Orientalism and African development studies: The 'reductive repetition' motif in theories of African underdevelopment

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 26, Issue 6, 2005, Pages 971-986

  Andreasson, Stefan ^a  

^a QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY BELFAST   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DEVELOPING WORLD; DEVELOPMENT THEORY; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

AFRICA;

EID: 32144448875     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01436590500089307     Document Type: Article

References (87)

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4. J Conrad, Heart of Darkness, London: Penguin, 2000 (first published 1902). On Conrad as 'precursor of the Western views of the Third World',
5. see EW Said, Culture & Imperialism, London: Vintage, 1993, p xix.
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10. GBN Ayittey, Africa in Chaos, New York: St Martin's, 1999.
11. Macmillan himself challenges many of the prejudices regarding African inferiority, certainly the crudely racist ones that predominated in his time.
12. It is not the author's intention to critique these works in particular. Nevertheless, the general picture of Africa they convey and, importantly, how that picture becomes vulgarised in subsequent interpretation and reference is symptomatic of a deeper current of isomorphism in (Western) reductive depictions of Africa.
13. A Laroui, The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual: Traditionalism or Historicism? (trans Diarmid Cammell), Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, pp 63-73
14. and EW Said, Orientalism, London: Penguin Books, 2003, pp 296-300.
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18. Cf Said, Culture & Imperialism, p xi.
19. D Etounga-Manguelle, 'Does Africa need a cultural adjustment programme?', in SP Huntington & LE Harrison (eds), Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, New York: Basic Books, 2000,
20. cited in S Matthews, 'Post-development theory and the question of alternatives: A view from within', Third World Quarterly 25(2), 2004, pp 378-380.
21. See RD Kaplan, 'The coming anarchy: How scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet', Atlantic Monthly, 273(2), 1994, pp 44-76.
22. On social majorities and minorities, see T Parfitt, The End of Development? Modernity, Post-Modernity and Development, London: Pluto Press, 2002, p 4.
23. W Reade, quoted in S Lindqvist, 'Exterminate all the Brutes': One Man's Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide, New York: The New Press, 1996, ch 4.
24. Cf M Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996, pp 3-8.
25. Asian commercial interests in Africa are also increasing. Chinese trade with Africa increased ninefold from 1999 to 2004 and may increase from a total $18 billion in 2004 to $30 billion by 2006. Today about 13% of African exports go to Asia. 'A new scramble', The Economist, 27 November 2004, pp 84-85.
26. P Abramovici, 'United States: The new scramble for Africa', Le Monde Diplomatique, July 2004, at http://mondediplo.com/2004/07/07usinafrica.
27. G Rist, The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith (trans Patrick Camiller), London: Zed Books, 2002.
28. See, for example, RH Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa: The Political Basis of Agricultural Policies, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981.
29. Ibid;
30. and N van de Walle, African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979-1999, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
31. See, for example, World Bank, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action, Washington, DC: World Bank, 1981
32. World Bank, Adjustment in Africa: Reforms, Results, and the Road Ahead, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994
33. World Bank, Can Africa Claim the 21st Century?, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000
34. and World Bank, African Poverty at the Millennium: Causes, Complexities, and Challenges, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2001.
35. S Andreasson, 'Divergent paths of development: The modern world-system and democratization in South Africa and Zambia', Journal of World-Systems Research, 7(2), 2001, pp 211-212.
36. S Andreasson, 'Economic reforms and "virtual democracy" in South Africa and Zimbabwe: The incompatibility of liberalisation, inclusion and development', Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 21(3), 2003, p 390.
37. R Joseph, 'Facing Africa's predicament: Academe needs to play a stronger role', Chronicle of Higher Education, 7 March 2003.
38. Murungi, 'The academy and the crisis of African governance', p 10.
