Theories and Practices of Development

"This book took around a decade to write. Three of us, coming from different
locations and contexts, coming from different histories, experiences and lived
lives, coming from different intellectual traditions, shared some initial thoughts. Our sharing showed that we were confronted with a related kind of problem: what do we make of the contemporary, a contemporary marked by a certain incitement to discourse on globalization. What indeed is globalization? What do we mean by ‘global’? What do we make of ‘global capitalism’? What indeed is global capitalism? Where then is the ‘local’?
Given that Marx provided an analysis of nineteenth century European
capitalism, what conceptual handles or windows can Marx offer today? Can he offer anything? Would we at all turn to him for an understanding, interpretation and explanation of contemporary capitalism? Or would he be irrelevant in the Southern situation, given the birth of his theory in a western context? Do concepts travel? Would his concepts be relevant in another culture and another time? How do we conceptualize Marxism in the South, if at all and why at all? Could we at all conceptualize a Marxism that was turned to the South? How would we attend to the scorn of the cultural difference theorist who would say that Marxism’s western moorings impart a certain incommensurability to its invocation in non-Western realities? How would we do away with the near religio-scientific belief of the Universalist who would see the possibility of a ‘core applicability’ of Marxism transcending (non-Western) particularities? Would a rethinking of Marxian questions and concerns in the South mean a radical displacement of much of Marxism; such that Marxism becomes aboriginal —that is, both, ‘other than the original’ as also ‘singed with a certain aboriginality’?
Would it also mean a rethinking of the very description and meaning of the
South that has hitherto hegemonized us? Would it mean a rethinking of the
category of ‘third world’—third world as the representative category for any
description of the South? Taking off from questions as to why and how Marxism could matter in the context of the South, it appeared to us that both western Marxism and third world as is usually deployed in classical and conventional renditions are deeply problematic. Even the bulk of the so-called critique of modernity, whether they be postmodern or postcolonial, falter when faced with the third world. A culturalist critique would tend to forget capital; and an economistic critique is inclined towards putting aside the question of modernity. Resultantly, the specificity as also the burden of the history and the experience of colonial modernity and the evolution of (indigenous) capitalism, all of these in their overdetermined and contradictory imbrications, remain unaccounted for at a more theoretical level. This theoretical problem, by no means peculiar to Marxism, acquires additional urgency in a Marxian space since western Marxism has never really faced up to the category of third world; nor has it come face to face with the experience–language–logic–ethos of the South. Rather, it has often turned away from this encounter; such a turning away is perhaps reflective of an implicit Orientalism. Whether in the North or South, wittingly or unwittingly, irrespective of ideological dispositions, the efforts to rethink Marxism and third world in the Southern space have, with few exceptions, remained forestalled. For us therefore, the more pressing questions are related to how Marxist theory would encounter the specificity of third world. In turn, how would third world encounter Marxism? How do the understandings of Marxism and third world change because of this encounter? This book deals with these questions; it proposes in the process the inauguration of a counter concept ‘world of the third’.

This work thereafter fleshes out a description of world of the third, and of its
encounter with global capitalism, with India as the site of analysis and in the
context of the present phase of globalization. Indeed, globalization has been a recurring sub-theme in the encounter of the ‘rest’ with the West and the current phase represents another passage, with its own unique effects, of this ongoing encounter. By virtue of its unique disposition, Marxian questions tuned to world of the third enunciate a quite different trajectory of explaining and understanding this encounter.

