Dr. Carolina Matos

Lecturer in Media and Communications

Department of Sociology

City University London

WK 7 – SGM223 – Communication, CULTURE and Development – “Communication,

Development and Economic Perspectives”

Required reading

Core reading:

•Bebbington, A. et al (2007) “Critical Challenges” in Can NGOs make a difference?: the challenge of development alternatives, Zed Books, 3-55, part 1

•Desai, Vandana and Potter, Robert (2001) (eds.) “Agents of Development” in The Companion to Development Studies, London: Routledge, especially 10.7, 10.8 and 10.14

•Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2010) “Equity and growth revisited: From human development to social development” in Development Theory, London: Sage, p. 125-144

Additional:

Moemeka, A. A. (2000) Development communication in action: Building understanding and creating participation, Oxford: U. P. of America.

Mowlana, H. (1988). Communication technology and development, UNESCO.

Slater, Don (2008) “Glimpsing God in the Internet” in D. Held and H. Moore (eds.) Cultural Politics in a Global Age, Oneworld Publication pp. 89-97

Key themes

Political and economic aspects of development Stages of development and the history of aid Development as equity and growth (Nederveen Pieterse, year) Social and human development The role of NGOs: in between the state and the market NGOs: challenges and future prospects NGOs and alternative development Case studies Conclusions Essay questions Readings for week 8

Agents of development (in Desai et al, 2002)

Development activity was for a long time the monopoly of the state. From the late 20th century onwards, the role of the state was weakened, with the entry of other agents of development, such as the World Bank, the IMF and NGOs.

“Development has to be seen in the economic context of global capitalism, but also in the political context.”

Growth of NGOs is likely as the state declines and global economic activity intensifies

Controversies regarding the intentions of NGOs (political and economic concerns)

Role of aid - is viewed as a means of promoting ‘good governance’ and ‘sound’ economic practices, which has lead many to be very critical of aid.

“Good governance” and the role of NGOS (in Desai et al, 2002)

“Good governance” defined as ‘sound’ management of a country’s economic and social resources

“What is ‘sound’ for the World Bank and others holding the view that ‘democratization’ stimulates development is a range of management techniques that are believed to work well within a standardized liberal democratic model.”

NGOs are generally viewed as market-based actors and central components of civil society. NGOS usually fill gaps left by the state, and can be seen as part of a structural adjustment or donor-promoted reform package.

Different types of NGOs: campaigning, charitable or service-providing.

Many are public interest research or campaigning organizations (i.e. Greenpeace), others are service-providing NGOs concerned with welfare

Foreign aid and official development assistance (in Desai et al, 2002)

Aid takes the form of transfer of finance, commodities and other goods, technical co-operation and debt relief. There are also differences between development aid and humanitarian or disaster relief aid.

Who are the biggest donors?: While the US before 1989 and Japan in most years since have been the largest

donors, the European Union member states together with the EU’s own development co-operation budget now account for 55% of all official development assistance (ODA).

Around 30% of development assistance is managed by the multilateral donors including the World Bank Group’s International Development Association, which makes interest-free loans to the least developed countries, and various United Nations agencies.

UK’s assistance is expected to rise to 11.3 billion, hitting the 0.7% target of the GNI (in The Guardian, 20/03/13)

Stages of development and aid (in Desai et al, 2002)

“NGOs like CARE, Medecins Sans Frontiers and Oxfam provide up to US$ 6 billion annually in private grants.

Nature of aid and its development through time: US’s Marshall Plan (1948-51) to economic reconstruction in western Europe set a successful precedent of promoting development. Aid to other countries since has never matched. Donors have had multiple goals, including maintain close historical ties (i.e. Britain with the Commonwealth).

Until the 1970’s: In the early decades development assistance was underpinned by an economic logic. By the 1970’s, dependency thinkers began to criticise forms of aid (i.e. philanthropy), seeing this as an instrument of domination that mainly privileged elites in the South

1980’s: development assistance began to be challenged with the rise of neo-liberalism. Aid was seen as contributing to excessive government, harming markets.

Aid in the 1980/90’s and the “Washington consensus” (in Desai et al, 2002)

“The 1980’s saw a dramatic expansion of conditional aid lending – quick-disbursing loans in the form of programme lending to help meet balance of payments and public-sector financing requirements, linked to recommendations for economic policy and institutional reform.

“Washington consensus” – i.e. structural adjustment loans for structural adjustment programmes.

1990’s: Aid during the period has been mainly focused on assisting progress towards liberal democracy, ‘good governance’ and respect for human rights, in developing as well as post-communist states.

Modest sums of under US$ 5 billion annually are being spent on ‘political development’, especially the US government’s Agency for International Development.

UN Electoral Assistance Division and Soros Foundation, with activities including support to the electoral process, ‘reconciliation elections’ in post-conflict situations and improvement of government institutions.

