From International to Global Development: New Geographies of 21st Century Development

Recent claims of 21^st century global convergence and the ‘rise of the South’ suggest a profound and ongoing redrawing of the global map of development and inequality. This article synthesizes shifting geographies of development across economic, social and environmental dimensions, and considers their implications for the ‘where’ of development. Some convergence in aggregate development indicators for the global North and South during this century challenge, now more than ever, the North–South binary underlying international development. Yet convergence claims do not adequately capture change in a world where development inequalities are profound. Between‐country inequalities remain vast, while within‐country inequalities are growing in many cases. Particular attention is given here to exploring the implications of such shifting geographies, and what those mean for the spatial nomenclature and reference of development. This article concludes by arguing for the need, now more than ever, to go beyond international development considered as rich North/poor South, and to move towards a more holistic global development — where the global South remains a key, although not exclusive, focus.     

Declining Food Security in a Philippine Oil Palm Frontier: The Changing Role of Cooperatives

The long‐held redistributive function of agricultural cooperatives — one of moral economy and poverty alleviation — has changed dramatically as they emerge as core brokers for agro‐industrial development in the so‐called ‘green economy’. This article examines the changing role of cooperatives involved in brokering oil palm production and its impact upon the food security and livelihoods of smallholders who labour in plantation regimes situated in historically uneven agrarian political economies. Findings show how, increasingly, cooperatives reinforce uneven agrarian social relations of production and exchange in which indigenous smallholders experience loss of land, poor wage labour conditions tinged with insecurity and prejudice, and mounting debt in an expanding oil palm complex. The article suggests that these changes in agrarian social relations negatively influence indigenous farmers’ food security pathways, with their access to and use of appropriate foods diminishing. It asserts that understanding the impacts of cooperatives on food security pathways requires a relational and situated analysis of livelihood change and agrarian relations in extractive frontiers.     

‘Death to Sarts’: History,injustice and a complex insult in Central Asia (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Recently published independent inquiries and detailed chronologies of the violence that occurred in the southern Kyrgyzstan city of Osh in 2010 noted the frequent and threatening use of ‘Sart’ against Uzbek residents in the city's mahallas. This article explains the significance and potency of this insult as the confluence of perceived historical injustices, iniquities in post‐independence land privatizations, and current hardships of food insecurity and poverty. It considers the significance of narratives of ‘Soviet injustice’ (outlawing of pastoralism, collectivization, and land confiscation) for contemporary nationalist agendas which emphasize Kyrgyz harm. With increasing political fragmentation and social disunity, the fear of further inter‐communal violence is ever present, and it is suggested that twenty years on from independence the Kyrgyzstan government will need to find ways of openly debating such interpretations of the past without undermining national reconciliation.     

Food Deserts: Towards the Development of a Classification

Many people in developed countries fail to consume a healthy diet. This phenomenon has been linked to the contested existence of ‘food deserts’ in the UK, and the occurrence of ‘food insecurity’ in the USA and elsewhere. ‘Food deserts’ remain contested theoretical territory at least partly because no firm definition has been proposed. This paper argues that the barriers to consumption of a healthy diet may be classified according to whether such barriers are financial, physical, or derive from the mental attitude and knowledge of the consumer. The perception of ‘unsupportive food environments’ by some consumers is contrasted with the geographical existence of multiple sources of fresh fruit and vegetables in certain locations. Using a total of 234 semi—structured interviews in various UK locations, qualitative evidence is gathered for the existence of at least ten different types of ‘food desert’. The paper then goes on to show how such a three fold classification may be developed, using a modified ternary diagram, to assess the most appropriate initiatives to tackle ‘food deserts’ and to monitor progress in alleviating their effects.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 28, Number 4. August 2012