However, one may still ask: why invent a new name world of the third? Does
a change in name solve the problem? Naming has to it a colonizing hue, especially in the South. Nobody has borne the consequences of the cultural imputations involved in naming more than the Southern people. Southern thinkers, to name a few, Franz Fanon, Che Guevara, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and Krishnachandra Bhattacharya (author of Swaraj in Ideas) have struggled against the stifling grip of markers coming to their homeland like metonymic meteors from the west. For them, the purpose of social struggles, including the struggle for freedom, was never to just win political independence, but to see to it that the emerging structure–subject is free from the scourge of concepts the West deploys to describe the South (one such concept being ‘third world’). That is also to free oneself from the Orientalist grip, that merged with that of a Capital-centered view to prescribe a fixed path of modernization, progress or development for ancient civilizations. It was to be, for them, a struggle over mindsets-attitudes,
over worldviews; decolonization meant decolonization of minds; swaraj meant ‘swaraj in ideas’. That is why language (whether oral, written, practical or aesthetic) was so important to all these thinkers and resultantly their struggles became a struggle over the structure of symbolic systems as also over subjectivity. These currents of intellectual and social opposition to discourses of colonialism and then modernization including development have subsequently taken various forms and have continued to redefine the intellectual and practical landscape of social resistance and at times social reconstruction in the South. In many ways, these intellectual and social movements talk not simply to their own people, but to the West as well by pointing out that what seemed obvious to the latter was only a particular construction of the ‘rest’ by the West. They argued that the lived
experience of the South could not be reduced to the conceptual frame (explanatory or interpretative) generated in and by the West. The problem is also of reducing (cultural, economic and political) difference to frames of discrimination; it is one of organizing worlds that are different in terms of step–ladder hierarchies, where one is not different from the other, but where one is either superior or inferior to the other (in this case it is all about reducing the difference that world of the third institutes into the global to the hierarchy of first and third worlds). The problem is therefore about being sensitive to a fundamental dissonance that has appeared as a result of the encounter of the West with the ‘rest’. In this context, the deployment of world of the third (as different and as outside) against the given of third world (as the lacking inside of the first world) is crucial.

Our endeavor takes us to a provisional conclusion: the foreclosure of world
of the third is produced through a foregrounding of third world. The hegemonic (here, global capitalism) is then a product of foreclosure (here, world of the third) and foregrounding (here, third world). Critiquing western Marxism and various other strands of ‘post’ thoughts for having missed this crucial mode and node of modernist thinking that motored the conceptualization of and intervention in the so-called third world societies, we offer an interpretation of how this conceptualization of and intervention in the so-called third world societies is a process constitutive of global capitalism.

Further, by defamiliarizing and denaturalizing the given of global capitalism
and third worldism (as also development–globalization), we propose a language of resistance premised on the return of the foreclosed world of the third. Consequently, resistance to the hegemonic cannot but be founded on the return of the foreclosed, on the return not of the third world but of world of the third. A world of the third Marxian approach thus not only provides a distinctly different language/worldview for analyzing the hegemonic, but in the same turn lays down the contours of a possible world of living beyond the hegemonic.

Finally, this work is not just about a dialogue between East and West, between South and North, between the global and the local, between world of the first and world of the third but also between Marx and Freud, between Althusser and Lacan. In the process, in addition, this work brings face to face two near-incommensurable traditions—the rationalist-humanist and the psychoanalytic—and see what productive dialogue or enabling moment can emerge from such an encounter. The dialogue with Amartya Sen (and John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum) is premised on such an encounter. In that sense, this book is also about a dialogue between Sen and Marx-Freud, between need and class, between positional objectivity and overdetermination, between capabilities–functioning–freedom and alienation."

The last two chapters described a Maya idea of sustainable development that has been emerging from Guatemala's Western Highlands. This involved a detailed look at the cultural, discursive, historical, and material roots of the idea, as well as a description of the idea itself. This chapter uses the same method, but moves the focus southward into the contested Garifuna territories of coastal Honduras. Much of this chapter is based on ongoing fieldwork that I have undertaken since 2011. This work is beginning to show a complex and contested Garifuna sustainable development ideal that is emerging around the concept of food sovereignty. Just as with the study of Maya sustainable development, an indigenous political institution will be used as a locus around which to describe an indigenous idea of development. In this case, the story will revolve largely around ideas and activism associated with the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH). The story of Garifuna activism stands as another exemplar of the transmodern nature of indigenous development ideas that are merging in Latin America during a period typified by neoliberal multiculturalism.

It has been said that what we have now are globalized economies brought by globalization. Trade, products even commodified labor are now making their way to different markets of the different parts of the globe. There is the phenomenon of feminization of migration where the numbers are increasing for women in migration who predominantly take the gender-stereotyped extension of reproductive work in the area of nurturing and caring (particularly as nurses, domestic workers, among others). The Philippines along with Indonesia, is said to be the topsending country or supplier of domestic work in the world.

