WK2 – SGM223 – Communication, Culture and Development – “Modernity, Globalization and

Development critiques”

Dr. Carolina MatosLecturer in Media and CommunicationsDepartment of SociologyCity University London

Key issues• The problematization of poverty (continued from WK 1)• Modernization theory• The role of information in development (WK5)• Criticisms of modernization theory• Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth• Dependency theory• Beyond development and post-development• Development and social change• Video BBC World Debate Why Poverty?• Conclusions• Seminar activities and questions• Readings for week 3

Core readings• Required: • Frank, Andre Gunder (1969) ‘The Development of

Underdevelopment’ in Roberts, J. Timmons & Hite, Amy (2000) The Globalization and Development Reader, London: Blackwell Publishing

• Fanon, Frantz (2001) ‘Concerning Violence - Chapter 1’ in The Wretched of the Earth, Penguin Books.

• Additional: • Cardoso, F. (1972) “Dependency and development in Latin

America” in Hite, Amy Bellone and Timmons, J. Roberts (2007) The Globalization and Development Reader, London: Blackwell Publishing

• Escobar, A. (1994) “The problematization of poverty”. • Schramm, W. (1964) Mass media and national development – the

role of information in the developing countries, Stanford University Press, see first chapter

Poverty in the globalized age: war, suffering, conflict, unemployment and hunger

The problematization of poverty (in Escobar, 1994)

• When did poverty become a major concern?• As Escobar (1994, 21) affirms, the early post-World War II period

saw the “discovery” of mass poverty in Asia, Africa and Latin America

• “Poverty on a global scale was a discovery of the post-World War II period. As Sachs (1990) and Rahnema (1991) have maintained, the conceptions and treatment of poverty were quite different before 1940. In colonial times the concern with poverty was conditioned by the belief that even if the “natives” could be somewhat enlightened by the presence of the colonizer, not much could be done about their poverty because their economic development was pointless…..”

• “…the social became prominent in the 19th century, culminating in the 20th ….in the consolidation of the welfare state and the ensemble of techniques encompassed under the rubric of social work. Not only poverty but health, education, hygiene, employment and the poor quality of life in towns….were constructed as social problems.”

The problematization of poverty: a social problem (in Escobar, 1994)

What is poverty? What constitutes a “poor person or a poor nation”?:

•“…the globalization of poverty entailed by the construction of two-thirds of the world as poor after 1945. If within market economies the poor where defined as lacking what the rich had in terms of money and material possessions, poor countries came to be similarly defined in relation to the standards of wealth of the more economically advantaged nations.”•The essential trait of the Third World began to be seen as its poverty, with economic growth and development becoming self-evident and universal truths.

Important connection between the decline of the colonial order and the rise of development: •“In the interwar period, the ground was prepared for the institution of development as a strategy to remake the colonial world and restructure the relations between colonies and metropoles.”

The problematization of poverty (in Escobar, 1994)

• British Development Act of the 1940s – the first great materialization of the development idea – was a response to challenges to imperial power in the 1930s. This was especially so in the settler states in southern Africa.

• The “invention” of development ?:

• “In 1949 an economic mission organized by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development visited Colombia with the purpose of formulating a development program…The program called for a “multitude of improvements and reforms” covering all important areas of the economy. …only through development will Colombia become an “inspiring example” for the rest of the underdeveloped world.

• …..A type of development was promoted which conformed to the ideas and expectations of the affluent West….”

“Decolonisation and US-Latin American relations” (Escobar, 1994)

• Most Latin American countries achieved political independence in the early decades of the 19th century, although they continued to be under the sway of European cultures.

• US-Latin American relations – double edged sword: • “Three inter-American conferences – held at Chapultepec in Mexico

(Feb.-March 1945), Rio de Janeiro (August 1947) and Bogota (March-April 1948) – were crucial in articulating new rules of the game. ….these conferences made evident the serious divergence of interests between Latin America and the United States….the United States insisted on its military and security objectives, Latin American countries emphasised more than ever economic and social goals (Lopez Maya, 1993).”

• “Latin America wanted appropriate economic policies, including the protection of the nascent industries. General Marshall made clear that Latin America could in no way expect something similar to the Marshall Plan for Europe (Lopez Maya, 1993).”

Racism and Eurocentrism and “The Wretched of the Earth” (Fanon, 1965, 2001)

• Distinctions made between self (i.e. the European) and the “Other” (often the postcolonial Other)

• Racism and Eurocentrism forms of thinking have been pointed out as underlining reasons for current conflicts throughout the world

• In the context of the liberation movements in Algeria, Frantz Fanon (1965) in The Wretched of the Earth dissected the psychological degradation inflicted by imperialism

• “The Western bourgeoisie, though fundamentally racist, most often manages to mask this racism by a multiplicity of nuances which allow it to preserve intact its proclamation of mankind’s outstanding dignity…Western bourgeois racial prejudice as regards the nigger and the Arab is a racism of contempt...”

