Developmentalities and Calculative Practices: The Millennium Development Goals

Abstract: This paper focuses on wide‐ranging governmental discourses that enable new ways of shaping social and economic affairs in the field of development. Directing particular attention to the Millennium Development Goals, we refer to these discourses as developmentalities. As a form of governmentality produced through these Goals, developmentalities draw on the turn of the century to recast certain development problems and offer reformulated solutions to these problems. We argue that they rely on three forms of neoliberal rationalities of government—information profiling, responsibilization, and knowledge networks, and their calculative practices, to shape global spaces and new capacities for individuals and social groups. Our analysis is based on extensive policy documents, reports, and development initiatives affiliated with the United Nations and other organizations, as well as insights derived from in‐depth interviews and conversations with United Nations policy and research personnel from the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).     

Cultural policies for sustainable development: four strategic paths

Abstract

In the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015, the role of culture is limited. We argue that culture’s absence is rooted in the longue durée of interplay among theoretical and policy debates on culture in sustainable development and on cultural policy since the mid-twentieth century. In response to variations in concepts and frameworks used in advocacy, policy, and academia, we propose four roles cultural policy can play towards sustainable development: first, to safeguard and sustain cultural practices and rights; second, to ‘green’ the operations and impacts of cultural organizations and industries; third, to raise awareness and catalyse actions about sustainability and climate change; and fourth, to foster ‘ecological citizenship’. The challenge for cultural policy is to help forge and guide actions along these co-existing and overlapping strategic paths towards sustainable development.     

An overview of Caribbean and Latin-American cultural heritage studies

Abstract

This review analyzes, through three recently published books that talk about cultural heritage in Latin America, how the Cultural Heritage Studies have allowed us to understand the current situation in the region characterized by the growing tendency to promote declarations of heritage as part of a plan for the use of culture as a resource for sustainable development. Likewise, those books analyze how responses from local communities are generated to hegemonic definitions of heritage, which indicates that cultural heritage in Latin America is not something given but something in constant construction and dispute.     

What role for culture in the age of sustainable development? UNESCO’s advocacy in the 2030 Agenda negotiations

ABSTRACT

The article presents the nuanced role of culture in the sustainable development agenda of the United Nations, highlighting the contribution of UNESCO. While UNESCO has been engaged in the intersections between culture and development since 1980s, when the World Decade for Cultural Development was proclaimed, it was only with the negotiation of post-2015 development framework that culture began to enter the mainstream development discourse. It is argued that this process, influenced by both external and internal factors, has led to the reconceptualisation of the culture-development nexus. While the role of culture in the human development paradigm was focused on poverty alleviation and other human needs, including identity, education, and health, the sustainability agenda significantly widens the possible roles for cultural factors. UNESCO’s three approaches are discussed: culture as a unique dimension of sustainable development, and culture as a driver and enabler of sustainability.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:
D. Harvey , Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanization : Vol. 1, Consciousness and the Urban Experience; Vol. 2, The Urbanization of Capital .
R. D. Sack , Human Territoriality. Its Theory and History .
D. Pepper and A. Jenkins (Eds.), The Geography of Peace and War .
R. Hudson and J. Lewis (Eds.), Uneven Development in Southern Europe. Studies of Accumulation, Class, Migration and the State .
M. Birkel, B. Lavalle, Y. Aquila, B. Chenot, W. Casanova, A. M de la Mota, Ch. Girault and H. Godard , Villes et Nations en Amérique Latine (Cities and Nations in Latin America).     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Hans Singer, Neelamber Hatti and Ramesbwar Tandon (eds), Technology Transfer by Multinationals. Paul W. Beamish, Multinational Joint Ventures in Developing Countries. Yves Beigbeder, Management Problems in United Nations Organizations: Reform or Decline? Frits van Holthoon and Marcel van der Linden (eds), Internationalism in the Labour Movement 1830–1940. R. Vos (ed.), From Crisis to Equitable Growth. A New Development Agenda for Latin America. PREALC, In Search of Equity. Planning for the Satisfaction of Basic Needs in Latin America. Margaret Garritsen de Vries, Balance of Payments Adjustment, 1945 to 1986. The IMF Experience. Birol A. Yesilada, Charles D. Brockett and Bruce Drury (eds), Agrarian Reform in Reverse: The Food Crisis in the Third World. J. Hinderink and J. J. Slerkenburg, Agricultural Commercialization and Government Policy in Africa. Piers Blaikie and Harold Brookfield, Land Degradation and Society. Mike Donaldson and Kenneth Good, Articulated Development: Traditional and Capitalist Agriculture in Papua New Guinea. Sun Jingzhi (ed.), The Economic Geography of China. Peter Bowden, National Monitoring and Evaluation, Development Programs in the Third World. Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Public Intervention and Industrial Restructuring in China, India and Republic of Korea. William K. A. Agyei, Fertility and Family Planning in the Third World: A Case Study of Papua New Guinea. G. N. Ramu, Family Structure and Fertility: Emerging Patterns in an Indian City. S. Alessandrini and B. Dallago (eds), The Unofficial Economy: Consequences and Perspectives in Different Economic Systems. The Netherlands Review of Development Studies.     