Development Cooperation, in addition to clear social and political support, originated from a context which represented a coherent contribution within the framework of Development Theory. However, from the 1980s with the rise of neoliberal ideas, debates on development and the international cooperation system and its strategies took different directions. Currently, the definition and monitoring of the Agenda has become the centre of debate, with the consequent abandonment of the theoretical and historical perspectives as well as the traditional perception of development as a process of transformation of reality. This disconnection between ideas on development and cooperation has led to a long-standing confusion over cooperation, with its role becoming increasingly unclear. This paper highlights the need to return to the relationship between theoretical reflection on development and cooperation strategies, through a process of identifying problems, studying their causes and consequently designing strategies. The way in which these links are created will open up the possibility of proposing alternatives according to the risks and challenges to be faced.

The World Bank is a United Nations international financial institution that offers loans, advice, and an array of customized resources to more than 100 developing countries all around the world. The World Bank is a component of the World Bank Group, and the largest global development institution focuses exclusively on private sector ventures and projects in developing countries in partnership by financing investment, mobilizing capital in international financial markets, and providing advisory services as well as technical assistance to businesses and governments. Its institutional culture and approach to development have changed in parallel with the evolution of international development thinking over the past sixty years. This research aims to argue connection between the World Bank and development thinking. Through a review of the literature, this research attempts to clarify the ways in which the World Bank's institutional culture has both influenced and been influenced by the understanding of 'development'

What is the nature and extent of historical awareness in the development discourse? Does the development discourse learn from history, including its own? Set in the contexts of aging development institutions and a changing geopolitical climate, this paper provides one account through a historiographical survey of 136 journal articles across 10 leading development journals. It uncovers a substantial body of works, which offer descriptive histories, derivative lessons, and historiographical critiques. Altogether, they evidence two modes in which the development discourse attempts to learn from history. The first lies in the proactive use of external histories as empirical evidence for a variety of development issues. This is the predominant mode exhibited in the survey. A second mode lies in the use of internal histories of the development discourse, itself. Here, the survey finds a number of noteworthy but largely disparate efforts. This suggests a relative dearth in historiographical self-consciousness for a narrow but influential segment of the development discourse. A number of consequences are considered, ultimately responding to the legitimacy, efficacy, and sustainability of development action. In sum, our survey finds that the mainstream development journal discourse is adept at learning from external histories, but not necessarily from its own. Evidence, however, suggests that it can. A case is made for why it must.

Since the 1980s the dependency theory has been falling out of favour in many academic spheres. This is mainly because of the thesis’ failure to be applicable in the case of the Asian Tigers and, also because communism, which in many cases is recommended by most of the theorists, in its various forms of applications has failed. So does this mean the death of the dependency theory? In the first volume of Dialogues on Development Kufakurinani et al. interview some of the most prominent and pioneers of the dependency school of thought in a bid to inquire whether it is still relevant to talk about dependency today, and if so, why has is been sidelined in recent years. They tap into the strengths of the dialogue approach to come up with an effective discussion on the relevance of the dependency theory in the twenty-first century. Ever since Plato, dialogues have been recognized as a uniquely effectively ways of exploring the realm of thought. Terence McKenna has described it as the basis of the dialectical method.1 After reading this book you will definitely have a renewed understanding of how the world systems function and how they have disguised and manifested themselves across space and time. Because of variations of the backgrounds of the interviewees, each chapter comes with it’s own form of unique understanding and enlightenment on why some nations are still underdeveloped in this age of advanced globalisation. The review goes through each of the thirteen chapters extracting and commenting on some of the major insights shared by the gurus of the dependency school of thought.

