my mind feels so dead. this is what i've scribbled out. i feel funny posting it 'cause i really haven't thought it through, but i think posting it will push me to engage it farther. and this is an informal blog, right? well, here it is:
how development operates through the discourse of modernity:
the culture of economics and the use of bureaucracy
the making of docile bodies
the creation of poverty, illiteracy, and underdevelopement
rather broad, no?
~ emiko
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
Thanks all
aloha to all,
I finally made it on here. In regards to the mid term i have been struggling on figuring a theme. thanks to all that have shared their topics and themes over the blog so now I can have some kind of idea or direction to write the essay.
pi'i
I finally made it on here. In regards to the mid term i have been struggling on figuring a theme. thanks to all that have shared their topics and themes over the blog so now I can have some kind of idea or direction to write the essay.
pi'i
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Paper Topic on the Economic Man
I would love for feedback on this paper topic. Here is what I have so far:
How has the ‘Economic man’ emerged and been exported to the third world, through the apparatus of development; what are the relationships of resistance and assimilation to the ‘economic man’ and how has this been gendered within the third world?
I think that might be too many combinations of topics but I would be super excited to write about it. Let me know what y'all think.
Peace,
Lil Milagro
Regimes of Representation
So, after spending yesterday debating with myself over various topics and ideas for the paper I began to think about how regimes of representation have created the third world. We talked about this topic in class on September 3rd and of course I have an incomplete sentence in my notes and I was hoping if any of you have a minute (Ok, so I know you probably do not but I would appreciate some input) to look at your notes and fill me in. I wrote that "regimes of representation are a genre through which"........ BLANK!! My next sentence says, "What governs representations of self and others, what is intent, effect of representation." So any one that can finish that sentence, or any ideas about regimes of representation would be grateful. For my paper I was thinking of writing about three representations that created the idea of the third world, as underdeveloped. I am off to go play around with and struggle with this idea. Good luck, how is everyone else coming along?
Solipsism
Ok, so here is my homework assignment to post about solipsism. When I looked up the definition it stated that solipsism is a "philosophy. the theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist." The second definition stated an, "extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one's feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption." It sounds to me like... the result of thinking/believing that the world only exists through one's own mind and not learning to think about the world through the experience of others creates in one self a heightened sense of self importance. I believe this philosophy plagues the average white, middle-upper class American. So busy worrying about ourselves and our needs, that we do not need to worry about other's feelings and desires. When we do think about other's desires it is to satisfy our own desires. (OK, so I said we and our, but this is cause the white, middle-upper class Americans is where I come from, whether I like that or not I am part of their group, thus I feel comfortable talking about our experience.) So now I need input from all of you as to prevent me from thinking about this from my strictly my point of view. (And its not more in depth cause I am going to keep wrestling with my midterm themes.)
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Midterm paper, dun dun dun...
So how is everyone doing so far on their midterm stuff? Questions? Comments? I know it's a bit soon to be thinking about it, and I should be reading for Tuesday or something, but I think I have just figured out what my three topics are going to be. I wanted to share them with everyone and get your opinions. Hopefully some of you will share your three topics? I'm still a bit unsure of how specific or general these three topics need to be, but the whole assignment is still a jumbled mess in my head as to how the heck I'm suppose to go about actually completing it!
OK, here they are:
General topic: Development Economics and It’s role in development discourse
1. Its fluidity and ability to shape and be shaped by past & present events, beliefs etc.. much like any other culture
- Like seen in chapter 3 as described as “not a neutral representation of the world and a truth about it” p. 58
2. Comodification and objectification of cultures
- How putting a culture into terms of a production system whose overarching purpose is production
3. How the development of civilization thus far has resulted in the current concept of how our economy is perceived and practiced
- Uh, this one might be a bit tricky
What do you guys think? Too general? I'm sure I'll figure out how to get more specific as I progress through my research and reading. Also, I found Escobar's Curriculum Vitae on the web though that was kinds cool and coincidental here the URL:
http://www.ces.uc.pt/emancipa/cv/gen/escobar.html
OK, here they are:
General topic: Development Economics and It’s role in development discourse
1. Its fluidity and ability to shape and be shaped by past & present events, beliefs etc.. much like any other culture
- Like seen in chapter 3 as described as “not a neutral representation of the world and a truth about it” p. 58
2. Comodification and objectification of cultures
- How putting a culture into terms of a production system whose overarching purpose is production
3. How the development of civilization thus far has resulted in the current concept of how our economy is perceived and practiced
- Uh, this one might be a bit tricky
What do you guys think? Too general? I'm sure I'll figure out how to get more specific as I progress through my research and reading. Also, I found Escobar's Curriculum Vitae on the web though that was kinds cool and coincidental here the URL:
http://www.ces.uc.pt/emancipa/cv/gen/escobar.html
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
the fetish
i'm having a hard time pulling together the threads of Ioan Davies' article. after the poem by Amie Cesaire, the first line reads, "The debate around the origins and history of religion is at the heart of the reexamination of the idea of Aricica..." Is it in encountering the text as something to be "unraveled" that points us to a history of Christianity and Western colonialism? is the fetish as play, rather than a false mistake, a way to displace this dominance? How is the fetish connected to a rereading by "rediscover[ing] the black presence in the existing text." (p. 130). page 136 reads, "Ochieng's rationalist campaign is portrayed in a fierce missionary rhetoric," but how so? - in, "realizing the nature of the national and international power structure itself."? (earlier, same page). Is it in the elitism that exists by virtue of it being in a language available only to a small minority? what is happening on page 141, when we are told, "The gun is not a fetish... but a metaphor for someone who has noting else to do but blast someone else's head off. The American black.." and so on. i assumed this was a critique on the dominant ways in which the term 'fetish' is used, but at the end of the paragraph Davies writes, "In this, the common storytelling becomes part of the music and the music part of the personal image." totally confused. confused confused.