“Aid fatigue” and beyond Aid in an age of globalization: The whole understanding around aid

for development has changed significantly in the last 50 years, with the 1990’s seeing a crisis in aid and minimal popular support in countries like the US. The aid’s horizon nonetheless has been expanded

New security threats in a post-Cold war context: International migration and global environment threats Organized crime and drugs trafficking Challenge of gender mainstreaming (public policy concept of assessing

the implications for men and women of planned policy action) Poverty reduction has emerged as the new priority. Emphasis now is on achieving results, especially in social

development, and less on maximizing aid funds. Realistic recognition of the limitations of aid.

Millennium Development Goals and Beyond 2015

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger2. Achieve universal primary education3. Promote gender equality and empower women4. Reduce child mortality5. Improve material health6. Combat HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases7. Ensure environmental sustainability8. Global partnerships for development(http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/)

Equity and growth (in Nederveen Pieterse, 2010)

Argument: the importance of the emphasis on equity and growth in the development of countries

Underlines that redistribution with growth was important in the 1970’s, was undermined during the “neo-liberal” era of the 1980’s and is being revisited now

Cites the 1995 World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen Nonetheless, in the World Summit framework followed by the

Millennium Development Goals, the “dominant tendency has been to relegate questions of social development to poverty alleviation.”

Post-development perspectives: Some, from a more ecological as well as alternative development view, reject growth.

What matters is “development that is equitable, sustainable and participatory”, with sometimes a rejection of growth per se.

Social development (in Nederveen Pieterse, 2010)

Quality of growth is now viewed as important. Question is: How can social development be good for economic growth?

I.e. Brazil is an example, of economic growth that has yet to show wider reduction of inequality and quality of life standards

Author argues that the market should not be demonised, and a more realistic approach is to search for a common ground between the market and social development

However, there are problems with the social welfare approach: I.e. The “Kerala model’’ included advanced social policies and high

levels of education, health and female emancipation. Other countries have included Costa Rica, Sri Lanka and Jamaica. Conclusion: in the absence of economic growth, it is difficult to

sustain welfare gains

Definitions of social development (in Nederveen Pieterse, 2010)

“The human development approach makes a strong case for combining equity and growth along the lines of human capital: this can be extended with a stronger perspective on the social dimension – as social development.”

Different understandings of “social development”: “A narrow meaning of social development is public welfare policies of health,

education and housing…..The Copenhagen summit and the MDG reproduce this tendency: social development usually ends up in the basket of poverty alleviation.”

Author sees social development as an equal emphasis placed both on the social and on development, including an integrated approach to social concerns and growth strategies.

Midgley (1995: 25) defines social development as “a process of planned social change designed to promote the well-being of the population as a whole in conjunction with a dynamic process of economic development.”

Social development and quality of life

Redistribution with growth (in Nederveen Pieterse, 2010)

Criticism: “The discourse of social development used by governments, international institutions and many NGOs is social policy, which usually means a social engineering, managerial approach.”

Implicit in social development are multiple layers of meaning, whether social development is seen as social policy, whether it is managerial, from above, or society-centred, from below.

Decade of the 1990’s: “In the 1990s, the idea of redistribution with (or for) growth regained some ground in mainstream development policy…..a genera concern with social indicators in measuring development, to the point of redefining development itself; an emphasis on human capital; and a growing critique of trickle down.”

World Bank has recognised the importance of safety nets for the poor when implementing deficit reduction.

Human development and the case of East Asia (in Nederveen Pieterse, 2010)

The World Bank has recognised that one of the initial conditions for rapid growth in East Asia has been a relative equality of income in the first generation of newly industrializing economies.

“….equity in income distribution and decent welfare systems are friends not enemies of economic growth, a pattern clear for Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore…..” (Weiss, 1996: 195).

“Large land reform schemes in both Korea and Taiwan, China, did away with the landholding classes and made wage income the main source of advancement.” (Leipziger and Thomas, 1995: 7).

Role of education in development: World Bank indicated that universal or near universal primary school enrolment was the single most important factor in launching these countries on a path of rapid economic growth.

Human development and the role of technologies (in Nederveen Pieterse, 2010)

“Human development owes its definition to the emphasis on the investment in human resources, human capital, which is prominent in the East Asian model and Japanese perspectives on development and is now a mainstream development position. The growing knowledge intensity of economic growth, as in innovation-driven growth and the emphasis on research and development technologies, reinforces the argument that an investment in human capital fosters growth”.

Ul Haq (1995:21-2) mentions four ways to create links between economic growth and human development:

“investment in education, health and skills; more equitable distribution of income; government social spending; and empowerment of people, especially women. …an HD paradigm of equity, sustainability, productivity and empowerment.”

Social capital in development: how does this matter?

Social, human and economic development

Can NGOs make a difference? (Bebbington, Hickey and Mitlin, 2008)

Core concern of the book: What are the challenges that NGOs face operating within a market-driven reality and new security agenda? Can they contribute to alternative forms of development? Or are they just destined to be at the margins of development models determined by others?

Serious doubts about how far NGOs in the North are able to do anything that is especially ‘’alternative’’ to their host countries’ bilateral aid programmes.

“There is a sense that their room for manoeuvre has been seriously constrained by the security agenda, increasing political disenchantment with NGOs, the constraints of a poverty impact agenda that will only fund activities with measurable impacts on some material dimension of poverty, and also a sense in which ‘’alternatives’’ have been swallowed whole within the newly ‘’inclusive’’ mainstream.”

