Development and the 'new' imperialism: A reinvention of colonial discourse in DFID promotional literature

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 26, Issue 6, 2005, Pages 1005-1020

  Biccum, April R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COLONIALISM;

EID: 32144445931     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01436590500139656     Document Type: Review

References (73)

1. M Duffield, 'Governing the Borderlands: Decoding the Power of Aid', Disasters, 25, 2001, pp 308-320.
2. See for example the debates over empire, globalisation, and competing narratives over the role of the US in international relations which suggest that American imperialism represents a benign global good. Some examples include: A Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US diplomacy, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2002
3. D Simes, 'America's Imperial Dilemma', Foreign Affairs, 82(6), 2003, pp 91-102
4. R Cooper (2002), 'Why we still need empires', The Observer, 7 April 2002.
5. Robert Cooper, 'The new liberal imperialism', The Observer, 7 April 2002; Tony Blair has also uttered apologetic sentiments prior to his election of the post in 1997.
6. See John Kampfner Blair, Wars, London, Simon and Schuster, 2003.
7. R Cooper, 'The New Liberal Imperialism';
8. R Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century, London: Atlantic Books, 2003
9. M Cox, 'Empire by Denial? Debating US Power', Security Dialogue, 35(2), 2003, pp 228-236
10. M Cox, 'The Empire's Back in Town: Or America's Imperial Temptation', Millennium 32(1), 2003, pp 1-29
11. J Ikenberry, 'Liberalism and Empire: Logics of Order in the American Unipolar Age', Review of International Studies, 30, 2004, p 615
12. M Mann, 'The First Failed Empire of the 21st Century', Review of International Studies, 30, 2004, pp 631-653
13. R Saull, 'On the "New" American "Empire"', Security Dialogue, 35(2), 2004, p 251
14. R H Wade, 'Bringing the Economics Back in', Security Dialogue, 35, 2004, 35, pp 243-249.
15. See John M Mackenzie (ed), Propaganda and Empire. The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880-1960, Manchester, UK, Manchester University Press, 1984.
16. Examples of these attempts abound among DFID's promotional literature and the healthy budget it has allotted for projects that promote 'development education'. For examples of such initiatives look especially to the DFID's magazine Developments which describes the DFID's activities in every issue, as well as the government White Papers beginning with 'Eliminating World Poverty: A Challenge for the 21st Century', November 1997, and 'Making Globalisation WORK for the World's Poor', December 2000. An early White Paper, 'Building Support for Development', in 1997 outlines the new Labour Government's intentions to raise public awareness of development issues and ways of measuring public awareness. There are also various studies looking at how the developing world is represented on UK television and how audiences will be responding to those images with support for the development agenda strengthened and revised by the Labour Government. Examples include: 'Viewing the World: A Study of British Television Coverage of Developing Countries', and 'Making Sense of the World'. The DFID has also published promotional literature encouraging young professionals to work in development and has produced literature to aid educators in the development of a 'global development' in the school curriculum. All of the DFID's promotional literature is available free of charge. Visit www.d.d.gov.uk
17. A McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, London, Routledge, 1995.
18. B Parry, 'Signs of Our Times: Discussion of Homi Bhabha's The Location of Culture', Third Text, Autumn/Winter, 1993
19. A Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1997
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21. J Edkins, Post-structuralism and International Relations: Bringing the Political Back in, London, Lynne Reinner, 1999
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23. J Briggs & J Sharp, 'Indigenous Knowledges and Development: A Postcolonial Caution', Third World Quarterly, 25(4), 2004, pp 661-676
24. C Sylvester, 'Development Studies and Postcolonial Studies: Disparate Tales of the "Third World", Third World Quarterly, 20(4), 1999, pp 703-721
25. I Kapoor,'Capitalism, Culture, Agency: Dependency versus Postcolonial Theory', Third World Quarterly, 23(4), 2002, pp 647-664
26. I Kappoor, 'Hyper-self-reflexive Development? Spivak on Representing the Third World "Other"', Third World Quarterly, 25(4), 2004, pp 627-647.
27. I am relying here especially on Edward Said's analysis of literature and popular culture as investments in the production of imperial subjectivities. See Said, E Culture and Imperialism, London, Vintage, 1994.
28. See Peggy Antrobus 'MDGs the Most Distracting Gimmick', and Carol Bartman 'Are MDGs a New Conditionality?' in Seeking Accountability on Women's Human Rights: Women Debate the Milleneum Development Goals, produced by Women's International Coalition for Economic Justice and distributed at the World Social Forum Mumbai 2004.
29. For accounts which illustrate how very little development discourse and policy have changed over the course of the 20th Century, see H.W. Arndt Economic Development: The History of an Idea;
30. Samir Amin, Maldevelopment: Anatomy of a global failure;
31. and various members of the 'post-development' group included in Wolfgang Sach's anthology The Development Dictionary.