The thesis forwards sociological reflections on the dialogue on volunteerism and development discourses – particularly the underlying assumptions of organized volunteerism and the factors affecting the discursive changes associated with it – through the experiences of organized volunteering groups. This is inspired by the recent international and national directives/laws declaring volunteerism as a strategy for development. Using grounded theory methodology and pakikipagkuwentuhan, the research explored the experiences of volunteers and program managers of Jesuit Volunteers Philippines, Associate Missionaries of the Assumption, University of the Philippines – Los Banos Ugnayan ng Pahinungod, and Dynamic Teen Company.
Findings show that the dialogue between volunteerism and the development discourse has placed organized volunteerism in a struggle to balance two dimensions of impact: personal formation (transformation of volunteers), and the strategic or social impact of their work on the communities they serve. However, not all organized volunteering groups exhibit the same intensity of the struggle. The intensity of the prioritization for either dimension depends on the declared organizational goals and the nature of the organization itself, the structure of the organization vis-à-vis the community, and the pragmatic considerations in the communities as managers and volunteers try to operationalize formation through the concrete change-making works of the volunteers in concrete situations and communities.
Moreover, the thesis explores the change processes associated with organized volunteering work as strategy for development. The process is highly pragmatic, wherein volunteers share their knowledge and skills, social capital, and inspire some members of the community by expanding lifeworlds of the people the volunteers work with. In understanding and making sense of the volunteer experience, the volunteers and managers generally refer to Filipino cultural concepts, while in more concrete discussions, the volunteers refer back to the declared institutional values espoused by the organized volunteer associations.

This paper asks Is the Global Shift of Production ‘Beyond Capital’?  It considers contemporary Marxist approaches and evaluates them as mostly northcentric.  Capital 1 is considered as three movements structured around surplus value in its becoming, modes of existence and accumulation as capital, punctuated by two turning points. Marx's comments at the second turning point, the conversion of surplus value into capital, reveal potentially other categories of surplus value beyond absolute and relative surplus value, based on distinct methods of obtaining extra surplus value based on the super-exploitation of labour and nature. The paper conclude that this extension of Marx is necessary to theorise the new totality of capitalism as globalised imperialism.

2012 ‘Structure and Essence in Capital and the Stages of Capitalism’ in Journal of Australian Political Economy No 70 December 2012; 251-270

Endogenous (New) Growth Approach (EGA) offer alternative perspective to those of the Neoclassical Growth (NG) theories. EGA tries to overcome the deficiencies of neoclassical theory in explaining the uneven growth of many developing countries as well as the external impact on growth.

The assumptions and characteristics of volunteerism in response
to disasters are explored through the concept of Spontaneous
Volunteerism. Taking into account the socio-political discourse on
volunteerism and the kapwa-loob theoretical approach the study
uses grounded theory and pagdadalumat and other qualitative
research strategies to explore the characteristics of spontaneous
volunteerism. The study identifies the characteristics of
spontaneous volunteerism. It is short-term and dependent on
the urgency of disaster relief. It is very pragmatic in terms of
volunteer strategies and operations. Spontaneous volunteerism
involves all motivated and capable volunteers. Institutions play a
key role in resource mobilization and in providing concepts that
serve as lenses to the volunteers for constructing their work.
Moreover, spontaneous volunteerism leads to change-oriented
outcomes in terms of volunteer formation and the reduction of
the immediate effects of the disaster on vulnerable groups.

It is 2017! Almost 46 years have passed since we earn our victory after a decisive struggle against Pakistani rulers. After independence, Bangladesh was among the poorest nations in the world and on the verge of becoming a failed state. Forty six years later, Bangladesh enjoys impressive economic growth and has emerged as a young, but fragile, democracy. Yeah, we have decreased the rate of mortality of children and mother! We decreased the dropped out rate from primary education! We have eradicated 'Monga', the yearly cyclical phenomenon of poverty and hunger in the northern part of Bangladesh.