International development in transition

International development is in a period of transition. While the outcome of this is still unclear, this article argues that there are at least four areas in which the project of international development is changing. First, there is a debate, especially within the World Bank, about development strategy and how we think about development, particularly in terms of the balance between states and markets. This is evident in the debate over state failure and the new structural economics. Second, there is increasing evidence of a shift in lending, away from projects of ‘small’ human development, perhaps best encapsulated by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, towards more transformative ‘big’ development projects such as infrastructure. Third, ‘non‐traditional’ aid donors and new forms of private philanthropy are playing a more significant role in development financing and this, in turn, offers developing countries a new range of choices about what kinds of development assistance they receive. Fourth, aid relations are changing as a result of the renewed agency of developing states, particularly in sub‐Saharan Africa, and shifts towards increased South–South cooperation are growing as evidenced by increased funding from regional development banks and increased trade flows. The article reviews these changes and suggests a series of questions and challenges that arise from them for analysts of international development, developing countries and traditional aid donors.     

‘We are not a rich country to waste our resources on expensive toys’: Mexico’s version of Atoms for Peace

Abstract

The Atoms for Peace initiative was announced by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on 8 December 1953. The ways in which Eisenhower’s proposal was interpreted, adapted and reshaped by different countries allows us to understand the various meanings and uses of nuclear technologies, particularly in Third World countries. Mexico’s version of the initiative was related to its modernizing nationalism, a distaste for overt geopolitical alignment and nuclear weapons, and an intermittent commitment of the federal government with nuclear technologies. These ingredients eventually led to the promotion of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean, known as the Treaty of Tlatelolco (TT) signed in Mexico City in 1967. The TT made Latin America the first nuclear weapons-free populated region in the world, thus positioning Mexico in the new geopolitical nuclear order through a denuclearization discourse and a policy of non-engagement with nuclear technologies.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Juliet Clifford and Gavin Osmond, World Development Handbook Charles Knight & Co. John White, Regional Development Banks. A Study of Institutional Style Overseas Development Institute Keith Griffin (ed), Financing Development in Latin America Milton C. Taylor (ed), Taxation for African Economic Development Hutchinson Educational Ramgopal Agarwala, An Econometric Model of India 1948–1961 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd Earl M. Kulp, Rural Development Planning - Systems Analysis and Working Method Alessandro Pizzorno (ed), Political Sociology Penguin Modern Sociology Readings     

An international public health crisis: can global institutions respond effectively to HIV/AIDS?