~ em
~ em
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Globalization
Other than there being missing pages from the "Globalization" article...did anyone else find it frustrating/infuriating?
Over all, I supposed, I was annoyed by the implicit insistence that all countries want to be a part of the global economy.
Then, at least on the pages we currently have, most of the correctives suggested insisted that developing countries make their voices heard in negotiating terms of free trade. Maybe I'm being overly cynical but I'm not so sure developing countries either have these voices or are allowed to use them.
And, finally, the conclusion basically said there is no way for countries to be equal partners or people to be equal citizens. I believe the article said it was "naive" to try to imagine such a world. But, hey, we should still try for correctives that make things less asymmetrical.
I dunno, maybe I'm just tired and cranky, but this article really rubbed me the wrong way. Any thoughts?
Over all, I supposed, I was annoyed by the implicit insistence that all countries want to be a part of the global economy.
Then, at least on the pages we currently have, most of the correctives suggested insisted that developing countries make their voices heard in negotiating terms of free trade. Maybe I'm being overly cynical but I'm not so sure developing countries either have these voices or are allowed to use them.
And, finally, the conclusion basically said there is no way for countries to be equal partners or people to be equal citizens. I believe the article said it was "naive" to try to imagine such a world. But, hey, we should still try for correctives that make things less asymmetrical.
I dunno, maybe I'm just tired and cranky, but this article really rubbed me the wrong way. Any thoughts?
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Lil Milagro's notes on 'Intellectual Openings and Policy Closures'
Definitions:
Washington Consensus: an extension of neo-liberal economic policy that worked in conjunction with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to create ‘structural adjustment programs’
Walrasian equilibrium – “there exists a set of prices which jointly and simultaneously equates demand and supply for all commodities and factors of production”
• Emerged out of and reinforced Adam’s Smith’s work around the ‘invisible hand’ and the idea that the market when left to itself will automatically balance itself
• This is the idea that the market, left to itself, will naturally find an equilibrium where prices will set at a ‘perfect’ level that reflects supply and demand that is consistent with individual’s self interest at both the supply and demand level
• If there is any sort of imbalance, “employed workers who cannot supply all the labor they would like at the going rate”(123) will make an effort to change the prices/wages so that the market better reflects their self-interest and move the market towards equilibrium.
Keynesian macroeconomic and microeconomic theory
• Idea that the macroeconomics can be helped with governmental involvement at the micro level, the level of the individual and that oftentimes it is not enough to just have a laissez-faire economic model and that governmental intervention in creating structural support for certain programs can stimulate macrolevel growth and production which can stimulate microeconomics
• These processes can be used when Walrasian equilibrium is not reached and is not enough to stimulate economic growth
• There was a backlash against this idea by those who followed Smithian liberalism (125)
Asymmetrical transactions: (126 – 128)
• Happens “when one party to a transaction knows more about the characteristics of the transacted commodity than the other” (126)
o Idea that either the quality of the supply/demand is difficult to ascertain and thus it is not able to hold it’s Walrasian equilabrium
o This can lead to the idea that the price can influence the quality (see page 126 - 127)
Two trends that have characterized the evolution of development economics
1. “Ascendance of a policy orthodoxy of development liberalism” (119)
a. Creation of a de-regulation of national markets and the need to create a ‘laissez-faire’ – hands off governmental policy, Invisible Hand Theory – Adam Smith – founder of this idea, Foucault talks about the importance of this as instrumental towards the creation of political economy and the development of the Economic Man
b. Seen also with the creation of the Washington Consensus that gained popularity during the 1990’s – roughly
c. Represented a “decentralized, noninterventionist perspective of the ultramodernist critique represents a dramatic change from prior approaches to development which stressed more active state planning and policies.” (120)
2. “Disciplinary revisionism which questions the singular generality, if not the relevance of these same core economic theorems” (119)
Invisible Hand Theorem
• “the invisible hand will see to it that. . . . private interests and passions of men’ are led in the direction ‘which is most agreeable to the interests of the whole society.’” (122)
o This is the idea that if people follow their economic self interest that the everyone’s self interest will be rewarded through the market. It is the idea that laissez-faire competition will naturally led to the high growth rates for countries/individuals/interest groups.