Front and back cover caption, volume 28 issue 4 Front cover: OLYMPIC LEGACY: FOOD Over the last decades, the Olympic Games have increasingly claimed to deliver a social and economic ‘legacy’ to the host city. The 2012 Olympic Games in London have set out to deliver a legacy of better food for east London, an area perceived as ‘deprived’, with higher than average rates of obesity and significant ‘food deserts’ in its midst. Various Olympic organizations have considered the issue, resulting in the publication of a Food vision for the first time ever in Olympic history. However, with companies such as Coca‐Cola and McDonald's having been appointed official suppliers to the Games, and with an extremely limited time frame, will the Games be able to deliver on this promise? Allotments have been demolished and plans are afoot for Queen's Market, Upton Park, to be replaced by a supermarket. In response, Queen's Market traders and customers protest that demolition of their market goes against the Olympic spirit. Indeed, the Games could be used instead to help improve access to London's ethnically diverse markets far beyond the borough limits, as suggested in this postcard distributed by campaigners. As Freek Janssens argues in his guest editorial in this issue, the 2012 Games provide the opportunity to more critically assess how food serves the marginalized in our ethnically diverse inner cities. Also in this issue, Johan Fischer deals with halal, another topic that impacts athletes and spectators at the Games, with sporting events taking place during ramadan. Back cover: POVERTY AND GRASSROOTS COMMERCE Aisha, a door‐to‐door entrepreneur in CARE Bangladesh’ s Rural Sales Programme (RSP), is one of 3,000 previously ‘destitute’ women who now earns an income by selling branded consumer goods across rural villages under a partnership between CARE and global multinationals such as Danone, Bic, and Unilever. Similar female distribution systems are now popping up across the world. From Procter and Gamble's distribution of sanitary pads to ‘poor’ adolescent girls in Kenya and Malawi, to Unilever's Shakti ammas distributing soap village‐to‐village in rural India, companies aim to expand their bottom line by fostering entrepreneurial opportunities among the poor through so‐called ‘bottom of the pyramid’ (BoP) initiatives. Such initiatives reflect the changing nature of international development where new development actors – celebrities, philanthrocapitalists, multinational corporations, social entrepreneurs etc. – spearhead efforts to reduce poverty, replacing the role long occupied by states and aid agencies. Today some of the world's largest corporations have become key players in global development by selling ‘socially beneficial’ products to the ‘poor’, and by drawing them into global commodity chains as entrepreneurs. These efforts are now widely endorsed as part of a pro‐market development agenda that looks to the perceived ‘efficiency’ of the private sector to do what billions of aid dollars have been unable to do. BoP distribution systems can offer ‘poor’ women like Aisha an opportunity to earn an income and contribute to the food security of their family. But these engagements pose risks as well as rewards, and raise pressing questions for anthropologists about how, under what terms, and with what effects, global capital is linking up with informal economies in the name of development.     

The Spirit and the Gifts: Dako,Benjamin Morrell and Cargo in the Vitiaz Trading area,New Guinea

In 1830 an American trader, Benjamin Morrell, abducted Dako, the son of a prominent leader from Uneapa Island in the Bismarck Sea, took him to New York and, four years later, returned him to Uneapa. Dako's encounter with America and his return provides insight into the region half a century before colonization, and in particular into local mytho‐practical knowledge at that time. This enables us to discern subsequent transformations. Myths concerning an origin spirit and guardian of the dead, Pango, which then dominated Uneapa cosmology have since ‘disappeared’. This, we argue, is not because Pango has been superseded or suppressed, but because the parallel ‘white’ world over which the mytho‐practical Pango presided has become ever more manifest as Uneapa has been drawn into a colonial, post‐colonial and globalised world. Today, Pango refers predominantly to white people. Islander's experience of American ‘Pango’ was a shocking event at the time, but we show how trading with Pango established transformatory possibilities for reciprocal trading relations with the dead which remain the concern of today's Cult movement on the island.     

Struggling for food in a time of crisis: Responsibility and paradox

Struggling for food in a time of crisis: responsibility and paradox. Responsibility is a useful lens through which to examine the current state of food poverty in the UK in the context of the Covid-19 crisis, noting that this concept contains several paradoxes. Currently, responsibility involves the voluntary sector, the food industry and the state, a situation which the author has been exploring for the last five years in an ethnographic study of food poverty and food aid in the UK. Food aid organizations, especially food banks, have mushroomed during the period of austerity. This reveals the first paradox: namely, that the existence of food banks conveys the message that ‘something is being done’, but in actuality this is very far from being sufficient to meet the needs of either the ‘old’ or ‘new’ food insecure. The second paradox is that at the onset of the crisis, a government which had been responsible for inflicting austerity on the country for 10 years, dramatically reversed some of its policies. However, predictably, this did not change the situation vis-à-vis food insecurity. The third paradox is that the frequent rhetoric invoking the two world wars has not resulted in lessons being learned – notably, the creation of a ministry to deal with food and rationing, as in the Second World War. The final paradox relates to Brexit and its likely deleterious effects on food security, particularly if no ‘deal’ is achieved with the European Union, as seems likely. The voluntary food aid sector, try as it may, cannot possibly assume responsibility for the long-standing and now hugely increased problems of food insecurity. That belongs to the state.     