Fanon’s Concerning Violence: the problems of the former colonial world (Fanon, 1965, 2001)

• Discusses the implications and interdependencies of a divided world• Examines the role of the national bourgeois in the former colonial world, as

well as the European bourgeois• The process of decolonization is a complex one: at its roots are the remains

of a series of psychological problems suffered by the colonised people, still embedded in a “colonised mentality” and “inferiority complex”, the result of various forms of oppression.

• “The colonial world is a world divided into compartments. It is probably unnecessary to recall the existence of native quarters and European quarters, of schools for natives and schools for Europeans….the town belonging to the colonized people…..the Negro village….is a place of ill fame, peopled by men of evil rupture. It is a world without spaciousness; men live there on top of each other…..The look that the native turns on the settler’s town is a look of lust, a look of envy. When you examine at close quarters the colonial context, it is evident that what parcels out the world is to begin with the fact of belonging to or not belonging to a given race…..” (Fanon, 27-31)

Modernization theory: concerns and definitions (in Kingsbury et al, 2004)

• Popular in the 1950s and 1960s:

• The essence of the modernization theories included the concern that “growth in successful regions will trickle down to the more peripheral areas”. Poor countries were seen as being able to “catch up” and to “benefit” from others.

• These ideas have remained influential, making a return to the mainstream in the 1980s.Some still see “post-development thinking” as highly influenced by modernization theories.

• The ideas have informed the documents of organizations like the World Bank and the IMF.

• Sen (2000) has proposed that we regard “development” as freedom, and in this way “development” involves the “removal of the major sources of un-freedom – tyranny, power economic prospects, social deprivation, insufficient public facilities, etc.”

Modernization theorists: Lerner and Schramm• First generation of researchers and policy makers who approached

development from the modernization theory perspective• Daniel Lerner and Wilbur Schramm were the main exponents, with Everett

M. Rogers succeeding Schramm at Stanford University as director of the Institute for Communication Research• Decade of the 60’s and 70’s: Major universities in the US carried out

research, trained Third World students to go back to their country to apply development model. • Lerner and Schramm argued that mass media could multiply development

efforts and promote rapid economic growth and stable democracy (Stevenson, 1988) • Schramm’s (1964) Mass media and national development: the role of

information in the developing countries was a study sponsored by Unesco.• It analysed the role of economic and social development and the ways in

which the media can be of assistance.

Modernisation theory and the role of the mass media in development

• Daniel Lerner (1958) believed that the mass media could break the hold of traditional cultures on societies and make them aspire to a modern way of life.

• Here was the view that international communication had a role in the process of modernising and developing the Third World (Thussu, 2000)

• This paradigm was founded on the notion that international mass communication should become the vehicle for spreading the message of modernity.

• Mass media were thus seen as being instrumental in spreading education, transferring educational skills, fostering social unity and creating the desire to “modernise”.

Modernization and development• According to Everett M. Rogers (1974, 45) in Communication in

Development, modernization is “the process by which individuals change from a traditional way of life to a more complex, technologically advanced and rapidly changing style of life.”

• “Development is a type of social change in which new ideas are introduced into a social system in order to produce higher per capita income and levels of living….The mass media….are especially able to raise the level of aspirations of citizens in developing countries.”

Role for the mass media in development: 1) the mass media are coupled with group discussion in media

forums; 2) the traditional mass media….are utilised along with the more

modern electronic and print media.

Schramm’s Mass media and national development (1964)

How social change occurs: Believed that traditional cultures were resistant to change and that this is perceived as threatening to old social relationships Sees media as having an important role in national development, but recognises its limits What the media can do (among others): The media as watchmen, performing informing functions (many generations of people form their opinions and ideas by what they read in newspapers); The mass media can raise aspirations; The mass media can create a climate for development; The mass media can help indirectly change strongly held attitudes; The mass media can broadened the policy dialogue ……enforce social norms; ……..help substantially in all types of education and training.

Schramm’s Mass media and national development

• “Lerner found a very high correlation between the measures of economic growth and the measures of communication growth.”

• In the Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East, Lerner discerned a psychological pattern, pointing to the first element, the “mobile personality.”

• The second element is the “mobility multiplier: the mass media”. • The mass media serve as the great multiplier in development, the

“device that can spread the requisite knowledge and attitudes more quickly and widely than even before.”

• “The media have disciplined Western man in those empathic skills which spell modernity. They also portrayed for him the roles he might confront and elucidated the opinions he might need.”