This research investigates the criminal modalities of the alliance between multinationals, the state and the dominant class in Colombia. The theoretical approach synthesises critical criminology with the dependency school, adapting the model put forward by Pearce (1976) that understands corporate crime as the rational extension of legally sanctioned activities. The research asks whether certain investment strategies (ECLAC, 2003) lead to characteristic forms of rights violations.  The methodology is founded on dialogue with the affected social movements. There are three case studies exemplifying ‘efficiency seeking’, ‘natural resource seeking’ and ‘market access seeking’ investment strategies. The interaction between neoliberal policies, investments and the Colombian state is found to be highly criminogenic. A clear economic rationale emerges of violations consistent with the investment strategy, confirming Pearce’s thesis. The research finds a common incidence of paramilitary violence as an informal system of social control.  Access to, and navigation within, these systems is a learned behaviour that is transmitted through specific private networks and constitutes part of the ‘social capital’ of the dominant alliance.  The neo-classical theory of economic rent underpins World Bank research problematising opposition forces rather than conflicts arising form the multinational investment. This research concludes that on the contrary
corporate ‘rent seeking’ is an economic incentive to infringe on human rights claims and to externalise social costs.

The thesis concludes by emphasising the profit motive, and advances a concept of corporate crime as a means to increase exploitation. The pursuit of corporate crime is likely to increase with greater opportunity and with the corporation’s neutralisation capacity.  Opportunities for crimes of the powerful are structurally greater in Third World countries, where decentralised organisation enhances a multinational’s ability to deny responsibility. This gives rise to the para-corporation, that is of the corporation but not in it - a deniable, parallel existence complicit in ‘dirty’ behaviours.

The field of gender and development has been marked in recent years by extensive debates about the shortfalls of gender mainstreaming and the depoliticisation of gender and other concepts in development praxis. In these discussions considerably less thought has been given to the theoretical premises of these concepts and the implications of their interface with the epistemological and normative systems of the diverse communities in which they are employed. In the current paper I hope to undertake a more theoretical project by delineating how three foundational concepts -
gender, gender equality, and empowerment - are directly linked to secular epistemologies and western gender metaphysics, to suggest how this might be interfering with effective gender and development practice in non-western/non-secular contexts. I propose that more effort may need to be put in reconstructing and theorising gender realities through local conceptual repertoires in order to better design gender interventions that are attuned to local normative systems. For proper citation see the full article on the Journal's page here: http://journals.dbuniversity.ac.in/ojs/index.php/jdp/article/view/305

In recent decades tourism development has expanded on most Mediterranean islands. Focusing on the island of Crete, this study recognises tourism as a highly visible and controversial component of change. The existence of the necessary infrastructure, the natural beauty, the climate, the culture and the history have contributed to tourism expansion, with Crete now attracting approximately 25 percent of foreign tourist arrivals and 55 percent of the total foreign exchange earnings of Greece. The perceptions of the local community in tourism were studied using personal interviews with three community groups: local authority officials, residents and tourism business owners and managers. The aim was to examine their views on tourism development, in an attempt to establish overall desired directions for tourism development and to suggest effective tourism strategies and policies to reinforce positive outcomes and alleviate problems resulting from previous unplanned tourism development. The research findings identify much agreement among the three community groups suggesting that it is feasible to further develop tourism with the support of the community. Although the areas used in the sample were in the maturity stage of Butler's (1980) life cycle model and therefore it might be expected that the community would be at the antagonism stage of Doxey's (1975) model, this was not suggested by the findings. Tourism is viewed positively as a development option, and further tourism development, with conditions attached, is supported. The expansion of tourism has brought economic gains, employment creation, increased population, enhanced community infrastructure and cultural and environmental preservation. However, there is limited co-ordination of tourism activities and insufficient collaboration between the public and private sector. In addition, the island is dependent on foreign tour operators, and the tourism industry is uneven geographically and seasonally. Tourism has modified traditions and has affected the environment and society. Since community perceptions match reality (what is on the ground from development), problems are real and it is necessary to find solutions for their amelioration. As a result, policy implications emerging from the results presented in this thesis are discussed and future strategies are suggested.