Gender and food security in Bangladesh: the impact of climate change

Food security remains a critical global issue, made more difficult because of the rising world population, climate challenges affecting food production and a focus on market-based solutions that undermine subsistence production in vulnerable rural areas. Particularly affected are countries across Asia where poverty, hunger and malnourishment affect a significant proportion of the population. Drawing on Sen’s entitlement theory, we argue that a shift in focus from national food production to intra-household food access enables a critical reflection on consumption smoothing strategies adopted at this level. In particular, we draw attention to the tendency for women and girls to eat less as an intra-household adaptation strategy. We present findings from our research in rural areas of Bangladesh and note that adaptation strategies adopted by households in response to food insecurity. We note that strategies designed to address food insecurity must include gender mainstreaming to ensure that women and girls are not taking a disproportionate responsibility for intra-household food security.     

Power Relations and Upgrading in the Cashew Value Chain of Côte d'Ivoire

Development organizations are increasingly adopting market‐based approaches to reducing rural poverty and food insecurity in the global South. The value chain approach is particularly popular. Aid donors, governments and non‐governmental organizations are applying value chain concepts originally designed for promoting industrial production to smallholder agricultural production. Cashew development in Côte d'Ivoire illustrates this new approach to rural development in which ‘upgrading’ the production and processing links are top priorities. A core assumption informing this approach is that improvements in product quality at the producer level will yield higher producer prices and incomes. This article examines this assumed quality–price relationship through a comparative analysis of cashew quality and prices in Côte d'Ivoire. The research reveals a disconnect between nut quality and producer prices. The case study demonstrates that power relations are more important than quality in setting producer prices for raw cashew nuts.     

From terrorism to dispossession: Pakistan's Anti‐Terrorism Act as a means of eviction

The discourse of the ‘war on terror’ fails to address the complex and multifaceted structural violence of landlessness, food insecurity and environmental degradation that afflicts the world. Pakistan, for instance, has been a subject of great discussion and geopolitical analysis as the ground zero in the war against terror. However, the scholarship on terrorism in Pakistan analyzes militant and jihadi groups as discrete agents of primordial conflicts, spy agencies and sectarian rivalries with little analysis of the history of the cold war and the effects of the Afghan war. In this article, the author analyzes how the global ‘war on terror’ has proliferated into seemingly unrelated domains of life, and specifically how anti‐terror security legislation has pulled the rug out from under the most successful peasant land rights movement in Pakistan.     

No Way Back? Adaptation and Urbanization of IDP Livelihoods in the Darfur Region of Sudan

This article explores how people in conflict zones adapt their livelihoods after they migrate to urban areas. Drawing on case studies in two towns in the Darfur region of Sudan, the authors find that livelihood systems are in transition and have undergone fundamental changes resulting from displacement and the effects of conflict on dysfunctional and failing institutions. Urban migrants’ livelihood strategies evolve in a context of insecurity, distorted markets, lack of regulation and punitive rent‐seeking regimes such as protection payments. Maladaptive livelihood strategies emerge in response to the need for food and income in the short term. New strategies also can increase societal inequities and marginalization, and over‐exploit limited natural resources. Thus the ‘new’ livelihoods cannot be considered sustainable or equitable, or even able to provide food security in the short term. Locally appropriate and innovative approaches to support livelihoods are badly needed, but it is important to monitor and evaluate their impacts on livelihood groups, local economic recovery, environment and conflict.     

Trajectories for Greening in China: Theory and Practice

This edited volume argues that China's development poses the greatest ever environmental challenge for the modern world in terms of speed, size and scarcity. The volume is organized around the greening of the Chinese state and society: can the inclusion of sustainable development principles into governance, management and daily practices by social actors lead to sustainable development per se? This introduction sketches the different scholarly camps around greening and sustainable development, ranging from sceptical to radical environmentalism. The contributions demonstrate that China is showing clear signs of greening as new institutions and regulations are created, environmental awareness increases and green technologies are implemented. However, the question remains whether this is sufficient to effectuate long‐term sustainable development. The key factors here are the sheer speed of China's economic growth, the size of its population, and the relative scarcity of its natural and mineral resources. Chinese development presents compelling reasons for rethinking the viability of greening. It is necessary to move beyond both alarmist visions of an environmental doomsday, and optimistic notions that incremental changes in technology, institutions and lifestyles are sufficient for sustainability. It might be more fruitful — and not only for China — to consider ‘precautionary’ rather than ‘absolute’ limits to growth.     