Criticisms to modernization theory• Criticisms came from the “dependency school of theories”. These

argued that the underdeveloped world would not be capable of developing in this model. • The emphasis on the individual as responsible for the state of

underdevelopment, and not on the political and economic system. • Modernisation theory was seen as having neglected the political,

social and cultural dimensions of development. • Developing countries saw the theory as too ethnocentric, holding a

simple view of a linear development. Inequalities were seen as not being narrowed, with the prosperity of the North contributing for the “impoverishment” of the developing countries • According to the critics, advanced economies like the US, Germany

and Japan went through the early stages of industrialization behind protective tariffs until they felt competitive enough to confront the global market on equal terms.” (Kingsbury et al, 2004)

Criticisms to modernization theory (in Hite and Timmons, 2007)

• Modernization theory failed to make distinctions between countries, regions, structural conditions or specific historical experiences. Many countries that were classified as “underdeveloped” had in fact “modern” industries.

• The term “modernization” was also seen as another word for “Americanization”, with the field being labelled as “pro-capitalist.”

• By emphasising the nations’ internal problems, modernization….seemed to blame the victims for their poverty.

• Some modernization ideas have come back into the mainstream from the 1980’s onwards, having been mainly adopted by the Right, but many also argue that mainstream development thinking is still largely influenced by modernization theory

Dependency theory• Dependency theory criticised the modernisation paradigm,

having had its origins in Latin America (1960’s and1970’s)• Centre versus periphery – countries that emerged from

colonialism remained “dependent” on the core capitalism countries through “new forms of economic and political dependency” (Cardoso, 1972)

• Development is conducted in such a way as to maintain the position of dependence, or “the development of underdevelopment” (Frank in Thussu, 2000, 61).

• American-style development programs were also criticised by European theorists as serving to strengthen exploitation of the “Third World”.

• The first generation of development assistance programs were not the solution to “Third World” underdevelopment, they were part of the problem.

“The Development of the Underdevelopment” (Frank, 1969 in in Hite and Timmons, 2007) • Frank’s (1967, 1969) argument was that the rich countries achieved growth

by exploiting their colonies and the rest of the underdeveloped world.• Metropolis-satellite relations based on a structural system of exploitation:• “It is assumed that underdeveloped countries are at a stage depicted as an

original stage of history that developed countries passed long time ago. “Historical research demonstrates that contemporary underdevelopment is in large part the historical product of past and continuing economic and other relations between satellite underdeveloped and developed countries.”

Metropolis-satellite relations (core-periphery): Once the goods in which these regions specialised where no longer being

produced….these countries would then be abandoned, thus limiting their development

“The Development of the Underdevelopment” (Frank, 1969 in in Hite and Timmons, 2007)

• Case studies of the economic and social histories of Chile and Brazil:

• “…these metropolis-satellite relations are not limited to the imperial or international level but penetrate…the very economic political and social life of the Latin American colonies…the history of Brazil is the clearest case of both national and regional development of underdevelopment. The expansion of the world economy since the beginning of the 16th century successively converted the Northeast, Minas Gerais interior, the North and the Centre South (RJ, SP and Parana) into export economies and incorporated them into the….development of the world capitalist system.”

“The Development of Underdevelopment” (Frank, 1969, 2007)

Case of Brazil: “ During the First World War….Sao Paulo began to build up an industrial establishment which is the largest in Latin America today…..The development of industry in Sao Paulo has not brought greater riches to the other regions of Brazil. It converted them into internal colonial satellites….and consolidated or even deepened their underdevelopment”.

1st Hypothesis: the development of the national and other subordinated nations is limited….by their satellite status.2nd Hypothesis: that the satellite experience their greatest economic development and their classically capitalist industrial development if and when their ties to their metropolis are weakest. 3rd Hypothesis: the regions which are the most underdeveloped…today are the ones which had had the closest ties to the metropolis in the past. They are the regions which were the greatest exporters of primary product to and the biggest sources of capital for the world metropolis…”. (sugar and mines)

“Dependent capitalist development” (Cardoso, 1972 in Hite and Timmons, 2007)

• Attempts to advance Frank’s analysis, stating that it should not be assumed that imperialism has created a “lack of dynamism” in dependent economies

• In specific situations, it is possible to expect development and dependency (1972, 93).

• Unequal trade relations: “Inequality among nations and economies resulted from imperialism’s development to the extent that import of raw materials, and export of manufactured goods, were the basis of the imperialist-colonial relationship……this type of economic expansion thus reinforced colonial links through wars, repression and subjection of peoples….that previously were culturally independent and structurally did not have links with Western World (i.e. African and Asian regions….)” (1972, 85-87).

• New forms of economic dependency: • foreign investment is moving away from oil, raw materials and in the

direction of industrial sectors. Joint venture enterprise includes local state capital, private national and monopoly international investment.” Local elites were identified also as agents of dependency and underdevelopment.