Keywords: Community attitudes and perceptions, development, planning, Crete

This chapter introduces ‘action research’ undertaken in the Rayagada district of Odisha, India. The work began with the identification of the experience of ‘singleness’ among Kondh adivasi (indigenous tribes) women farmers in a village named Emaliguda. The dialectic of oppression and resistance resulting from the condition of singleness led to the emergence of a collective called Eka Nari Sanghathan (Single Women’s Collective) in 2013. Attending to single women’s lives marked by experiences of pain, violence and otherness (by the violence of hetero-patriarchy, of primitive accumulation and capitalist development) and to the adivasi life-worlds sustaining noncapitalist class processes in a largely capitalist world, this contingent-emergent collective engages in enacting a possible postcapitalist-feminist future, a future beyond dictated developmental agendas. This chapter explores connections between the rem(a)inders of resisting and negotiated gendered processes and subjectivities (‘singleness’) and noncapitalist economic processes and subjectivities (‘world of the third’) in order to work towards a possible postcapitalist-feminist praxis. Embedded in postdevelopmental thinking and praxis, this chapter largely examines how questions of economic transformation and gender work come to co-exist in the adivasi context.

This paper presents an appreciation of the originality and salience of Ruy Mauro Marini’s political-economic thought, specifically that he posits the super-exploitation of labour as the driving category of capitalist underdevelopment.

Writing from the Marxist wing of the Latin American dependency school, Marini made a novel contribution that addresses the continent’s unequal exchange with Britain from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Marini derives super-exploitation from the import of cheap food and raw materials sought by the most developed capitalist nation. An inequality between capitals sets in, the primary export-producing capitals compensate for their lowering prices and lower rate of profit by driving down wages. Through this mechanism, Marini connects super-exploitation in the raw material exporting countries with the consolidation of relative surplus value in the developed countries. Once superexploitation (a higher rate of
surplus value) is established it shapes the dependent social
formation.

The paper explores Serra and Cardoso’s critique, arguing
that Marini’s response in the debate raises a fundamental
issue: distinctive combinations of absolute and relative
surplus value as the explanation for the divergent social
formations of developed and underdeveloped capitalism.

The paper examines the relationship between super exploitation and the mechanisms of increasing surplus value.  It argues for sympathetic modifications to Marini’s argument,
principally that price tends to cost of production rather than value. This refers to the necessary divergence of price from value in a system of sectors with different value
compositions of capital, as unfolded by Marx in the early chapters of Volume 3 of Capital. This modification reinforces the general direction of Marini; however it introduces complications into the limiting assumptions of Marx’s transformation schema.

The paper concludes that the revolutionary wing of the Latin American dependency theory provides a fruitful and necessary conceptual basis for the analysis of capitalist imperialism. 

2010 Paper to Historical Materialism Conference, London

The hospitality industry generates benefits for many host communities including employment generation and foreign exchange earnings. However, the hospitality industry often leads to external dependency contributing to a loss of local control over resources, migrant workforce and leakages outside the local economy, seriously reducing industry’s potential for generating net financial advantages and growth for the local economy. Despite the variation of size of hospitality firms, there is still limited research on how well different size hospitality firms contribute to local economic development, something which this paper addresses, taking as a case the island of Crete. The findings suggest that the smaller the size of hospitality firm the larger the benefits to the local economy.

Keywords: hospitality firms; Scale; Economic development; Crete

After WWII, development became a major global pursuit, and culture played a key role in ideas of how to nurture its occurrence. This chapter scrutinizes postwar, largely uncritical, development theory—focusing on the way in which culture appears in these ideas.

This article re-conceptualizes processes whereby religious tourism is adopted to generate socio-cultural "betterment" in small-scale societies by presenting an in-depth case study of the Southern Italian village of Pietrelcina, the birthplace of recently canonized St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina. "Tourism development" has long been considered central for economic development, employment, and poverty alleviation; it has also been criticized as fostering neocolonialism, inauthenticity and museumifi cation. Arguing that the pervasive "development
paradigm" creates a tautology whereby outside forces create and attempt to alleviate local tensions between maintaining tradition and transformation, the paper argues that such initiatives be organic and focused on tourism's potentialities and intangible effects; anadaptation of Anthony Wallace's classic anthropological model of revitalization movements is then proposed. In contrast to the "development paradigm's" linear, top-down, and antiorganic approach, a revitalization movement posits society as a life-cycle, wherein members organically look to past practices to resolve present problems. Drawing on data collected over more than two years of fieldwork, the paper presents an ethnographic analysis of the variety of responses by Pietrelcina's locals and site managers to tourism's revitalizing potential, ultimately urging practitioners and researchers alike to consider revitalization theory as a model for sustainable tourism development.

