Freedom to Aspire

Development is dead. I’m trying to be a good academic and cite everything I quote, but I can’t remember who said that, or, in fact, if anyone put it quite that way. But around the late 80s and early 90s at a time in Development history called, optimistically, the Impasse, that was the consensus of many. Someone else has commented that development studies nearly didn’t make it into the 21st Century. There’s even a development school known as post-Development. They basically say that Development should be stopped altogether. But the next question is: then what?

And why do I spell Development with a capital D? By Development, I mean the large-scale international effort by rich countries to help poor countries get to where the rich countries are in terms of GDP, industrialization, material standard of living, etc. Development has been a massive project, starting, effectively, after WWII with the Marshall Plan. The US injected (development studies loves the word injected, usually coupled with the word ‘cash’ as I will do after this next parenthesis) cash into the European and Japanese economies. The amount of cash was staggering. The US did it for two reasons, because they felt bad for nearly obliterating Japan and bombing the hell out of (or maybe into) Germany and (I think more importantly) because they knew that if Europe did not recover economically, neither would the US.

With the Marshall Plan, money seemed to be the answer. With so much cash injected at once (a tactic known as the ‘Big Push’, a term coined, I believe, by Walt William Rostow) the economy would slowly recover, until it reached a ‘take-off’ point at which time much less outside money would needed and the economy would grow under its own steam. This appeared to work in Europe and Japan in the 40s and 50s. And it failed miserably in Iraq (of late). My analysis: if a doctor loses his clinic in a fire and you build him another one, his practice will be up and running in no time. If you go to a poor person in rural Ghana who survives on subsistence agriculture and build him the same clinic, a medical practice will not magically appear.

That’s Development, trying to find scientific formulas to generate economic growth, measured by GDP increase. What about development? 'Small d' development has been defined as freedom (Amartya Sen1999) as the achievement of human rights or human justice. Paulo Freire talks about education (in many ways the core process for development) as a process of awakening an understanding of our own capacity to change our circumstances. These ideas fit with Kurt’s ideas about life, liberty and the freedom to share these things. I agree. And I want to take the idea of freedom one level deeper. Development as freedom is about nurturing the ‘capacity to aspire’ (Appadurai 2004). To turn that into a question: can we (professionals) be involved in facilitating a long-term process of building the capacity of poor people to realize their aspirations?

Our role as professionals is not to suggest an answer or a project, or even to suggest aspirations, but to avail ourselves to the poor as a tool to help them overcome the relationships and structures of power that keep them poor. If we can do this and see development as a long term, risk-laden, learning-by-doing process and not as a project, we might just be of some use. That’s from the bottom up. I believe things have to happen from the top down as well. Governments need to reform, income needs to be spread out, good institutions need to be built to protect property rights and stand for justice. But those reforms alone will not help the poor help themselves.

Jordan (Manchester)

References:

Appadurai, A. (2004) The Capacity to Aspire: Culture in Terms of Recognition, World Bank, Stanford University Press (I apologize that full citation details are not available).

Sen, A. (1999) Development as Freedom, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

Many of people who mention the phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" come from very different perspectives than I have and I think that is important for this post. I almost named this entry "Paradigm Shifting".

So, the topics at hand are my answers to the three opening questions we of this blog; What is development? Why should I be involved in development? What is our hope for development – what to we think can be accomplished, what is our ideal outcome of development?

Before I get into things, I am a zero-sum type person, I have a strong conviction that in almost everything in life there are no gains without losses. As it applies to development, I feel that it is unreasonable to frame development in terms of bringing everyone up to a Western style of living, that is certainly unsustainable - see global footprint. And just to throw in one more wiki-link, in a very similar vein, I am often reminded of the tragedy of the commons. To me, these ideas are different perspectives of the same thread and I see them pop up often in life, not just with respect to ecology but, also economics, personal life and even my faith.

(The global footprint link obviously addresses sustainability but I was surprised how quickly the TotC link gets into ecology - I thought it was a broader theory than that. And VERY interestingly that the zero sum article was categorised under the international relations theory which really ties in well.)

So, what is development? Last night Carla and I watched a special by David Suzuki about Europe's attempts at sustainability and they mentioned quality of life. In my opinion, development is helping all people achieve a good quality of life. Yes, I just shifted the question to, "What is a good quality of life?" but I think it does help to re-frame the question like that. For example, 30 min commute times is not a decent quality of life for many reasons and therefore it is not development. Getting people involved in the rat-race (ie the global economy) does not ensure a decent quality of life. For the record I do not have any rose-coloured glasses on the traditional ways of life in Africa or South America, I am aware (or at least I KNOW that I am NOT aware) of the poor quality of life that those lifestyles offer.

I am fairly certain that there is a quality of life standard by which most people can look to their own life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Many people in Africa do not have that and, unfortunately, many people in North America do not have a good quality of life either. So I'll stop there - development is achieving a better quality of life for all people.

Number two, why should I want to be involved in development? I think this segues rather nicely. I am interested in development not only because I want to help people achieve a better quality of life but I want that for myself and my family. In general, I am interested in defining what is a sustainable, good quality of life. Not only from the technical perspective (ie a house built this way and this much travel by this means per year) but also from the paradigm perspective. For myself I want to promote the mindset where people are OK with biking 20 minutes to get to work or understand that some food may not be readily available because seasonality or their geography.

As you can see, I am trying to promote the idea that there is just as much development work needed in North America or Europe as in the third world. So as for why I am interested in doing development work overseas, I think it again gets back to quality of life. Both Carla and I feel that the quality of life for us and our kids is better in many ways than here in North America. Don't get me wrong, we are very happy to be "home" now but often talk about the broader implications.

Finally, what is my hope for development – what do I think can be accomplished, what is my ideal outcome of development? To reiterate the above, my hope for development is to help people find a decent quality of life that they can share with their neighbours. And this as much about mindset as anything else.

I am reminded of one of my favourite Dilbert strips which I know most people won't find too funny but I laugh out loud every time I read it, even now - check out paradigm shift.

Personally, I found this entry flowed rather well but I am all to aware of how my ideas look when others reflect them back to me so let the criticisms fly. As well I know these thoughts are hardly novel, so please share any links for recommended reading (blogs, books, etc) of people who have expressed these thoughts better and more completely than I just did.

Kurtis (in Waterloo)