Beyond Development and Post-Development: development since the 1980’s

The debt of poor nations and “neoliberal” forms of development since the 1980’s:“The poorer nations took on debts in the 1960s and 1970s to try to build their industrial sectors and infra-structure and to catch up with the core nations. The loans permitted these poor nations to finally do some development planning…. But the nations became more and more in debt. They had to secure more loans, and in exchange for these loans, they had to submit to a sweeping program of cuts in food, housing, privatization of state companies…”As Nederveen Pieterse (2007, 11) underlines, there has been a shift from the structuralist perspective on development towards institutional and agency-oriented views. From the 1980’s onwards, both modernization or neo-Marxist dependency theories started to lose out in terms of their explanatory power (Schuurman in Desai et al, 2002, 12).

Beyond development: modernization and dependency theories

• Reasons for the impasse: • 1) the failure of development programmes in the South and the

growing diversity of underdevelopment experiences; • 2) the postmodern critique in the Social Science in general and on the

normative characteristics of development; • 3) the rise of globalization• (Schuurman in Desai et al, 2002)2

• Thus key post-Second World War developmental paradigms were challenged:

• 1) the “Third World” as homogenous; 2) the uncontested belief in the Enlightenment and 3) the importance of the nation-state (that began to be challenged with globalization).

• 002)

Impasse of development studies • From the 1990’s onwards, globalization has had a major influence on

Development Studies • Post-modern critique: that development was based on meta-discourses,

such as the Enlightenment ideal of the emancipation of humanity (shared by modernization and development theories alike) had not been achieved. (Schuurman in Desai et al, 2002).

• Many felt that “development” meant “cultural Westernization”, or “homogenization”.

• Related to concepts of anti-development and post-colonialism, post-development is a critique of the standard assumptions about progress (Sidaway in Desai et al, 2002, 17)

Social change, humanitarianism and sustainability

• The emphasis on agency results in development thinking becoming more local or regional.

• There is also concern for differentiation and diversity. • As Nederveen Pieterse notes, “there are no general recipes, no

development policies that are relevant across countries and regions. The singular makes way for the plural – not simply development but what kind of development?” (2010, 13)

• New qualifiers emerge, such as sustainable development and people-friendly growth and a general emphasis on a participatory approach.

• “This is a step towards the democratization of development politics…..In development policy, significant themes are inter-sectoral cooperation, social diversity, human security, gender and environment and changes in development cooperation and structural reform.”

Why Poverty?

• BBC World Debate Why Poverty?• (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNIEb3injpc)

• Published November 30th, 2012

Conclusions• Development thinking has been associated with the history of the political

and intellectual hegemony of Eurocentrism, with exceptions given to dependency theory and alternative forms of development

• Modernization theory has been highly influential in development thinking, mainly the idea that “poor countries” could “catch up” with the West in terms of technological, cultural, political and social advancement

• Scholars like Schramm assigned an important role for information and the media in transmitting values and changing attitudes towards “becoming modern”

• Dependency theory was also highly influential and argued that the prosperity of the North was in large part the result of the impoverishment of the South, and that the former colonies would continue to be dependent on the advanced economies

• Post-development in an age of globalization: modernization and dependency theories were both questioned, and after the 1980s’ there was a shift towards agency-oriented forms of development and a rise of post-colonial and anti-development thinking

Seminar questionsSeminars will consist of two main activities:•I. Class divides into two main groups, one pro-modernization theory and one pro-dependency. Groups needs to think of the merits of each and the limits of the other theory.•II. Based on the readings, groups will discuss the following questions:•A) What does Frank mean by “the development of underdevelopment”? Discuss this in the context of the dependency theory debates. •B) Using Fanon’s text, discuss the problems of decolonisation and of the relationship between colonised and colonizer.•C) Examine Schramm’s modernization theory perspectives and the role assigned to information in development. •D) Using Escobar’s text and the BBC debate, examine how poverty emerged as a social problem in the 20th century, making reference to the examples of the relationship between the US and Latin America.

Readings week 3• Core reading: • Boyd-Barrett, O. (1977) “Media imperialism: towards an

international framework for assessing media systems” in Curran, J. and Gurevitch, M. (eds.) Mass Communication and Society, London: Arnold, 5-20

• Sparks, C. (2007) “Culture and Media Imperialism” and “The Failure of the Imperialism Paradigm” in Globalization, Development and the Mass Media, London: Sage Publications

• Additional: • Matos, C. (2012) Media and politics in Latin America: globalization,

democracy and identity, London: I.B. Tauris, 14-29 and 217-243 • Melkote, S. R. and Steeves, H. Leslie (eds.) “The Enterprise of

Modernization and the Dominant Discourse of Development” in Communication for Development in the Third World, London: Sage