Agrarian Growth and Transformation
• Idea of how hard it is to create a real value or to ascertain certain quality in regarding to agrarian growth/development (see page 130 for examples)
• “Within inegalitarian economies (those of Latin America and parts of southern Africa) . . . (there is a suggestion of) two fundamental breakdowns which distort the process of market-mediated growth and transformation”: (131)
o “Production behavior is likely to systematically vary across wealth-based classes of producers, with low-wealth producers behaving like prototypical peasants . . . and high wealth producers behaving like entrepreneurial capitalists”
• Idea that when people start off from a place of inequality, there will be a difference in the way they use their resources and the importance they place on land, resources and the ability to acquire new technologies. The low-wealth producers will relay more on labor-intensive production and the high-wealth producers will be able to acquire and use more technological means of achieving a higher harvest
o “The process of agrarian growth and transformation in actually existing market economies can be an unsteady one, and one in which initial levels of inequality are reproduced and deepened by a growth process.
Endogenous Growth theory and the Reproduction of the Core-Periphery Structure
• There is a theory amongst neo-Marxists called the Dependency theory which states the in much the same way that working class/the proleteriat is oppressed by the bourgeois, the same things happen at an international level; that the ‘periphery’ states are the ones with the natural resources that are exploited for the benefit of the ‘core’ rich states and the money and resources are diverted away from periphery states in order to enrich the ‘core’
• The opposition to this theory, which lead to the emergence of free-trade structures and NAFTA and CAFTA, states that we all emerge from interactions with the world market victorious and that interaction within a world-market will lead to “national growth and high living standards (will) eventually converge, extinguishing the distinction b/w developed and less developed countries” (132)
o We will all reach a place of balance and equilibrium within the world market
• Endogenous growth theory states that wealthy nations can continue their wealth and their gains through an interaction with the ‘periphery’ states and expentionally increase their growth and lead to a greater divide b/w core and periphery states
Washington Consensus: an extension of neo-liberal economic policy that worked in conjunction with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to create ‘structural adjustment programs’
Walrasian equilibrium – “there exists a set of prices which jointly and simultaneously equates demand and supply for all commodities and factors of production”
• Emerged out of and reinforced Adam’s Smith’s work around the ‘invisible hand’ and the idea that the market when left to itself will automatically balance itself
• This is the idea that the market, left to itself, will naturally find an equilibrium where prices will set at a ‘perfect’ level that reflects supply and demand that is consistent with individual’s self interest at both the supply and demand level
• If there is any sort of imbalance, “employed workers who cannot supply all the labor they would like at the going rate”(123) will make an effort to change the prices/wages so that the market better reflects their self-interest and move the market towards equilibrium.
Keynesian macroeconomic and microeconomic theory
• Idea that the macroeconomics can be helped with governmental involvement at the micro level, the level of the individual and that oftentimes it is not enough to just have a laissez-faire economic model and that governmental intervention in creating structural support for certain programs can stimulate macrolevel growth and production which can stimulate microeconomics
• These processes can be used when Walrasian equilibrium is not reached and is not enough to stimulate economic growth
• There was a backlash against this idea by those who followed Smithian liberalism (125)
Asymmetrical transactions: (126 – 128)
• Happens “when one party to a transaction knows more about the characteristics of the transacted commodity than the other” (126)
o Idea that either the quality of the supply/demand is difficult to ascertain and thus it is not able to hold it’s Walrasian equilabrium
o This can lead to the idea that the price can influence the quality (see page 126 - 127)
Two trends that have characterized the evolution of development economics
1. “Ascendance of a policy orthodoxy of development liberalism” (119)
a. Creation of a de-regulation of national markets and the need to create a ‘laissez-faire’ – hands off governmental policy, Invisible Hand Theory – Adam Smith – founder of this idea, Foucault talks about the importance of this as instrumental towards the creation of political economy and the development of the Economic Man
b. Seen also with the creation of the Washington Consensus that gained popularity during the 1990’s – roughly
c. Represented a “decentralized, noninterventionist perspective of the ultramodernist critique represents a dramatic change from prior approaches to development which stressed more active state planning and policies.” (120)
2. “Disciplinary revisionism which questions the singular generality, if not the relevance of these same core economic theorems” (119)
Invisible Hand Theorem
• “the invisible hand will see to it that. . . . private interests and passions of men’ are led in the direction ‘which is most agreeable to the interests of the whole society.’” (122)
o This is the idea that if people follow their economic self interest that the everyone’s self interest will be rewarded through the market. It is the idea that laissez-faire competition will naturally led to the high growth rates for countries/individuals/interest groups.