The United Nations Millennium Project (2005 UN Millennium Project , 2005 . Combating AIDS in the developing world ( London : Taskforce on HIV/AIDS, Malaria, TB, and Access to Essential Medicines: Working Group on HIV/AIDS, Earthscan ). [Google Scholar]) describes the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a ‘global catastrophe, threatening social and economic stability in the most affected areas, while spreading relentlessly into new regions’. Multilateral institutions under the leadership of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS and World Health Organization have been charged with coordinating the worldwide response. Yet with attention and funding diverted between bilateral, regional and multilateral aid providers, and little discernible success in containing the global epidemic to date, it remains an open question whether traditional global institutions are able to effectively combat HIV/AIDS. It is argued that bilateral relationships are still heavily relied upon at present as traditional multilateral arrangements struggle for resources and political attention. The critical questions discussed here are whether global institutions should, can and will respond effectively to the HIV/AIDS crisis. This analysis finds that the most readily organised and deployed global response will likely involve an alliance of public and private agencies that can escape some of the domestic, political and organisational constraints inherent in existing HIV/AIDS funding arrangements. Ultimately, newer hybrid arrangements that have emerged recently, like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, may offer a more enduring global regime to control the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The corollary is that UN agencies alone in their traditional form, hampered by multilateral practicalities, will be less effective.     

The reshaping of Ibero-American cultural diplomacy in the beginning of the XXI century: the declining of the Spanish historical hegemony?

ABSTRACT

Francoist cultural policy in Latin America – itself based on Hispanist philosophy – and the Spanish activity in the Organization of Ibero-American States (1949) promoted the emergence of Ibero-American cultural diplomacy. The return of democracy to Spain in 1978 turned these projects into more horizontal instruments of cultural cooperation. After a process of institutionalization that led to the creation of SEGIB and the establishment of the Ibero-American Cultural Letter in 2006, this multilateral diplomatic system was called into question due to its economic asymmetries and its ideological basis. However, the relative influence of this process in reformulating the system and in creating a shared identitarian discourse within Ibero-America has never been properly weighted, nor has the importance of each actor within this process. This article analyses the multilateral Ibero-American cultural diplomacy in order to understand its recent transformations in terms of the importance of both national power and symbolic hegemony.     

The true ‘EURESCO’? The Council of Europe,transnational networking and the emergence of European Community cultural policies, 1970–90

