Adam Tickell wrote:
>
> The point being that the UK government is committed to development
> rather than easy and empty rhetorical gestures?
To what extent does DFID represent the United Kingdom anyway?
A commitment to 'development' is not incompatible with empty and
rhetorical gestures as Alan Patterson points out in his message to
the forum. A major problem with this white paper and its
predecessor, 'Eliminating World Poverty', is that they both
universalise 'abject poverty', reducing the complex struggles of poor
people to a series of 'targets' to be met by the world's
conscientious and enlightened donor community. To be critical of
these targets is not to be a 'cynical and disillusioned academic' as
Richard Johnson points out but to begin to interrogate the complex
affiliations that New Labour has made with neoliberal orthodoxies
and to tease out some of the contradications that result.
Globalisation needs to be managed and 'harnessed' according to
the white paper while at the same time promising an acceleration
of trade liberalisation and a rolling back of the the frontiers of the
state. The implication of the proposed 'Africa trade programme' is
that Africa needs to learn how to trade 'properly' and according to
rules prescribed by people like Tony Blair and Claire Short. 'Tough
action on corruption' is also sought, but this is constructed as
something that uniquely afflicts the 'world's poorest countries'.
A commitment to 'development' is welcome but not if it is
underwritten by a series of unproblematised assumptions about
globalisation and trade.
Marcus
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