The mainstream being “participatory”? Constraints also operating on NGOs in the South, which include funding

decisions and the political and economic environments in which they operate

Role of NGOs: challenges and future prospects (in Desai et al, 2002 and Bebbington et al, 2008)

Criticisms to NGOS: can be weak in contextual analysis of the societies in which they work; technical skills; concerns with micro rather than the macro context and the practice of participation in project implementation can be poor (in Desai et al, 2002)

Little ‘d’ and ‘big D’ Development: “Hart (2001: 650) amends this distinction slightly to talk of ‘little d’ and ‘big D’

d/Development, whereby the former involves the geographically uneven, profoundly contradictory’ set of processes underlying capitalist developments, while the latter refers to the ‘project of intervention in the third world’ that emerged in a context of decolonization and the cold war.”

Role of NGOs and big D development – “NGOs have been seen as sources of alternative ways of arranging microfinance, project planning, service delivery, that is, alternative ways of intervening…”

What constitutes ‘alternative’?: Distinction is between partial, reformist, intervention-specific alternatives and

more radical, systemic alternatives.

Make Poverty History Campaign, Bolsa Familia and other examples

NGOs: themes and campaigns

Role of ITCs in development (in Matos, 2012, Norris, 2001; Nederveen Pieterse, 2010)

Pessimistic versus utopian theories surrounding the Internet – One strand believes that the Internet will only intensify inequalities, the other that it can contribute to reduce them.

“Various theories have explored the numerous advantages of the web, including its assistance in globalisation and its capacity to increase interconnectedness, permitting rapid transmission of global events, the creation of global citizens and the formation of a global civil society united in favour of particular political causes.”

Both Norris (2001) and Nederveen Pieterse (2010) see the digital divide debate less about providing computers in schools in developing countries, and more about creating the means for wider education in IT skills and literacy levels.

Rethinking development and the role of telecommunications in the 1980s (in Stevenson, 1988)

• Questions for development in the 1980s were how to speed up the transfer of technology, how to improve Third World capabilities and how to expand the existing global system.

• Just as the use of communication to promote economic and political development came under attack in the 1970s, the dominant Western style of news-making was the focus of attacks in the 80s.

• By the early 1980’s, the question of the mass media’s role in national development was almost as murky as it was a decade earlier (Stevenson, 1988, 119).

• Different organizations, such as the MacBride Commission, the International Telecommunications Union and the World Bank concluded with evidence that telecommunications had been underrated in communication development programmes

World Bank: The Citizen Cafe

(http://www.worldbank.org/

Conclusions Economic growth by itself has its limits, with the “neo-liberal” policies

of the 1980’s having been questioned. Possibilities of equating social development with economic growth have began to be revisited

Multiple understandings of “what” social development is Social welfare programmes (i.e. social policy or the welfare state) by

themselves as well are deemed problematic NGOs are seen as having grown and occupied more space since the

1980’s precisely because of the decline of the state Ambiguities exist regarding their role (service-providers for the state or

co-partners of the market) as well as contradictions (self versus collective interest)

Is being a “mainstream” NGO necessarily means to suffocate its “grassroots participation”?

Can NGOs still be “alternative” and make a difference?

Essay questions• 1) According to Thussu, Boyd-Barrett, Mowlana and

Masmoudi, the global information order is characterised by imbalances between the global north and south. Discuss these imbalances and what were the proposals put forward during the NWICO debates.• 2) Outline the basic principles of modernisation and

dependency theories in development studies and its critiques.• 3) Consider gender equality as a development goal. Discuss

strength and limitations. You may want to pick 2-3 authors to focus your essay.• 4) Do the media still have a role in national and international

development? Discuss. • 5) Examine the strengths and limitations of participatory

approaches to development communication.

Seminar questions 1) Using the texts that you have read, discuss the challenges facing

NGOs today and their future prospects. In what way can NGOs still be “alternative” and make a difference?

2) Examine the definitions of social development given by Nederveen Pieterse. According to him, how does the Millennium Development Goals see it? Do you agree?

3) Using Desai’s et al text, examine the different perspectives in development on aid in the last 50 years within the context of the shift in development thinking regarding the role of the state, the market and NGOs.

4) Choose a development campaign (i.e. Make Poverty History in Africa) and discuss its preoccupation with participation (i.e. democratic, communications), sustainability and understanding of political and economic circumstances.

Readings for week 8 Core reading: Matos, C. (2012) “Television, Popular Culture and Latin American and

Brazilian Identity” in Media and politics in Latin America: globalization, democracy and identity, London: I.B Tauris, 139-169

Thussu, D. (2010) “Mapping global media flow and contra-flow” in Thussu, D. (ed.) International Communication: a Reader, London: Routledge, 221-238

Additional: Matos, C. (2012) “Mass media and globalization” in Wiley-Blackwell’s

Encyclopedia of Globalization, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell McMillin, Divya (2007) International Media Studies Nederveen Pieterse, Jan (2009) “Globalization as Hybridization” in

Globalization and culture: global melange, London: Rowman and Littlefield, 59-81

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