A Market Road to Sustainable Agriculture? Ecological Agriculture,Green Food and Organic Agriculture in China

To the extent that free markets show little concern for the existence of externalities, they are unlikely to produce optimum outcomes with regard to the protection and enhancement of the natural environment. Accordingly, the increasing emphasis on markets to deliver development in China under Deng Xiaoping and his successors has the capacity to threaten the long‐term environmental sustainability of that development. While there are good reasons to remain sceptical about the ability of market mechanisms to promote sustainable rural development in many respects, market reforms in China and the opening of the country to the outside world have nevertheless provided opportunities for farmers to engage in ecologically sensitive agriculture in the form of ‘green’ food and organic farming. Given that these forms of agriculture reduce farmers’ use of chemicals compared to conventional farming — chemicals which are costly to produce and environmentally degrading to use — they contribute to ensuring a more environmentally sustainable future for Chinese farming, post‐WTO entry, whilst providing opportunities for farmers to enrich themselves at the same time: a ‘win–win’ state of affairs. This will remain the case, however, only so long as the state is prepared to create and reinforce appropriate institutional arrangements.     

The case of the World Trade Organization

This article explores the relationship between power and rules within the context of international relations, utilizing as a case‐study what is arguably the most powerful international juridical institution in the world today, the World Trade Organization (WTO). The author draws upon a number of his previous works on the subject of the WTO and its predecessor, the GATT, wending through such topics as: the way that political and diplomatic leaders improvized and filled in the gaps of international institutions when the original idea for an International Trade Organization (ITO) failed; the remarkably elaborate development of the particularly deep and rich WTO Dispute Settlement (DS) jurisprudence (over 60,000 pages); and the constant tension between the role of nation‐state power and the power allocated to international institutions, apparently necessitated by the huge impact of ‘globalization’ and interdependency in world affairs (especially economic) today. Various specific issues and cases illustrate these tensions and allocations, including treaty interpretation techniques, the degree of deference towards the members’ government actions, the arguments about the appropriate role of the ‘adjudicators’, and the delicately sensitive approach of the DS system towards clashes of policy necessitating ‘balance’. Throughout, particular emphasis is laid upon the ‘rule oriented’ (‘more legalization’) approach of the WTO DS jurisprudence, both in reflection on the historical and current developments of that juridical system—from ‘power oriented’ to ‘rule oriented’—and also in the important roles regarding tensions between ‘sovereignty’ concepts and international rule needs.     

Cultural insecurity and its discursive crystallisation in contemporary France

This article analyses the emergence in French public discourse since 2010 of the term ‘insécurité culturelle’ (‘cultural insecurity’). It traces firstly the take-up of the term outside France since the 1980s in anglophone written news media. It establishes four received meanings for the term: a ‘pure’ cultural insecurity expressing simply a relation to the arts world; a nationally refracted cultural insecurity that expresses that relation through the prism of relations between nations; an anthropologico-political conception; and a conception related to the human development paradigm. The take-up in France of the term has conformed to the anthropologico-political conception. Developments after 2002 in France created propitious conditions for coupling the semantic fields of ‘culture’ and ‘insecurity’. The term itself was launched from 2010 through the work of two quite different ‘discursive entrepreneurs’ associated with the erstwhile ‘popular left’ current close to the French Socialist Party (Christophe Guilluy and Laurent Bouvet). The article analyses in both linguistic and political perspectives how the expression has been taken up since 2012 in the national press in France. In particular, it explores the debate concerning the purchase of the term on reality, and its current discursive fit with the agendas of the mainstream and far right.     

Time Ni Hota Hai: time poverty and food security in the Kumaon hills,India

This article investigates food and nutritional security (FNS) in a sub-Himalayan North India community, and argues that socio-spatial policies and practices naturalize a discourse that places women in a position where they are responsible for an inequitable share of both productive and reproductive labor. As a result, women are often unable to properly perform FNS practices. Paradoxically, insecurity increases when there is more agricultural labor and thus less time for food preparation, a notion itself that is productive of anxiety and further compounds poor FNS practices. NGO and government programs implicitly reinscribe these gendered labor burdens through exclusively targeting women, educating them to be ‘better’ housewives and mothers. While simple solutions and an educative approach were the dominant activities, these organizations also constitute the home as a delimiting social space for development and seek to empower women through livelihood diversification and employment activities. While these programs provide women new spaces with which to forge social relations and develop different sets of knowledge outside the home, without a renegotiation of household labor burdens, these novel commitments oftentimes exacerbate women’s existing workloads at home. This analysis suggests that while FNS programs and policies might sometimes lend short-term relief to FNS, the greatest threat to FNS comes from the ways that the home spaces of women and their household work are devalued through development practices. This results in a lack of gendered labor time to adequately prepare food, thereby contradicting the policies’ stated objectives of reducing food insecurity.     

