis, my skepticism has formed after I left Pakistan upon graduation from high school. Growing up, I watched my father and two other White doctors start up a small community health programme in North-Western Pakistan. The project focused primarily on education – helping villagers help themselves with basic sanitation and with pre- and post-natal health and safe home deliveries. The overheads were small, the project was local and most of the staff were from the area. In many respects the project was a success in small scale, sustainable poverty reduction and capacity building (a lecturer recently told us that, under no circumstances, should we use terms without defining them: I just used two – sustainable and capacity building. In retrospect, I still see projects like that, as a beacon of hope, that development (yet to be defined in this blog, I know) can work and that my education may be of some use to someone else.

So what am I, skeptical or hopeful about the prospects for development to work? Ask me tomorrow, and I might know.

Jordan (Manchester)