Agrarian Growth and Transformation
• Idea of how hard it is to create a real value or to ascertain certain quality in regarding to agrarian growth/development (see page 130 for examples)
• “Within inegalitarian economies (those of Latin America and parts of southern Africa) . . . (there is a suggestion of) two fundamental breakdowns which distort the process of market-mediated growth and transformation”: (131)
o “Production behavior is likely to systematically vary across wealth-based classes of producers, with low-wealth producers behaving like prototypical peasants . . . and high wealth producers behaving like entrepreneurial capitalists”
• Idea that when people start off from a place of inequality, there will be a difference in the way they use their resources and the importance they place on land, resources and the ability to acquire new technologies. The low-wealth producers will relay more on labor-intensive production and the high-wealth producers will be able to acquire and use more technological means of achieving a higher harvest
o “The process of agrarian growth and transformation in actually existing market economies can be an unsteady one, and one in which initial levels of inequality are reproduced and deepened by a growth process.
Endogenous Growth theory and the Reproduction of the Core-Periphery Structure
• There is a theory amongst neo-Marxists called the Dependency theory which states the in much the same way that working class/the proleteriat is oppressed by the bourgeois, the same things happen at an international level; that the ‘periphery’ states are the ones with the natural resources that are exploited for the benefit of the ‘core’ rich states and the money and resources are diverted away from periphery states in order to enrich the ‘core’
• The opposition to this theory, which lead to the emergence of free-trade structures and NAFTA and CAFTA, states that we all emerge from interactions with the world market victorious and that interaction within a world-market will lead to “national growth and high living standards (will) eventually converge, extinguishing the distinction b/w developed and less developed countries” (132)
o We will all reach a place of balance and equilibrium within the world market
• Endogenous growth theory states that wealthy nations can continue their wealth and their gains through an interaction with the ‘periphery’ states and expentionally increase their growth and lead to a greater divide b/w core and periphery states
implications of phrases
what up with Majid Rahnema's line, "to flower in goodness,"? and this dichotomy of inner and outer freedom? does anyone else see this as problematic? i did like a lot of what this author had to say, it just all went strangely toward the end (p.127-9). i'm wondering also why this term, "fear-power"?
The Oxford American dictionary uses this sentence as an example for the definition of democracy: "capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world," and this sentence as an example for imperium: "it was the high noon of the imperium, an age when there was something empowering about being American."
The Oxford American dictionary uses this sentence as an example for the definition of democracy: "capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world," and this sentence as an example for imperium: "it was the high noon of the imperium, an age when there was something empowering about being American."
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
first thoughts
hi y'all. it's me, emiko. (i guess i forgot to mention that.) i'm glad there's some interest. i find this more accessible than meetings just 'cause i have a hard time making them (for example, today i've got two people i need to connect with after class), and it's nice to write down thoughts as i read (though i haven't done that as of yet).
so. just a couple of things to get us started:
did anyone understand all that economic jargon in the first article we read (intellectual openings and policy closures)? i've never taken an econ class and know very little about this stuff. but i would love to learn more if anyone can explain it to me.
i loved the article, 'state.' i have very little background knowledge on nation-states. it put a lot into perspective.
in 'science,' i was surprised by this idea of entropy being ethno-centric. i like how it was related to the econ's idea of scarcity, though i don't yet have a good grasp on how either of these ideas function. it was also great to hear science being paralleled to scripture (p.228 3rd paragraph). also, the difference between knowledge and information... i like the distinction. i feel like knowledge has direction. what cha'll think?
shit. i've got to work on my paper, readings, and all that other stuff. but one last thing: anyone else notice how 'technology and expertise' ended mid-sentence? i really loved that article and was so bummed for it to just leave me hanging like that.
so. just a couple of things to get us started:
did anyone understand all that economic jargon in the first article we read (intellectual openings and policy closures)? i've never taken an econ class and know very little about this stuff. but i would love to learn more if anyone can explain it to me.
i loved the article, 'state.' i have very little background knowledge on nation-states. it put a lot into perspective.
in 'science,' i was surprised by this idea of entropy being ethno-centric. i like how it was related to the econ's idea of scarcity, though i don't yet have a good grasp on how either of these ideas function. it was also great to hear science being paralleled to scripture (p.228 3rd paragraph). also, the difference between knowledge and information... i like the distinction. i feel like knowledge has direction. what cha'll think?
shit. i've got to work on my paper, readings, and all that other stuff. but one last thing: anyone else notice how 'technology and expertise' ended mid-sentence? i really loved that article and was so bummed for it to just leave me hanging like that.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)