Abstract

The roots of EU action in the field of culture lie in the 1970s. At the time, the Council of Europe (CoE), the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and other organizations were already established players in the field. This article analyses the incremental and often haphazard process in which the European Community (EC) became the key organization at the European level by the end of the Cold War. It stresses the role of the EC’s specific governance structure, its considerable financial resources, and its objectives of market integration and expanding powers as drivers of this process, along with selective forms of adaptation of practices first tried out in other forums. Besides scrutinizing general tendencies of inter-organizational exchange during the 1970s and 1980s, the article zooms in on two concrete case studies. For the 1970s, it highlights the debates about cultural heritage and the European Architectural Heritage Year (EAHY) project: although initiated by the CoE, the EAHY became one of the first cases of EC policy import, strongly facilitated by transnational networks. The second case study, for the 1980s, deals with the development of a European audio-visual policy. Here again the CoE took the lead and worked as a laboratory for schemes later adapted by the EC.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this issue. International Relations theory On global order: power, values and the constitution of international society. By Andrew Hurrell. Between war and politics: international relations and the thought of Hannah Arendt. By Patricia Owens. William E. Connolly: democracy, pluralism and political theory. Edited by Samuel Chambers and Terrell Carver. The realist tradition and contemporary international relations. Edited by W. David Clinton. Nations, states and violence. By David D. Laitin. Human rights and ethics Killing civilians: method, madness and morality in war. By Hugo Slim. Purify and destroy: the political uses of massacre and genocide. By Jaques Semelin. Human rights and the WTO: the case of patents and access to medicines. By Holger Hestermeyer. International law and organization The Oxford handbook on the United Nations. Edited by Thomas G. Weiss and Sam Daws. Defending the society of states: why America opposes the International Criminal Court and its vision of world society. By Jason Ralph. Reparations for indigenous peoples: international and comparative perspectives. Edited by Federico Lenzerini. The international judge: an introduction to the men and women who decide the world's cases. By Daniel Terris, Cesare P. R. Romano and Leigh Swigard. Foreign policy China—India relations: contemporary dynamics. By Amardeep Athwal. Conflict, security and armed forces Culture in chaos: an anthropology of the social condition in war. By Stephen C. Lubkemann. UN peacekeeping in Lebanon, Somalia and Kosovo: operational and legal issues in practice. By Ray Murphy. Biosecurity in the global age: biological weapons, public health and the rule of law. By David P. Fidler and Lawrence O. Gostin. Uniting against terror: cooperative nonmilitary responses to the global terrorist threat. Edited by David Cortright and George A. Lopez. War on terror, inc.: corporate profiteering from the politics of fear. By Solomon Hughes. Politics, democracy and social affairs What democracy is for: on freedom and moral government. By Stein Ringen. Political economy, economics and development Escape from empire: the developing world's journey through heaven and hell. By Alice H. Amsden. Everyday politics of the world economy. Edited by John M. Hobson and Leonard Seabrooke. Global governance reform: breaking the stalemate. Edited by Colin I. Bradford, Jr and Johannes F. Linn. Ethnicity and cultural politics The politics of Englishness. By Arthur Aughey. Cultural contestation in ethnic conflict. By Marc Howard Ross. Energy and environment Peace parks: conservation and conflict resolution. Edited by Saleem H. Ali. Greening Brazil: environmental activism in state and society. By Kathryn Hochstetler and Margaret E. Keck. History The Reagan diaries. Edited by Douglas Brinkley. From bloodshed to hope in Burundi: our embassy years during genocide. By Ambassador Robert Krueger and Kathleen Tobin Krueger. Europe Europe's global role: external policies of the European Union. Edited by Jan Orbie. Democratic politics in the European Parliament. By Simon Hix, Abdul G. Noury and Gérard Roland. Middle East and North Africa Der unerklärte Weltkrieg: Akteure und Interessen in nah und Mittelost. By Bahman Nirumand. Sub‐Saharan Africa Big African states. Edited by Christopher Clapham, Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills. After the party: a personal and political journey inside the ANC. By Andrew Feinstein. One hundred days of silence: America and the Rwanda genocide. By Jared Cohen. Asia and Pacific Reconciliation: Islam, democracy and the West. By Benazir Bhutto. Dancing in shadows: Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge and the United Nations in Cambodia. By Benny Widyono. Rivals: how the power struggle between China, India and Japan will shape our next decade. By Bill Emmott. The battle for China's past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution. By Mobo Gao . China rising: peace, power and order in East Asia. By David C. Kang. Reluctant restraint: the evolution of China's nonproliferation policies and practices, 1980‐2004. By Evan S. Medeiros. Frontier of faith: Islam in the Indo‐Afghan borderland. By Sana Haroon. North America The long war: a new history of US national security policy since World War II. Edited by Andrew J. Bacevich. The mighty Wurlitzer: how the CIA played America. By High Wilford. Latin America and Caribbean Panama lost? US hegemony, democracy, and the canal. By Peter M. Sánchez. Warfare in Latin America. Volumes 1 and 2. Edited by Miguel A. Centeno.     

Latin America: trade and culture at a crossroads

ABSTRACT

Trade liberalization took the cultural community in Latin America by surprise, forcing a defensive reaction that took years to generate adequate public policy responses. However, cultural policy has changed unevenly in the region. Two issues became the center of culture and trade debates after the 1990s: cultural industry production and traditional indigenous knowledge. Mexico, by far the largest producer of audiovisual content on the continent, has been reluctant to adopt defensive approaches or red lines during trade negotiations. In fact, Chile is the only country that negotiated a ‘cultural reserve’ in its FTA with the United States. Regarding traditional knowledge, only states with large indigenous populations like Guatemala, Panama but especially Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador in the Andean Region dedicated significant efforts to fight for intellectual property protection for traditional knowledge, including benefit-sharing for the commercial use of genetic resources, derived through indigenous collective knowledge.     