Keywords:
tourism; development;, revitalization; pilgrimage; Pietrelcina; Padre Pio; Italy

Throughout the development sector, there is increasing recognition of links between the environment and aspects of development such as poverty alleviation, health, income generation, and agriculture. While furnished with a diverse range of perspectives and approaches, development practice is in need of ways to better conceptualize the interactions between the social, environmental, and economic dimensions of sustainability so that opportunities for simultaneous improvement in human and ecological well-being can be identified more readily. Critical systems thinking is proposed as a way for development practitioners to conceptualize and act toward the integration of these economic, social, and environmental dimensions and, in so doing, support communities to nurture both human and ecosystem well-being. Four desirable attributes of a critical systems thinking approach to development are identified based on development literature, critical systems literature, and the author’s research into sustainability in semi-rural communities in Vietnam. The four attributes are ‘a systems thinking approach;’ ‘an ethical base to action and choices;’ ‘critical reflection permeates processes;’ and ‘appreciation of diverse views and application of diverse approaches.’ These attributes are described and then offered as the basis for further discussion of the ways in which simultaneous improvement of human well-being and ecosystem health can become an integral part of development practice.

A growing number of innovative gender transformative programmes targeting men and boys are currently being developed across Africa south of the Sahara.  One such initiative is the Khanyisa programme in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa which utilises the concept of Ubuntu as a lens to explore subjects such as masculinity, inequality, gender, violence and HIV/AIDS.  Based upon original qualitative research which follows a Khanyisa group of eight young men over a 12 month period, this paper examines the use of indigenous knowledge approaches to transformative education in relation to masculinities.  Focusing through transformative learning theory, this paper then explores how socio-cultural processes construct societal patterns of masculine domination and related individual masculine identities, and examines the use of gender transformative programmes towards the reconstruction of new, more equitable gender identities. 
Data collected through focus groups, semi structured interviews, subjective outcome evaluation and a diary project was interpreted using thematic analysis.  The research shows the programme to produce a reduction in gender based violence and risk taking and an increase in self-esteem, communication and domestic and parental responsibility.  Culturally appropriate pedagogies are found to be central to successful interventions, and a learning cycle which supports the internalisation of new, more equitable masculine schemas has been developed.  In order to avoid social pressure to revert to default communal gender norms post intervention, the paper suggests adopting a ‘whole community’ approach to transforming societal gender systems into more equitable models.

This chapter compares, contrasts, and, where possible, incorporates indigenous concepts of sustainable development with “Western” ideas presented in earlier chapters. The goal here is to use Maya, Andean indigenous, and Garifuna development ideas to bend the sustainable development towards an indigenous perspective. The underlying question addressed is “can existing ideas of development bend to incorporate indigenous perspectives, or must they be jettisoned if indigeneity is to be meaningfully considered?”

The methods and understandings introduced in previous chapters are used to discuss indigenous sustainable development as it is emerging among Afro-indigenous Garifuna in Honduras. Although Garifuna activists, thinkers, leaders, and practitioners share a close geographical relation to Maya groups, their challenges, cultures, and histories are substantially different. As a result, Garifuna sustainable development has its own distinct form, focused increasingly around territorial autonomy and food sovereignty.

Capitalism survives as globalised imperialism, a world dominated by multinational corporations whose pre-eminence signifies important changes in the capitalist mode of production. How then does historical geographical materialism approach the theorisation of multinational corporate capital?

This paper develops three strands. Firstly, standard Marxist explanations highlight the concentration and centralisation of capital, processes located in Marx’s exposition of the general law of accumulation. What if the general law is itself modified by imperialism as ‘monopoly capitalism’, how does monopoly correspond with the concentration and centralisation of capital?  Secondly the analysis revisits Hilferding’s Finance Capital and the specific focus on fictitious capital and corporation organisation : promoter’s profit, credit and the double movement of capital.  Thirdly, in asking what are super-profits in relation to Marx’s categories, we come to the theory of imperialist rent and its application to forms of multinational capital.