The Interregnum: The South's Insecurity Dilemma

Abstract. This article investigates the ‘insecurity dilemma’ facing many Third World states arising from the fact that multiple ethnic communities reside within their borders. In terms of analysing the types of states that exist in the ‘South’, much of the literature on this phenomenon serves to confuse the various elements of state power and, therefore, the reasons for the existence and persistence of internal threats to Third World states. It is posited that the ‘insecurity dilemma’ has three possible sources: a lack of coercive means by the state for imposing its rule; a deficient infrastructure; and a lack of legitimacy. In examining the persistence of the ‘insecurity dilemma’ the article focuses on the third dimension of state power and the possible diminution of challenges from ethnic communities within a state's borders via the process of nation-building. The possibility that it will only be a matter of time before the embryonic states of the South will emulate the success of European states in achieving some degree of domestic consensus is highly questionable when the processes of nation-building are examined, for two reasons. Firstly, the emphasis placed on ‘modernisation’– infrastructural development and state imposition of a national ‘high’ culture – may be misplaced. Secondly, because of their peripheral status in the world economy the assimilative tendencies associated with ‘modernisation’ may take an extremely long time in arriving.     

Women's Employment in Urban Bangladesh: A Challenge to Gender Identity?

Drawing on survey and ethnographic data, this article presents empirical evidence regarding the impact of work participation on poor women's lives in urban Bangladesh. Working for pay is common among poor, married women in Dhaka and working women commonly make an important contribution to household income. There is evidence that working women are more likely to manage money, shop for household provisions and move about outside the home than non‐working women. Working women also appear better able to accumulate personal assets and take steps to secure their own well‐being. Despite such signs of challenge to ‘traditional’ gender identity, social and economic structures continue to be heavily weighted against women, limiting the impact of employment on other dimensions of their lives. In the acutely insecure urban setting, women (and men) are found to pursue multiple strategies aimed at both securing ‘centrality’ within their families, as well as protecting personal interests should familial entitlements prove unreliable.     

On the difficulties of speaking out against security

Abstract: This article outlines an approach to security that explains its phenomenal growth by examining a peculiarity of its semantic field. In contrast to notions like ‘war’ and ‘violence’, whose antonyms, ‘peace’ and ‘non‐violence’, have positive connotations and are therefore well suited to discursively opposing ‘war’ and ‘violence’, the antonym of ‘security’ ‘ namely ‘insecurity’ ‘ does not achieve the same effect. I suggest that this peculiarity leads to situations in which those in the political field who oppose ‘security’ find themselves in the predicament of having to come up with alternative antonymic constructions such as ‘security vs freedom’ or ‘security vs human rights’ to argue their case. Yet, this produces an asymmetric constellation: while ‘security’ tends to be presented as a self‐evident category, most of its opposites require more explication and substantiation when they are used to denaturalize security. Thus, my argument is that it is difficult to speak out against security without becoming enmeshed in complex questions of what a desirable social life should look like.     

Environmental insecurity and fortress mentality

This article explores the political, economic and ecological context within which environmental insecurity emerges and feeds back into a fortress mentality. Shortages of food, water and energy sources are the trigger for nefarious activities involving organized criminal networks, transnational corporations and governments at varying political levels. The consequences of such activities contribute to even more ruthless exploitation of rapidly vanishing natural resources, as well as the further diminishment of air, soil and water quality. These developments, in turn, exacerbate the competitive scramble by individuals, groups and nations for what is left. The accompanying insecurities and vulnerabilities ensure elite and popular support for self‐interested ‘security’. Accordingly, the ‘fortress’ is being constructed and reconstructed at individual, local, national and regional levels—as both an attitude of mind and a material reality. Fundamentally, the basis for this fortress mentality is linked to decades of neo‐liberal policy and practice that have embedded an individualizing and competitive self‐interest that, collectively, is overriding prudent and precautionary policy construction around climate change and environmental degradation. The net result is that security is being built on a platform of state, corporate and organized group wrongdoing and injustice, in many instances with the implied and/or overt consent of relevant publics. Yet, as long as the fortification continues apace, it will contribute to and further exacerbate varying levels of insecurity for all.