32. H Bhabha, 'Articulating the Archaic: Cultural Difference and Colonial Nonsense', The Location of Culture, London, Routledge, 1994.
33. Rev. A Du., India and India Missions: Including Sketches of the Gigantic System of Hinduism etc., Edinburgh, John Johnstone, 1839, p 211
34. Sir H Maine, 'The Effects of Observation of India on Modern European Thought', Cambridge, The Rede Lecture, 1875
35. J Fitzjames Stephen, 'The Foundations of the Government of India', Nineteenth Century, 14, October 1883, pp 551ff.
36. All cited in H Bhabha, 'Articulating the Archaic'.
37. H Bhabha, 'Articulating the Archaic'.
38. The actuality of this claim is, in fact and of course, only partial. Domestic social welfare policies are, I would argue, a manifestation of internal 'development', bearing a similar rhetoric of poverty manifested as 'barriers' and 'lack of access' as does mainstream development discourse. See Arjan de Haan, 'Social Exclusion: Towards an Holistic Understanding of Deprivation' produced by the DFID in April 1999.
39. D Irwin, Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1996
40. J S Furnival, Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma & Netherlands India, New York, New York University Press, 1956
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44. WSachs (ed), The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London, Zed Books, 1992
45. A Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1995
46. S Amin, Maldevelopment: Anatomy of a Global Failure, Tokyo, United Nations University Press, 1990
47. H W Arndt, Economic Development: The History of an Idea, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1987
48. T Allen & A Thomas, Poverty and Development in the 1990s, Milton Keynes, Oxford University Press & Open University, 1992.
49. For a very good discussion of the discursive manifestations of this narrative in popular culture and especially advertising, see Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, 1992.
50. A Biccum, 'Interrupting the Discourse of Development: On a Collision Course with Postcolonial Theory', Culture, Theory & Critique, 43(1), 2002, pp 33-50.
51. S. Amin, Eurocentrism, London, Zed Books, 1989
52. S Amin, Dynamics of a Global Crisis, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1982
53. F H Cardoso, Dependency and Development in Latin America, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1979
54. F Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, London, Macgibbon and Gee, 1961
55. Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, Boston, MA, Beacon Press, 1965
56. E J Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire: From 1750 to the Present Day, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1968
57. Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism, Boston, MA, Monthly Review Press, 1955
58. J C Mariategui, 'The Anti-imperialist Perspective', New Left Review, 7, 1971, pp 67-72
59. W Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Washington, DC, Howard University Press, 1981
60. E Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press, 1994, among many others.
61. Visit http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
62. See www.commissionforafrica.org
63. From an unpublished paper from the Centre for International Politics (CIP) at the University of Nottingham titled: 'Normalising Empire, Ignoring Imperialism'.
64. S Soederburg, 'American Empire and "Excluded States": The Millenium Challenge Account and the Shift to Pre-emptive Development', Third World Quarterly, 25(2), 2004, pp 279-302.
65. White Paper on International Development, 'Eliminating World Poverty: A Challenge for the 21st Century', Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for International Development by Command of Her Majesty, November 1997.
66. The recent Tsunami disaster has acted as a boon to the global development project, operating as a spur and justification for existing policies, allowing the 'developed' world to step up its initiatives in the affected region and posing as a convenient example of the new 'interconnectedness' articulated by contemporary development rhetoric. See George Monbiot, 'Punitive - and it works: Sweden proves neo-liberals wrong about how to slash poverty', The Guardian, January 11 2005, p 21.
67. DFID, 'What we are Doing to Tackle World Poverty: A Quick Guide to the Department for International Development', produced for the DFID by Grundy & Northedge, July 2003.
68. Clare Short, 'Foreword by the Secretary of State for International Development' in White Paper on International Development, 'Eliminating World Poverty: Making Globalisation WORK for the Poor', Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for International Development by Command of Her Majesty, December 2000, p 7.
69. W Reno, 'Order and Commerce in Turbulent Areas: 19th Century Lessons, 21st Century Practice', Third World Quarterly, 25(4), 2004, p 607-625.
70. G C Spivak, The Postcolonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, Sarah Harasym (ed), New York, Routledge, 1987.
71. A McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender & Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, London, Routledge, 1992.
72. S Amin, interviewed by V Sridhar, 'For Struggles, Global and National', in World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, Jai Sen, Anita Anand, Arturo Escobar & Peter Waterman (eds), New Delhi, Viveka Foundation, 2004.
73. E Said, Culture and Imperialism.