These concepts are applied to a concrete study of the City of London’s role as a centre of financing of global mining capital, conceived as predatory production. The paper ends with observations on the political implications of the analysis. Capitalism survives in part because its imperialist character is barely challenged in the imperialist countries.

Presentation to Historical Materialism conference, London November 2014 ‘How does capitalism survive?’

Ideas of development, and later sustainable development, did not appear out of nowhere after WWII. This chapter explores prewar origins of economic and cultural theories of development. The discussion focusses on ways that culture and development concepts appear in the classical political economy of people like Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, and neoclassical economists from Pareto, to Hayek, to Keynes.

"In this paper, we will scrutinize the position of the Cultural and Creative Industries in Development Theory. Throughout the years, the notion of culture has significantly changed in Development Theory and practice. Initially, within the modernization-paradigm, culture was seen as a factor impeding economic and social development of the Global South. However, after the ‘cultural turn’ in development thinking the notion that Development always occurs in a culturally defined context and culture should thus be at centre stage in development thinking has gained considerable currency.
Currently, under the hegemonic neo-liberal political economy, the urge to commoditize every aspect of our lives has also affected our conceptualization of culture in many ways. Culture is no longer merely 'a way of life' in development thinking, as anthropologists tend to approach the subject, but it is also a utilitarian articulation of ‘symbolic texts’ that are tradable as any other commodity. Cultural relations have been subjected to economic selection, and the commoditization has become primordial to identity politics. Culture (and, mutatis mutandis, creativity) are thus put forward as active loci of development. As a result, culture has ceased to be perceived as an obstacle, or merely an aspect intrinsic to development, but increasingly constitutes a means to catalyze cultural, human and economic advancement. Due to this increased attention to the global commoditization of culture in development contexts through the so-called Cultural Industries, we wish to explore its relation to the theoretical shifts in development; from modernization to modernities.

Our aim is to critically engage with the literature surrounding development theory and practice. The main question we are asking is how the increased attention to the cultural (and creative) industries takes form in development thinking; and more specifically, how this may have changed (or will change) the conceptual position of culture in development theory."

Neoliberalism has been described as the most successful ideology of our time. It has been adopted and adapted in a variety of theoretical and disciplinary contexts and it seems like there is no escaping it’s ideological reach. There is a growing tide of conceptual critiques that have begun to unravel it’s once lauded economic benefits that privilege individualism, competition, and merit, yet in reality, it’s policies have led to widespread inequality and eroded social ties. Despite promoting diversity to recognize formerly excluded differences, LGBTQ people have had vastly different experiences in relation to neoliberal policies, where one’s “otherness” is marketed to perform in accordance with existing stereotypes. By exploring the intersections of class and sexuality in neoliberal policies, this paper will look at various theoretical approaches that have been taken to understand LGBTQ and queer lives and their resistance in this new age of neoliberalism.

A brief survey of usage and meanings given to the concept of development. In part a response to the proposal then current in some academic literature that "development" was a failed project. (Derived from master's level work.)

Comment: This is a topic of ongoing interest that I hope to return to.

The most politically forceful, and institutionally integrated, form of indigenous sustainable development in Latin America has emerged in the Andean region—especially in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Although this region is home to multiple indigenous cultures, much weight is given to the Kechwa concept of Sumak Kawsay (living well). Owing to the power of the local indigenous movement, the idea has been most completely incorporated in Ecuador—where it is the central theme of the country’s most recent constitution. The Andean case study allows us to observe indigenous sustainable development in its most advanced form. The Ecuadorian example at once provides home for indigenous development, and a cautionary tale of its implementation.

Youth in the EU and China: Working Together to Common Challenges is a project funded by the EACEA of the European Commission together with the Guanghua Foundation in Beijing (2011-2014). It brings together 16 youth organisations operating in Europe, China and South East Asia and is intended to foster cooperation between European and Chinese youth organisations by engaging in actions aimed at asserting the positive role of volunteering in curbing youth unemployment.