39. P Chabal, 'The African crisis: Context and interpretation', in R Werbner & T Ranger (eds), Postcolonial Identities in Africa, London: Zed Books, 1996, p 36
40. see also pp 45-46.
41. Murungi, 'The academy and the crisis of African governance', p 11.
42. Ibid, p 15.
43. Ibid, p 20.
44. Cf J Gray, False Dawn: The Delusion of Global Capitalism, London: Granta, 2002, pp 116-119.
45. Cf A Sen, Development as Freedom, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp 5-6.
46. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2003, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003
47. and 'The UN laments the 1990s', The Economist, 10 July 2003.
48. W W Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960, pp 4-16.
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50. R Bakshi, 'Gross National Happiness', Post-autistic Economics Review, 26, 2004, at http://www.btinternet.com/~pae_news/review/issue26.htm.
51. On the nature of ubuntu, see ED Prinsloo, 'Ubuntu culture and participatory management', in PH Coetzee & APJ Roux (eds), The African Philosophy Reader, London: Routledge, 1998, p 42.
52. Sen, pp 18-19.
53. Latouche, 'Why less should be so much more', Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2004, at http://mondediplo.com/2004/11/14latouche.
54. Ibid.
55. S Amin, Delinking: Towards a Polycentric World, London: Zed Books, 1999.
56. Rahnema, cited in Latouche, 'Why less should be so much more'.
57. See also S Andreasson, 'Accumulation and growth to what end? Reassessing the modern faith in progress in the "age of development"', Capitalism Nature Socialism, forthcoming, 2005.
58. World Wildlife Fund, Living Planet Report 2002, at http://www.panda.org/ downloads/general/LPR2002Summary.pdf.
59. Ibid.
60. World Wildlife Fund, Living Planet Report 2004, at http://www.panda.org/ downloads/general/lpr2004.pdf, p 2.
61. Ibid, p 1.
62. Ibid.
63. United States Census Bureau, World Population Profile: 1998, Washington, DC: US Census Bureau, 1998
64. and United Nations Population Information Network, World Population Prospects: The 2002 Revision, New York: UNPOPIN, 2002.
65. M Rahnema, 'Introduction', in M Rahnema & V Bowtree (eds), The Post Development Reader, London: Zed Books, 1997, p x.
66. G Bush Senior, quoted in Peter Singer, One World: The Ethics of Globalization, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002, p 2.
67. Quoted in KM Sen, 'The Baül singers of Bengal', in R Tagore, The Religion of Man, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1931, p 213.
68. While there is a need for African solutions to African dilemmas, this does not require closing off global fows of ideas and knowledge; it does not preclude considering, for example, Western science or Eastern mysticism along with African philosophies in discussions of how African and global problems may be resolved.
69. W Bello, Deglobalization: Ideas for a New World Economy, London: Zed, 2004, p 7.
70. For examples of post-development theory, see W Sachs (ed), The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, London: Zed Press, 1992
71. A Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995
72. Rahnema & Bowtree, The Post Development Reader;
73. G Esteva & MS Prakash, Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures, London: Zed Books, 1998
74. and R Munck & D O'Hearn (eds), Critical Development Theory: Contributions to a New Paradigm, London: Zed Books, 2001.
75. A Ziai, 'The ambivalence of post-development: Between reactionary populism and radical democracy', Third World Quarterly, 25(6), 2004, pp 1045-1060.
76. J Nederveen Pieterse, 'After post-development', Third World Quarterly, 21(2), 2000, p 184.
77. Ziai, 'The ambivalence of post-development', p 1049.
78. Matthews, 'Post-development theory and the question of alternatives'.
79. On 'cognitive locks' as barriers to policy change, see M Blyth, 'The transformation of the Swedish model: Economic ideas, distributional conflict, and institutional change', World Politics, 54(1), 2001, pp 1-26.
80. Escobar, Encountering Development, p 7.
81. Cf Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa, p 183.
82. K Kanneh, African Identities: Race, Nation and Culture in Ethnography, Pan-Africanism and Black Literatures, London: Routledge, p 43.
83. Ziai, 'The ambivalence of post-development', pp 1056-1058.
84. Ibid, p 1056.
85. See also E Laclau & C Moufe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso, 2001, pp 178, 184.
86. C Mercer, G Mohan & M Power, 'Towards a critical political geography of African development', Geoforum, 34, 2003, p 426.
87. I Kapoor, 'Hyper-self-reflexive development? Spivak on representing the Third World "Other"', Third World Quarterly, 25(4), 2004, pp 627-647.