The International Fund for Cultural Diversity: a new tool for cooperation in the audiovisual field

This paper analyses the implementation of the International Fund for Cultural Diversity (IFCD), emerged from the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (UNESCO 2005). The uniqueness of this multilateral fund is that most of its resources are aimed at supporting actions of non-governmental organizations functioning within the fields of cultural policy and cultural industries in developing and underdeveloped countries. Through a thorough study of different decisions and documents, this text analyses the IFCD’s funding, the results of the first calls for initiatives and the support obtained by projects focused on the audiovisual industry. Conceived as an instrument to implement initiatives whose goal is to strengthen the cultural sphere of the poorest countries, the hitherto modest IFCD faces now questions about its future growth and effectiveness in terms of changing the existing imbalance at work within the flows of audiovisual content both regionally and internationally.     

Trade and culture: the ongoing debate

ABSTRACT

The debate over how to reconcile trade liberalization with cultural policy is a long-standing one. There is great variation in how countries have navigated this debate. Furthermore, evolving individual policy approaches show noteworthy dynamism, largely in response to domestic politics, shifts in the international trading system and technological developments. This special issue explores different approaches to the trade and culture debate across geographic space, as well as the evolution across time through analysis of six cases – Canada, the European Union, South Africa, Latin America, the United States and China.     

Indigenous peoples' rights to their cultural heritage

Abstract

This paper discusses indigenous peoples' rights to their cultural heritage, using the example of rights to indigenous human remains, held by institutions, universities, scientific centres and museums. It addresses international developments in indigenous cultural policy at the United Nations and the European Union, with specific reference to Australia and the United Kingdom. It also outlines issues relating to indigenous peoples' collective rights, free, prior and informed consent, ownership of indigenous human remains and the issue of benefit sharing and sustainable justice. There are now several international declarations, conventions and policies in place to assist indigenous people in gaining some form of control and protection over their heritage, however, these international instruments are often unco-ordinated and lacking in any enforcement mechanisms and they hold little sway with those who retain indigenous human remains against the wishes of descendant communities.     

Aid for trade and ecologically sustainable development in Australia’s international aid program

In September 2015, Australia, along with 193 member states of the United Nations, signed the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The facilitation of international trade and increasing foreign aid for developing countries were emphasised as crucial means for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. An important role was assigned to the international Aid for Trade initiative, which is about stimulating economic growth in developing countries through removing constraints to trade. Australia has been a strong supporter of the Aid for Trade initiative since it was launched at the World Trade Organization’s Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong in 2005. Aid for trade has become a central plank of the ‘new development paradigm’ of Australia’s international aid program. This article analyses the conceptualisation and practice of aid for trade in Australia’s aid, with a focus on how it links to ecologically sustainable development. It argues that Australia’s aid for trade is reinforcing the neo-liberal development paradigm in which environmental dimensions are overall neglected and private sector development and free trade are prioritised. In order to achieve international and national development goals of poverty reduction and sustainable development, environmental sustainability needs to be fully integrated into the growing aid for trade portfolio of Australia’s international aid.     

Lord Castlereagh's return: the significance of Kofi Annan's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change

This article suggests that the Annan High Level Panel that reported in December 2004 has produced the most important strategic document to be published by the UN since 1945, eclipsing the now distinctly dated Millennium Development Goals. It documents how it is unusually cogent and candid for a Blue Ribbon exercise. This article starts by describing both the long wave and the immediate events within which the Panel's work exists. The world is now plainly moving through the biggest change of course since the late eighteenth century, which the Panel also discusses, and which was punctuated in 2002–3 by a specific crisis over Iraq. The aftermath of that crisis was the occasion for the secretary-general of the United Nations to establish a High Level Panel with a wide mandate, to describe the new environment of international peace and security and to recommend changes to refurbish the United Nations in order to face new threats, challenges and change. The article analyses the Panel's strategy to obtain action on its key recommendations. These are to make routine the exercise of the responsibility to protect individuals at risk in failed or collapsed states by 'full spectrum' UN interventions embracing peace-enforcement, -keeping, -making and -building. The mechanisms recommended are described and the judgement made that the shrewd presentation of the brokerage of different interests gives a modest but real chance of success. The Panel also addresses the matter of membership of the Security Council but in a way which will enable the likely deadlock over that question later this year to be contained so as not to impede action on other matters. In sum, the High Level Panel promises to be Kofi Annan's best legacy.